Such is the nature of the current situation in Canadian federal politics. For those who find the news over the last couple of weeks to be a bit dizzying. Here’s the condensed version, with some comment, and with some recommended spin for the Conservatives and Liberals.

On Wednesday, November 19th, 2008, the Governor General read out the government’s speech from the throne. The speech included no bail-outs or corporate welfare (in weasel-speak: no “economic stimulus”) of any note. The opposition parties said that they wanted it to include economic stimulus. However, following the speech, Liberal leader Stéfane Dion said that, even though the speech lacked an economic stimulus plan, his party would support the throne speech. Not doing so would be a matter of no confidence in the government and could trigger another election. Dion explained: “As there is nothing new in this throne speech, it would be irresponsible to bring the government down on this” and “It would be completely irresponsible to have an election now”.

NDP leader Jack Layton said that his party would not support the throne speech because it lacks the “bold action” that, he said, Canadians want. Just as he had been saying before losing the election a few weeks ago, he said that steady as she goes is not the approach needed right now.

The government had an “economic update” scheduled for 4:00 PM Thursday, November 27, 2008. By Wednesday, November 26, 2008, rumours had started to spread that the economic update would announce that the federal government would – as one of many government belt-tightening measures – end the $1.75-per-vote annual political party allowance that was introduced by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien in 2003 (the allowance is indexed for inflation, and now sits at about $1.95 per vote). The cut would hurt all parties. However, because Canadians voluntarily give more financial contributions to some parties than to others, parties with less voluntary support would be hurt most by the cut.

The annual cut to each party would be as follows:

• Conservatives $10 million (37% of total party revenues)
• NDP $4.9M (57% of total party revenues)
• Liberals $7.7M (63% of total party revenues)
• Green Party $1.8 million (65% of total party revenues)
• Bloc Quebecois $2.6M (86% of total party revenues)

By Wednesday, November 26, the Liberal and NDP parties were extremely upset about the prospect of losing their allowance. Their early responses were, clearly, ones focussed primarily on the proposed elimination of the political party allowance. Here’s a sample:

Liberal Party president Douglas Ferguson: “That’s the majority of our funding and it just shouts to me that there may be a motivation there of more than just attempts to cut expenses for the government”.

NDP president Anne McGrath: “The whole point of the public financing of political parties was to put an end to corporate and union donations and to make the playing field a little bit more level and to make politics more transparent and accountable and fair”.

Liberal Finance critic Scott Brison: “During an economic crisis, Stephen Harper is more focused on putting the boots to his political adversaries than he is in helping vulnerable Canadians protect their jobs and their savings.”

Liberal party leadership contestant Bob Rae: the Conservatives are “…deliberately creating a political crisis in order to avoid dealing with an economic crisis”. There is “no public policy benefit at all” in scrapping the political party allowance. “It’s just absolute bloody-minded meanness that’s motivating them and it can’t be allowed to stand.”

NDP leader Jack Layton: “Instead of an immediate stimulus package to attack the recession, this government is apparently going to attack democracy.”

Before the economic update was even released, the opposition parties were discussing the possibility of ejecting the Conservative government and replacing it with a Liberal-NDP government having the support of the Bloc Quebecois. Yet, on November 27, immediately after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivered his economic update, the Speech from the Throne passed with Liberal Party support: Dion had, after all, said that he would support the throne speech because even though it contained no economic stimulus, because voting against it would bring down the government, and bringing down the government could trigger an election that nobody wants.

By the afternoon of Friday, November 28, 2008, the Liberals had prepared a motion of no confidence in response to the economic update (remember how Single, believing Prospect to be rich, agreed to marry Prospect?). However, the opposition parties had all begun denying that their objection to the economic update was its proposal to eliminate the political party allowance (remember how Single told him/herself, and others, that he/she wasn’t marrying for the money?). They knew that Canadians would never forgive them for bringing down the government and putting Canadians through another election if the reason for the no confidence motion was a self-serving attempt to keep their political parties on life support. So they started to exclaim that the political party allowance was not what motivated them: it was the lack of a fiscal stimulus plan that was forcing them to bring a non-confidence motion.

