editorial with a twist

Paul Martin – forgotten but not gone
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
February 20, 2006

Paul Martin has stepped down as leader of the now Official Opposition but is he coming back? He just might be.

Martin as anyone who has followed him knows was not just born to lead the Liberal Party of Canada but to govern the country with a healthy majority government. His two elections as Liberal leader resulted in failure; the first enabled him to hang on with a slim majority while the second saw the Conservatives come into power. He took the once mighty party of Jean ChrÈtien and moved it across the aisle to the opposition benches. The party, and no doubt Martin himself, were not amused. Many of the party faithful wondered not when but if their great institution would once more be in control of the country.

What a difference two weeks made. On February 6, Stephen Harper was sworn in as prime minister. Harper not only did not have a honeymoon but he barely survived the wedding ceremony. Watching his newly appointed cabinet arrive at Rideau Hall to be sworn in, Canadians learned for the first time that the new Harper cabinet would contain an unelected and appointed new senator as well as an instant Conservative Party member who two weeks before had run for re-election as a proud Liberal. There were a lot of unhappy Conservative and conservative campers that day.

Many Canadians came to the realization that while the policies of the Conservatives will differ from those of the Liberals, it was going to be business as usual in Ottawa. The new government lacks the culture of corruption and the culture of entitlement that permeated the Liberals only because culture, by definition, takes time to become entrenched and time is not necessarily something that Stephen Harper’s minority government will be granted.

When Paul Martin "resigned" on the night of his government’s defeat, he gave up only his parliamentary position as leader of the Official Opposition; he retained control of the Liberal Party and continues to be its leader. This begs the question of whether Martin is considering "pulling a Trudeau". Shortly after losing to Joe Clark in 1979, Pierre Trudeau announced his resignation. But before a leadership convention could be arranged, Clark ran into trouble and his minority government fell only nine months after it assumed power. Trudeau changed his mind and went on to lead another majority Liberal government.

As the greatest American philosopher of all time once said it seems like dÈjý vu all over again. Harper’s cabinet appointments breathed new life into the depressed Liberals and they now see a Liberal majority government at the end of the minority Parliament led by Stephen Harper. Harper’s cabinet appointments were deliberately thought out moves; not the type of rookie mistake (like Potato Patch Pete’s plan for stopping the violence over Danish cartoons by reaching out to Muslims) that everyone knew they would make. The cabinet appointments put an end to Harper’s honeymoon before it even started.

The aftermath of the election saw all of the "Tier One" candidates for leadership of the Liberal Party announce that they were declining to run, using family and other reasons as reasons why they will not be seeking the party’s highest office. Now look for some of those to see the errors of their ways announce their re-entry into the race.

And Paul Martin is just as likely to announce that he will stay as Brian Tobin or John Manley is to enter the race. Many of his same cabinet ministers are still around and he can even get David Emerson back; won’t be that difficult (and if Emerson loses the next election, Martin could always appoint him to the senate. Not only is there precedent for such a thing, there is recent precedent). It would be just like old times except that Martin will have at least a reasonable expectation of governing Canada with a majority government.

If it happens, it will not happen immediately. But it is still a possibility.
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