February 15, 1996: Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is shaking hands at an event to commemorate Canada’s national flag. Radical socialist and separatist  Bill Clennett heckled the prime minister and in close proximity. The closeness of that proximity was obvious when the prime minister put Mr. Clennett in a choke-hold and broke one of his teeth.

An obvious over-reaction that would have landed almost any other citizen in court (even if they were justified), but then again, Clennett probably had it coming.

The Shawinigan Shake: A Part of our Heritage.

On the other side of the coin, the Russians are deceptive in their seriousness about horizontal non-proliferation when it comes to Iran and North Korea, and perhaps this should have been included in the treaty, but such negotiations are fraught with too many dynamics to make a serious criticism of the treaty on this front. None-the-less, it is becoming more than apparent that if the United States is serious about preventing a mullahist-nuclear Iran, sanctions – that would necessitate full Russian and Chinese cooperation – are simply not going to happen in any meaningful way. Both the Russians and Chinese are adept at playing a game that ingratiates themselves to the Western allies, while at the same time playing good-cop with rouge regimes.

Treaties like today’s that control the vertical proliferation of nuclear weapons deserve a cheer, but decisive and undaunted action is needed to control the horizontal proliferation of these weapons. Reducing the capacity of the United States and Russia to destroy the world over with a few less salvos is all fine and great, but as the cliché goes: it is the wrong the man with a single bomb that is the real threat to peace.

Well, that’s a time warped excerpt of an article jointly penned by Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan circa 1997, Our Benign Dictatorship (click for the non-time warped full text).  It is a startling observation in a very well written peice by the now prime minister and his mentor that provides a solid analysis of the political situation as it was then.

Times change of course and so do we.  Vindicating Prime Minister Harper’s claims, here is a graph showing how true his words really were.

My list was identical except for the example of David Peterson, whom I would have replaced with Stephane Dion and his, well, nearly every move as Opposition Leader.

Five Top Biggest Political Blunders in Canadian History by Gerry Nicholls

#5. John Tory gets an education

Ontario went to the polls in 2007 and it seemed the governing Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty might be in trouble. Voters still remembered how McGuinty had broken a promise not to raise taxes and the Opposition Progressive Conservatives had a brand new leader, the personable John Tory. And Tory thought he had a winning issue: funding faith based schools.

The Plan
Tory wanted to extend public funding to religious schools. He had two reasons: a) he thought it was wrong to grant funding to Catholic schools but not to other religious schools b) he thought such a move would win him votes among ethnic voters in the Greater Toronto Area.

What Went Wrong
Many voters found Tory’s “faith based school” initiative confusing and those who didn’t find it confusing found it scary. Was Tory going to use tax dollars to finance terrorism schools? Even PC supporters didn’t like the plan and were vocal about saying so. Faced with overwhelming negative reaction and an open mutiny from within his own ranks, Tory dropped the idea halfway through the election. But by then it was too late.

The Result
Dalton McGuinty scored an easy majority government victory. Tory failed to win a seat. Faith-based schools didn’t get any funding.

# 4. David Peterson overestimates himself

David Peterson served as Ontario Premier in the mid to late 1980s. Bright, young, articulate and telegenic, this Liberal leader, with his trademark red ties, embodied the “Yuppie.” By all rights, he should have held power for a long time. But then he decided to risk his political career on a premature election.

The Plan
In 1990 Premier Peterson sensed economic trouble on the horizon. The province was heading for recession, so he figured it would make political sense to hold an election before the economy started turning sour. So with his party still way ahead in the polls, he called a “snap election” barely three years into his mandate.

What Went Wrong
What Peterson didn’t realize was that Ontario voters were coming to view their Yuppie Premier as arrogant and smug. And his clearly cynical decision to call a clearly opportunistic election only fuelled that sense. What’s worse, Peterson decided to make his leadership the central question of the election. Bad move.

The Result
The NDP under Bob Rae won a stunning majority victory sweeping the red-tie wearing Peterson and his Liberals from power. Rae, of course, then went to implement a socialist agenda and basically wrecked the Ontario economy. So in a sense everybody lost that election.

# 4. Harper’s Poor Chess Move

In the 2008 federal election Prime Minister Stephen Harper handed the Liberal Party one of its worst defeats ever. Did that satisfy him? Nope. What the Prime Minister really wanted to do was grind the defeated Liberals into little bits of red dust.

The Plan
Harper, known a “grand chess master of politics”, devised a move which he believed would drive the cash-strapped Liberals into bankruptcy. In November 2008 his government introduced a measure to end the public subsidies political parties enjoy. This was supposed to corner the Liberals: either they would accept the end to subsidies and essentially commit financial Hara-kiri or they would oppose it, triggering an election they would be sure to lose. On paper it was brilliant.

What Went Wrong
Harper had put the Liberals in a tight box alright, but that just made them desperate, desperate enough to form an unholy alliance with the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois, a countermove which the chess master had not anticipated. Suddenly this new NDP-Liberal-Bloc “Coalition” had the votes to potentially displace the Conservatives as the government. Talk about a plan backfiring!

The Result
Fortunately for Harper the Governor General prorogued Parliament thwarting the Coalition takeover. Yet, the Prime Minister was forced on the defensive and soon after his government introduced a Coalition-appeasing budget, which plunged the country deep into deficit.