Now, keep the following in mind, because it is KEY: November 28th was one day after the Liberals voted in favour of a Throne Speech that lacked an economic stimulus. The Liberals want us to believe that it would be “irresponsible” to bring down the government over a throne speech that lacks economic stimulus, but that it is absolutely imperative to bring down the government over an economic update that lacks economic stimulus (even though the economic update was released minutes before the throne speech passed).

Sensitive to the fact that the public would doubt the nature of their motive in bringing the no confidence motion, the Liberals put out a media release on Saturday, November 29, 2008 in which Finance critic Ralph Goodale is quoted as saying:

The political financing changes were never the issue. The economy has always been the issue…Instead of coming up with a plan to help our economy through this recession, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to engineer a constitutional crisis to distract Canadians from his government’s reckless economic policies that have put the country into deficit…At a time when every other Western industrialized nation is moving forward with packages to stimulate their economies, all the prime minister has brought to the table is ideological cuts and attacks on the rights of Canadians — nothing to help our economy.

Meanwhile, the Liberal-NDP coalition talks continued behind closed doors.

Then, in a move strangely reported by virtually every newspaper to be a “climb-down” or a “u-turn” from a “miscalculation“, the Conservatives called the Liberals’ bluff. Conservative Transportation Minister John Baird announced that the political party allowance cut would be removed from the update: parties would continue to get their money (remember how Single discovered that Prospect was not rich after all?).

There was no turning back for the opposition parties. If they decided not to go ahead with their motion, they could no longer get away with the ridiculous claim that their motion had not been motivated by a the proposed cut to party funding (remember how, if Single changed his/her mind and didn’t marry Prospect, Single would be exposed as a person willing to marry for money?). So, now, we are all faced with a motion of no confidence that the opposition claims is needed because the economic update does not contain huge bail-outs and corporate welfare. And, it will be noted, the motion is being promoted by one party that – only a few weeks ago – campaigned on increasing corporate taxes (the NDP) and by another that planned to increase the GST and impose huge new carbon taxes (the Liberals).

It is yet to be seen whether the public wants this motion to be successful. It is not even clear that the Liberal leadership front-runner Michael Ignatieff – who already has the support of the majority of sitting Liberal MPs – wants the motion at all. Only yesterday (November 30), Ignatieff was on CTV laying all responsibility for the motion on current Liberal leader Stéfane Dion. Ignatieff essentially claimed he would be doing whatever he was told, by Dion, to do.

Late last night, it was being reported that Ignatieff does not want the motion to go ahead because – if a Liberal-led coalition were the ultimate result – it could leave him the Prime Minister of a broken coalition government overseeing a severely sick economy. CTV reported that Ignatieff met with other Liberal leadership contestants on Sunday (November 30) in a meeting intended to get them all singing the same tune. This morning (December 1, 2008), the National Post is reporting that Ignatieff is now supporting the motion in exchange for an agreement that he will get to be interim party leader.

Meanwhile, Jack Layton sees it all quite differently. The Conservatives yesterday released a tape of a conference call – to which one of their members had been invited, for some reason – in which Jack Layton essentially says or implies that he and the Bloc Quebecois had a pre-arranged agreement to boot the Conservatives from power and replace them with a Bloc-sponsored NDP-Liberal coalition government as soon as an opportunity presented itself. For Jack, it arguably really was about the absence of an economic stimulus: the political party funding cut – which he could not have liked, mind you – was primarily just the excuse he was looking for for carrying his plan into execution. Jack, in essence, wants the Governor General to give him the government that Canadian voters denied him.

On November 28, 2008, the government delayed the Liberal motion to December 8, 2008. This gives everyone the time needed for voters to catch-up and learn what is happening and why. It also gives the Liberals some time to think of a way to back out of the marriage – er, um the no confidence motion – while somehow saving face and not confirming that it really always was about self-serving party funding all along.

