reminding Liberals of what they lost

In Ottawa
Why, it was almost like old times in Ottawa Chrétien pops in, reminding Liberals of what they lost
Apr 21, 2007 James Travers TheTorontoStar

For a few mostly shining moments this week, Jean Chrétien was everywhere. Back at centre stage to celebrate The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the former prime minister was at his puckish, edgy, self-absorbed best.

As the parallel greening of Brian Mulroney demonstrates, time is a great political healer. So, not many were churlish enough to spoil the 25th anniversary of a great Canadian achievement by wondering out loud who steered the Quebec sponsorship machine or by grousing about the Chrétien era's entitlement culture.

Even so, his return carries its own baggage. Whether Liberals like it or not, the little guy from Shawinigan who became Ottawa's Big Man is a breathing reminder of the party's current challenges as well as what's good and bad in its past.

It's a recognizable Chrétien role. Just as it did this week, his bravura performance at last winter's Liberal convention was the catalyst for unflattering comparisons between old and new leaders.

As Chrétien rightly recalled, the same phenomenon surfaced during his first years in opposition. Shrewd and tough enough to throttle anyone blocking his path, Chrétien dismissed caucus nervous Nellies to tie together a string of majorities.

It remains to be seen if those instincts or prospects are in Stéphane Dion's political genes. Even more uncertain is the answer to the question that hung over this week's Charter backslapping: Does the Liberal party still have the greatness chromosome, the one that gives politicians the strength of conviction to lead a country through democratically healthy controversy to watershed change?

Entrenching the Charter is arguably the last truly seminal Liberal feat. After that came the Mulroney years and free trade, followed by Chrétien and Paul Martin's balanced budgets. As transformational as those were, none altered so dramatically what Canadians see when they look in the mirror.

It's also true that between then and now the country lost confidence in the federal government as a change-agent. Scandalous mismanagement, most recently by Liberals, convinced taxpayers to clutch their wallets and made voters susceptible to the Conservative siren song that individual choice trumps collective action.

Past failures have long tails. By letting costs spiral, Liberals turned a police-supported long-gun registry into a political hot button that Conservatives still repeatedly push. Conceived as the philosophical successor to medicare, the poorly conceived and executed Liberal daycare plan was fatally skewered by Conservative cheques to parents.

Debating the merits of those programs remains a passion for many.

What doesn't get much attention beyond Liberal backrooms is the party's lost capacity to offer a clear alternative to a Conservative vision now taking firm shape despite the limitations of minority rule.

Much of that weakness can be traced to the Chrétien years. Better at winning elections and taking care of day-to-day business than advancing the knowledge economy, or protecting public health care or the environment, Liberals prepared the ground for Stephen Harper's strategy of leaving services to the provinces. By the late '90s, a hollowed-out civil service wasn't very good at either designing or delivering innovative public policy.

Even worse, beyond Parliament Hill, federal politicians assumed the characteristics that those credit card company commercials so relentlessly attach to banks: Hands in your pocket and eyes fixed on self-interest.Conservatives now project a different image.

While trying to buy votes like Liberals, they are steering clear of overarching programs, erasing peacekeeping as a defining national characteristic by fanning the patriotism of two world wars and promoting family values as the antidote to the nanny state.

That's a familiar U.S. formula, and ultimately voters here will decide if it's right for Canada. But making a reasonable choice between available options demands an alternate champion.

True, Canadian champions are rarely perfectly prescient or without ulterior motives. In 1982, it was impossible to predict the Charter's extraordinary impact even if it was easy to see how constitutional wrangling was politically useful in distracting attention from more pressing, if more mundane, problems.

Still, there remains an urgent need for Liberals to rediscover their political voice and persona. It's measured weekly by opinion polls that track voter resistance to giving Harper the majority he requires to finish making a Conservative vision Canada's reality.

That's a political dynamic Chrétien would instantly grasp. It also makes his cameo this week particularly timely.

Watching him slip so naturally back into the spotlight was a cue to Liberals to remember what it takes to win and a cautionary tale to the rest of the country about what happens when holding power becomes more important than doing something memorable with it.