# 3 Chretien’s Face

In the fall of 1993, Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Kim Campbell, (remember her?) was leading her party in a federal election. Unfortunately for her, things weren’t going that well. Already facing an uphill climb, Campbell made things worse with a series of gaffes – i.e. she supposedly commented that “an election is no time to discuss serious issues”. The Liberals seemed headed for at least a minority victory. And so, in a last desperate attempt to turn things around the PCs decided to launch a negative TV ad.

The Plan
The Tory party’s chief strategist, Alan Gregg, realized that although the Liberals were ahead in the polls, their leader, the old warhorse Jean Chretien, was not personally popular. So to hammer away at this weakness he produced a series of TV ads which featured unflattering close-ups of Chrétien with lines like “I’d be embarrassed if he were Prime Minister.”

What Went wrong
Unfortunately for the Tories many voters and media observers believed the attack ads were mocking Chrétien’s facial paralysis, leading to a severe anti-Tory backlash. And the wily Chretien recognizing a hanging curveball when he sees one smashed it out of the park, when he compared to the Conservatives to schoolyard bullies: “When I was a kid people were laughing at me,” he said, “but I accepted that because God gave me other qualities and I’m grateful.” Great drama.

The Result
The Liberals won a smashing majority and the once-mighty Conservatives were reduced to two seats in the Commons. Campbell lost her seat and resigned as leader. Chretien went on to win two more majority governments and gave eventually gave Canada “Adscam.”

#1 Joe Clark blows it

In 1979 Canadian conservatives had reason to be jubilant. That was the year Joe Clark and his Progressive Conservatives defeated the hated Liberals and formed a minority government. Even better, Pierre Trudeau had announced he would resign from politics. But then Clark decided to tempt fate.

The Plan
One of the reasons Clark had won the 1979 election was that he promised to cut taxes. So naturally when it came time to write his first budget he decided to raise taxes. In fact, he wanted to slap a whopping 18 percent tax on gasoline. The Tories called it “short term pain for long term gain.”

What Went Wrong
The Opposition, sensing that Clark’s tax was extremely unpopular, assembled all their MPs to vote against the budget. It was clear the budget, if introduced, would be defeated on a non-confidence vote and the government would fall. Yet Clark went ahead and presented the budget – and his government fell.

The Result
As soon as the government fell Trudeau reversed his decision to resign and led the Liberals to a majority government victory over the hapless Clark. This gave Trudeau four more years to wreak havoc on the Canadian economy as he introduced such measures as the National Energy Program. Thanks Joe.

Coderre has been “reserving” safe or highly winnable seats for star candidates and party insiders, sometimes justified as affirmative action.  The story has been portrayed as a fight between two men with ambitions to one day replace the current leader, with each invoking higher powers to do their bidding. Coderre’s decisions stand because the leader has a veto over all candidates, while a former minister of the crown has been reduced to having Bob Rae and Jean Chrétien ask nicely that he be allowed to run.  The thought that the Liberal voters of Outremont are the only legitimate people to decide who will be their candidate in the next election is an afterthought.

That leaders or their appointed minions have the ultimate power to decide who is allowed to stand as a candidate – and not the party members or supporters  – in a given riding is a testament to the autocratic nature of Canada’s political system.

Even in ridings where a nomination race is allowed to proceed, party brass normally have an interest in ensuring that their anointed candidate wins, and therefore fix the timing and rules in their favor.  That the other candidate is even to be allowed on the ballot is seen as a privilege, not a democratic right.

At the very heart of Canada’s oft touted “democratic deficit” is the over-centralization of power, but one simply cannot wish it away.  To decentralize power – on both sides of the House – the incentive structure needs to be altered in a way that the primary loyalty of MPs it not directed to their leaders, but to their electors.  This is especially so in “safe” ridings, where the most important ballots cast are in nominations (where they are allowed to take place) and not in general elections.  Competitive nomination fights – without manipulation by party brass – are needed most for Conservatives in rural and western Canada, Liberals in Toronto and western Montreal, and anywhere that MPs feel that they can relax and focus on Ottawa.

This can begin by removing nomination powers from party leaders and executives, and placing them with a non-partisan entity like Elections Canada.  From there, a move to primaries where all party supporters in a given riding can select their candidate openly and fairly will go a long way to ensuring that whoever the MP for Outremont is, they are representing their electors, and not their party.

UPDATE

Magnifique! So minutes after writing about the autocratic nomination tiff in Outremont, it was announced that Michael Ignatieff bowed to pressure and “allowed” Martin Cauchon to contest the Liberal nomination in that Montreal riding.  That no candidate will have a hand laid on them and blessed as the appointed candidate is a positive development, but reinforces the point made above only a few minutes ago.

That no vaguely democratic nomination race would be have been allowed to take place without such a high profile stink being raised, by a man who – regardless of his politics – is certainly not a fringe candidate within Liberal circles, speaks to the corrupted nature of how we select candidates, regardless of party.  If Mr. Cauchon had been an unknown “community organizer” that wanted to be the Liberal candidate, the only hoops that he should have had to jump through would be to collect signatures for his papers, file a deposit, and win the most votes in a democratic contest.

Does anyone believe that in Canada’s nomination system, Barack Obama could have won a party nomination over Hillary Clinton?

UPDATE

Former Liberal National Director Sheila Gervais launch a blistering attack on the autocratic nomination process in Canada, with a criticism that was bang on true for all political parties.  Her comments should be heeded by Harper, Ignatieff, Ducceppe, Layton and the brass of their respective parties.

For a former national director to stand up against entrenched interests this way takes guts, and Sheila Gervais should be commended for it.

*Cross Posted at taxpayer.com/blog