If the Conservatives are awake at the switch, they will know that most Canadians will not take the time to understand everything that has happened over the last few days, and why. What they will know is simply this: the opposition parties have brought a motion to defeat the government over a lack of economic stimulus. The right response for the Conservatives is:

The Liberals said it would be irresponsible to bring down the government over its decision not to engage in a massive borrow-and-spend plan. One day later, they brought a motion to do what they said would be irresponsible. Why? Because they learned that they had something to gain if they did the irresponsible thing. They learned that Jack Layton had a back-room deal with the Bloc that would allow the Liberals and NDP to over-ride the election results and seize power by means of a constitutional technicality – a “Liberal loophole”. The Liberals and NDP have decided that because you did not elect them into power, they will go over your head and seize power by having the Governor General give them the government.

The right response for the Liberals is:

By threatening to bring down this government on a vote of no confidence, we have forced the Conservative government to deliver its budget two months sooner than it otherwise would have. We have gotten them to back down on self-serving, anti-democratic plans to make politics a game in which the monied interests call the shots. We have gotten them to back down on an attack on the public sector worker. The will of the people is the Liberal party’s highest concern. The people do not want the risk of another election and, by supporting the throne speech, the Liberals have already taken steps to avoid an unwanted election. Given the success our motion has already had, we see no need actually to bring it to a vote. We remain concerned about this government’s lack of timely response to the current crisis, but we feel it would be most prudent to assess the coming budget before the fate of the Conservative government is decided.

Put another way: “I regret I must withdraw my agreement to marry you because, since agreeing, you’ve changed”.

1. It’s Not a Debate: Prepare Content Accordingly

First, all of the leaders must keep in mind that, despite the name given to the event, it is not a debate at all. Consider the format:

• There will not be any lecterns, and nobody will be standing. The participants will be seated around one table.
• Only one microphone will be active at any given time, so no person will be able to shout-down another (which should discourage most attempts to do so). Assuming nobody smashes the conch, we can expect a fairly civil discussion.
• The organizers have described the protocol for each debate as follows:

All questions will be posed by Canadians via videotape…The moderator will pose follow-up questions. Each candidate will have 45 seconds for an opening statement and 45 seconds for a closing statement….Each leader will have 45 seconds to answer each question. This will be followed by approximately eight minutes of open debate.

• There are five leaders participating such that, on average, each leader will have 96 seconds worth of microphone-on time during the 8 minute “debate” portion for each question. Each debate will be moderated, so the moderator can split up the 8 minute debate period into fairly even-sized portions, allowing each of the five participants the opportunity to speak his/her mind in each 8 minute segment. All told, each leader will have about 2 minutes, 21 seconds to talk with respect to each question.
• The order of responding to the first question has already been picked for each debate. In the French debate, the order is: 1. Bloc Québécois, 2. Conservative Party of Canada, 3. Liberal Party of Canada, 4. Green Party of Canada, and 5. New Democratic Party of Canada. In the English debate, the order is: 1. Green Party of Canada, 2. Liberal Party of Canada, 3. Conservative Party of Canada, 4. New Democratic Party of Canada, 5. Bloc Québécois. Presumably, the order will advance with each additional question: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 becoming 2, 3, 4, 5, 1 on the second question, and 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, on the third, etc.

Clearly, this is not a format compatible with a real debate:

• there is inadequate time to make a response detailed enough for any prudent voter to evaluate its logical soundness;
• there is even less time in which to critique another candidate’s response, unless ones contribution is little other than a critique;
• during the 45 second response segment for each question, there is not even an opportunity for leader X to critique leader Y’s response if leader Y’s response comes after that of leader X;
• a debate usually requires a person to agree or disagree with some proposition, but I fully expect some or all of the questions to demand not agreement or disagreement, but a fill-in-the-blank response. Moreover, for those questions that do demand agreement or disagreement, getting any of the leaders clearly to agree or disagree will be as difficult as herding cats. Each leader will want to reframe the proposition, say the proposition is not really relevant to him/her, or pretend he/she is taking a stand while actually fudging. There’s only so much a moderator can do to force a politician to answer the question before time concerns demand that he move on to the next question.

