You Had an Option, Sir - The Little Red Riding/Hood

This article first appeared in the McGill Tribune on September 26, 2007.

The Liberal fortress has fallen. Last week, in arguably their safest riding in Montreal, Liberal candidate Jocelyn Coulon took less than thirty percent of the vote on his way to a second place finish behind NDP candidate and former provincial cabinet minister Thomas Mulcair in Outremont. This is a riding that has, with one exception, voted Liberal in every election since its creation in 1935. In 1968, the Liberal candidate received a unfathomable 78.7% of the vote. During the Trudeau era, it was rare for the Liberals to get less than 60%. As political strategists across the country conduct their post-mortems of last week’s by-elections, the most pressing question will be whether blame rests with Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

Despite the ten months that have passed since he was elected leader, Mr. Dion has not been able to unify the clashing factions of his party. Rumours are abound as to the role Michael Ignatieff or his supporters might have played in purposely ensuring that Dion’s hand-picked candidate would lose. Further, Dion has failed to implement a cohesive organization framework that would help him win elections. The campaign was sloppy, with candidate signs and campaign literature taking far too long to hit the streets, which means leaving potential voters wide open to being influenced by every other party. Having been reached first by everyone else, voters were left to wonder why they should vote for a party that doesn’t even have the capacity to distribute pamphlets to them.

But what truly clinched the win for the NDP was the /La Presse/ poll released four days before the by-election showing that they were leading by six points. At this point, it was pretty much over. I live in the Plateau, but I swear I could hear the air being sucked out of the Liberal campaign office on the other side of Mount Royal. Viral pessimism infected every volunteer who came into the campaign thinking they were backing a bona fide winner. Desperate to salvage the campaign, Liberal staffers from Ottawa were scrambled to help out the struggling candidate. The last minute actions were in vain, however, because the negative publicity from the poll grew exponentially as political commentators all over the country mused loudly about why the Liberal were in jeopardy of losing such a safe riding and why Stephane Dion couldn’t get his act together. Liberal volunteers lost faith in their candidate and his ability to win, while the NDP were reinvigorated by the possibility of their first election victory in Quebec since 1990. The poll deflated any enthusiasm left in Liberal camp and drove the NDP to what would eventually become a twenty point margin of victory.

While many of my fellow Tory partisans have declared that the Outremont by-election results were desirable, I look at it with a bit of caution. I’m not worried about the NDP in Quebec – they will have to poach a lot of famous provincial cabinet ministers to make any sort of a dent here. What I am worried about is the excessive destabilization of Dion’s leadership. While this may seem like it would benefit the Conservatives, consider the long term gains of having Dion stick around; he is not a strong leader, nor is he someone that has a lot of potential for growth. Let the man flounder, I say. I want him around for a long time to come.