No, this will not be a debate. It will be more like episodes of TVO’s “The Agenda” (which, hint hint, is hosted by the English-language debate host, Steve Paikin) that are taped at the Monk Centre, except with political party leaders instead of journalists and professors; more like an episode of the earlier format of Michael Coren Live! (to see what I mean, have a brief look at some of this footage from a year 2000 episode on government funding for the arts).

That is not to say that it will not be revealing or interesting. It is only to say that the content prepared by the leaders should be less focused on detailed logical argument, and more focused on the creation of easy-to-understand – and to feel – impressions or mental images. The question is not whether “expected revenues of $XB will, given our best estimates of future rates of inflation, continue to cover the anticipated costs of item 16 in my election platform”. The question is (for example) whether a sociologist has the qualifications to determine the economic wisdom of his own platform. Any comment made must be clear, powerfully succinct, and memorable if it is to rise above the inevitably forgotten white noise of the event.

To see what I mean, have a look at the interplay between myself and Larry Solway starting at about 55:30 in the aforementioned video on arts funding. Larry tells a tale of personal financial misfortune, expecting me to change my position in order not to appear insensitive to his self-inflicted loss. He wants to put me on the defensive. Instead, I stick to my guns and reply: “Bad business choice”. Three words, easy to understand, packed with meaning and implications, but hardly even a sentence, much less a detailed logical argument. You can agree or disagree with my response to him, but there is no doubt that it is one of the few things that people will more easily remember from that 1 hour broadcast.

2. Look Good

More important than anything any of the leaders will say is how good they will look sitting at the table. A few thoughts:

• The fact that the leaders will not be standing means that their heights shouldn’t be a big factor: being the tallest probably won’t buy anyone the presence that a stand-up debate normally helps to buy.
• The fact that the leaders will not be standing means that the movement of their bodies will have almost no effect. What remains: face, back, arms and hands. They are sitting together at a table, so they had better have the courtesy to look at the other participants, especially the one that is speaking at any given time (what would you think of a person who is looking down or away while you are talking at the holiday dinner table?). Backs should be straight (with their jackets tucked under their respective behinds to prevent their jackets from bunching up or creasing around the neck and shoulders: you want crisp, straight lines): posture matters in a person who expects to lead a country. They should not be overly expressive with their arms: coming too close to other participants could be perceived as rudeness. They should not fiddle with their fingers. The right approach: Pat Buchanan‘s gentle hatchet chop when making emphasis, and his gentle relaxation when not stressing something.

3. Sound Good

John Wayne put it best: “Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.” The best leaders never explain everything. They leave the impression that they know everything that needs to be known. The reason is simple: they, not the governed, are making the decisions, and most of the governed want it that way. Most people want to be reassured, not taught. The best way to reassure, of course, is to appear competent. Normally this will require one actually to be competent, because most people can detect a pretender.

4. Get Face Time While Rising Above the Boors

I have participated in this sort of discussion numerous times and I can tell you that, although the discussion is moderated, the bulk of the time will go to those who correctly seize the opportunity to speak. Do not forget: this broadcast has to have at least some entertainment value, and there is nothing less entertaining than the absence of conflict.

During the 8 minute “debate” segment of each question, the participants must not ask for the opportunity to speak. They must impose themselves immediately after the completion of another speaker’s sentence.

They should avoid “Can/May I just say something?”. Prime Ministers do not ask: Canadians expect them to tell. If candidate X merely asks candidate Y if candidate X may say something, candidate Y is well-advised to ignore the question and keep speaking.

Candidates should avoid childish calls for “turnsies”: they should avoid “fair’s fair” playschool nonsense. Someone worthy of being Prime Minster fights for what is right: he/she does not ask for, or voluntarily permit, what is right to be given a voice on a 50/50 basis with what is wrong/stupid/evil.

At the same time, all leaders should have a store of 3 or 4 statements that they can make when interrupted; statements that make the person who interrupts appear boorish. The key is to appear more civil than the person who interrupted. Something like: “Pardon me sir/madam, but please show some courtesy and allow me to finish” or “You’ve made your point sir/madam, please do not interrupt mine”. And, if the interruptions from boor X continue, have a zinger ready like: “Mr./Ms. ____, if you expect Canadians to believe you will listen to them, you might consider what your incessant interruptions of others on this stage are revealing about you.” But, whatever they do, the leaders should not ask the moderator to intervene or assist them: it would be a show of weakness. No “Mr. Paikin, can I just say something?” should be uttered.

5. General Themes for Each Leader

The entire presentation of each leader should have an over-riding message or theme (whether implicit or explicit).

Stephen Harper (Conservative): He is Canada’s Prime Minister. Canadians really are not too too upset about the way he has governed. He needs only portray himself as the leader who (a) knows what one needs to know in order to make Prime Ministerial decisions, (b) has not done Canada any major disservice during his reign, (c) loves Canada and is protecting Canadians even as he speaks, and (d) knows that the other parties’ wild proposals for change are, at the very least, imprudent given the delicate nature of Canada’s still-successful economy in the face of American and world-wide turmoil. The image: the time-tested uncle who has demonstrated that he has the experience and judgment to take care of things that few understand. The target: ambitious party leaders who have never sat in the Prime Minister’s chair and who, for lack of experience in that role, do not realize the complexity of the system that they want to change with their sweeping proposals for change.

One word: avuncular.

Stéphane Dion (Liberal): Dion must find a way to get the public to disregard his less-than-intimidating appearance and his nervous, thin-skinned/over-sensitive nature. He has to convince people that he sees what too few people, including Harper, can. Think “Revenge of the Nerds“, and you won’t be too far off the general idea of the script. He is better-off playing the victimized genius than the macho hero. Does Harper’s appearance of confidence and relative masculinity mask what is, in fact, a lack of understanding? Dion better make us think so.

Arguably, the best way for Dion to accomplish this is not to say that Harper will change things that should not be changed (which is his party’s present, misguided approach: see Michael Ignatieff in this regard), but that he will fail to change things that must be changed. Attack not Harper’s alleged “hidden agenda” for change, but his demonstrated unwillingness to take “absolutely necessary” proactive steps. Most of all: make it possible for voters to admit to their friends and family, without feeling embarrassment, that they voted Liberal.

One word: bright.

Jack Layton (NDP): Layton has to get much quieter about policy. He must avoid talking about his plans to fight poverty by 2020 and other such tired socialist nonsense. He has to learn that people want signs of good judgment, not proof of good plans. He must make use of the winning face (is it possible to get a picture of this man that is not complimentary?) and posture. In short: he must make us see him as a face worthy of being on our $100 bill. He must promise to represent Canada with a strong (an adjective well harmonized with his chin, eyes and mustache) but peace-loving (the smile) face, and to heal relationships strained by years of war, so that Canada can get back to living the way it did before 9/11. He must agree that Canada is not facing the same economic crisis currently faced by the USA, and must convince us that he would never even consider a change that would undermine Canada’s relative economic security in the face of U.S. economic turmoil.

He must not say that he is campaigning to be Prime Minister. Instead, he must campaign in a way that makes people think he would be a good Prime Minister. He must not demonize Harper. Harper has governed while Canada has kept a fairly even keel and, if Layton wants us to believe that he is Prime Ministerial material, he must be prepared to honour the records of all previous Prime Ministers (even if disagreeing with some of their policies), including Harper. Instead, he must suggest that Canada is capable of doing more than just treading water – as it has under Harper’s reign – and that what is needed is a more Canadian/less American way of doing things; a vision influenced less by U.S. concerns and more by the unique and preferable set of factors facing Canada; more by the NHL and snow boards than by the NFL and surf boards. If this vague, touchy-feely stuff all sounds like BS, that’s because it is BS. Nonetheless, it will sell really well if well-delivered to that portion of the electorate that just does not like Harper and who, faced with Dion, is looking for some hope.

One word: peacetime.

Elizabeth May (Green): May has already said that she will not pretend that she might be the next Prime Minister. This being a de facto debate among Prime Ministerial contenders, there is little she can now do to convince people she is the right pick for the post. The most she can hope for is the official opposition but, in reality, she should really just aim to save face and not end up with zero seats in Parliament. If she has internal polls showing she has candidates with a shot of winning their seats, she should focus on whatever has made those candidates popular in their ridings. She should mention those candidates’ names and, stating that “Canadians want a government that will ____”, she should fill-in the blank with the chief concerns of voters in ridings where the Greens stand a chance of winning a seat.

One word: aware.

Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois): Duceppe needs merely to do what he always does: say that his sole mission is to champion the cause(s) of Quebec within Canada. Only he can afford to favour one province over others and, as he already knows, he needs to focus upon how his single-minded advocacy of all things Quebec is favourable to representation by parties who feel it necessary to balance Quebec’s concerns with those in other provinces.

One word: Quebec.

6. “Win”

In truth, there is no winning in this format. You do not “win the debate” on Michael Coren Live, and you do not lose it either. Instead, each and every participant presents himself/herself well or poorly. If one does well, one will get “X is my hero” or “he/she really did well”. If one does poorly, one will get “I didn’t think much of X”. If one is exceptionally rude or embarrassing in some way, one will get “What’s with X?!” or “What an ass!”. As proof, consider the comments written at YouTube in respect of the aforementioned episode on government funding for the arts. “Hero”, “ass”, “pompous”, “ridiculous”, “bravery”, etc. are the sorts of words used to evaluate peoples’ performances in formats like this, not “won” or “lost”.

The goal of the debate, therefore, is not to make anyone think you’ve won. Rather, it is to come out having an acceptable brand or, best case scenario, an “heroic” brand. The leaders go into this debate like blank coffee cups. They come out labeled as “Starbucks”, “Tim Hortons”, “McDonald’s”, or “No-Tell Motel”. And, ultimately, they expect voters to carry one of their branded cups around in public until, on, and after, voting day. The worst thing that can happen is to make it embarrassing for people to do so. The best thing that can happen is to leave them proud to do so.

Summary

All leaders should calmly and succinctly invoke memorable images rather than making detailed logical arguments, should look good and relaxed, should demand attention, and should one-up others on masculine civility. Where masculinity comes up short, an unusual depth of understanding and foresight must at least be feigned. Harper must be the trusted uncle, Layton the man who will restore normality, Dion the undervalued intellect, May the only person listening to voices outside of the mainstream, and Duceppe the only leader who fights solely for Quebec’s interests. “Winning”, if such a term applies in this sort of event, means that a leader has made it possible for voters to vote for his/her candidates without feeling embarrassment, and without facing any anger or laughter. A knock-out: making someone feel proud that they support that leader and his/her party…like carrying a well-branded cup of coffee along Front Street while wearing ones best attire.

In my view, choosing to run in Stephen Harper’s riding is a mistake if the Libertarian leader expects thereby to boost his vote count. Party loyalists (of just about any big-box political party) like to believe that were things only different (e.g., were they to have a majority), their party would advocate different policies. And, although such hope is usually unjustified, they are more likely to come out and vote for their party if they think there is the slightest chance that someone is trying to horn-in on the “right-wing” action. If the Libertarian runs in Calgary, and takes the approach that he is the capitalist that Harper is not right now, I expect he will get stomped like a narc at a biker rally, electorally.

No matter where he intends to run, the better approach for the Libertarian leader – if he hopes to maximize his vote count – would be to campaign against the Conservatives on Libertarian positions that are not the same as positions thought to be Conservative (i.e., to campaign as a liberal on anti-libertarian Conservative policies), and to campaign against the Liberals on things that nobody, in Alberta (except, perhaps, someone with a large trust fund) could want whether Liberal or Conservative. For example, if the Libertarian Party of Canada is pacifistic – and many of its members are sure to be – it would be easier to get votes by campaigning against military participation in Afghanistan while campaigning against the oil-sector-victimizing, Alberta-milking, Liberal carbon tax.

However, almost any advice one could give to a Libertarian candidate will be of little importance at the end of the day because, in reality, the vast majority of voters do not vote according to policy. Here’s how it will happen, in every riding, amongst the vast majority of voters.

1. They will wake up on election day and say to themselves “well, I’d better figure out who I’m voting for”.
2. They will not base their decision upon the parties’ election platforms: they will not read the election platforms.
3. The radio and television news will not say much about polls etc. on election day, so those sources will be largely useless. They will turn to friends, family and colleagues if they turn to any source of information at all.
4. But, in all likelihood, they will simply ask themselves whether the Harper government is causing them more grief than they are willing to suffer any longer. If so, they will vote Liberal not because of what the Liberals are promising to do or not to do, but because voting Liberal increases the chances that the Conservatives will cease to be the government. If not, they will vote Conservative, and give it no more thought. For the vast majority of voters, it’s really that simple.

Poll after poll demonstrates that the most important factor in determining whether a party is elected is: its size. A person who wants the government to stay in power just votes to reelect the government. A person who wants the government out of power will vote for the biggest alternative party – the party with the greatest chance of knocking the governing party out of power. For those who are sufficiently wanting to change the government, if the biggest alternative party is the communists, the communists will get the vote; if it’s the capitalists, the capitalists will get the vote; if it’s the Nazis, the Nazis will get the vote. In short: most people do not vote for a party not in power, they vote against a party that is in power; they vote not for policies, but against them.

The Libertarians do not enter the running because virtually nobody believes they stand a chance of dislodging Conservatives. Only Liberals, NDP, or Bloc candidates (depending upon the riding) are currently thought of as having the power to knock-out a Conservative MP.

The right approach for any party with no (current) chance of electoral success is to (a) contrast itself with the parties that win seats (so that people gain awareness of the existence and nature of the small party), and (b) to attack, relentlessly, the party that parades around falsely claiming to be the voice of the ideology that the small party really does endorse. For example, the right approach for the Green Party right now is not to co-operate with the Liberal Party (as it has been doing), but to torpedo the Liberal Party. Expose every lie. Expose every ambiguity and equivocation. Expose every bad judgment. And do not be afraid to call a liar, a fake, or a moron a liar, a fake, or a moron, respectively. Until the faux-green Liberals are undone, the truly-Greens have little if any chance of replacing them.

At the end of the day, all countries are two-party countries and the reason for that fact is: people vote against, not for. They are looking for a big hammer, not a good idea.

Sorry.

So that the matter of outstanding apologies to the descendants of people long since offended and dead by people long since dead might be dealt with once and for all, I have prepared a kill-#-birds with one stone speech for your use:

“On behalf of all Y-Canadians, Z-Canadians, and other Canadians, I hereby sincerely apologize to all X-Canadians for what the great, great parents of some Y, Z, and other Canadians did to the great great grandparents of X-Canadians.

On behalf of all X-Canadians, Z-Canadians, and other Canadians, I hereby sincerely apologize to all Y-Canadians for what the great, great parents of some X, Z, and other Canadians did to the great great grandparents of Y-Canadians.

And, on behalf of all X-Canadians, Y-Canadians, and other Canadians, I hereby sincerely apologize to all Z-Canadians for what the great, great parents of some X, Y, and other Canadians did to the great great grandparents of Z-Canadians.

I would now ask X-Canadians, Y-Canadians, Z-Canadians, and all other Canadians please to advance to the CRA wicket to pay our new Sins of the Ancients tax. Thereafter, please proceed to the Department of Love wicket to collect your cheque.”

Of course, the letters X, Y, and Z can be replaced with the names of any groups currently seeking an apology. However, given the current intellectual milieu, might I suggest that you include an apology to all those descendents who, in the future, might choose to be offended?

And, while you’re at it, why not cut them a cheque too? In fact, why not just cut us all a cheque to complete the process? It’s been a while since I took money out of my right pocket and put it into my left. And, come to think of it, I’ve got some feelings of offence brewing inside me about what was done by my great-grandmother’s people to my grandfather’s people…of course, she had her reasons, but those relate to MacDonalds and Campbells and I do not wish to remind anyone, with the exhumation of some ancient Scottish grievances, that it was a MacDonald who founded a certain party, and a Campbell who killed it…well, she tried anyway, I’ll give her that much credit.