All I Want for Christmas is a Liberal Leadership Convention

Youthful exuberance pervaded the elegantly appointed Old Montréal hotel housing Stéphane Dion's December 2006 Liberal leadership campaign. Just blocks from the convention, the freshness in the air had as little to do with the average age of those involved as it had to do with the snow outside.

It was hope—wide eyes. The same hope popularly believed to have brought President Barack Obama to office. Hope for the change American progressives still await, with varying degrees of patience. Hope for accountability, for justice, for fairness, for all manner of freedoms, and, perhaps most importantly, for honesty.

That same brand of wide-eyed hope characterised Nour El-Kadri's supporters at the recent federal Liberal nomination meeting in Ottawa West Nepean.

Their hope was tested that day. As was that of those present who had supported Ted Chartrand, who had by this point withdrawn from the race amid overt bias displayed by a large and apparently mutinous segment of the riding executive.

The green shirts donned by Professor El-Kadri's supporters would not carry him to victory as they had Stéphane Dion. The green-shirt magic had run out, and there would have to be new magic, or there would be no magic at all.

Another establishment shill, Anita Vandenbeld, without even an 'Issues' section on her website, is currently poised to lose miserably against everyone's favourite pitbull in a tutu, John Baird, in what some had considered a hotly contested riding. Not anymore. Not thanks to the stubborn old conservatism of the Liberal party.

Cold, stuffy, moth-infested conservatism. Leather-chair, mahogany, and scotch conservatism. Ivory-tower conservatism. The type of centralised conservatism that tends towards appointment over election, backroom deals over public debate. The type that leads politicians to say things they don't mean and take back things they do. And, in pseudo-elected Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's case on matters relating to the projection of national influence abroad, the neo type of conservatism as well.

Ignatieff, Vandenbeld, and even Obama represent a conservatism that dares not speak its name. One of entrenched power, fear of the unknown, and abhorrence of all things immoderate. One which values stability above all else. One that would crown an interim leader king for the sake of precedent.

Too right to be left, too left to be right. No coalition, only obstruction and appeasement. Only broken promises and outright lies. Only coal and oil and war and torture and empire. Only more of the same.

We need not fear the failure of such people. Rather, their potential success should give us pause.

Iggy's no Barry, but they do share one profound love in common in addition to Israel and moneyed interests. It's the new C word south of the border: compromise.

While a willingness to meet half-way in the spirit of getting things done is an indisputably positive trait, the trouble arises when devotion to flexibility runs deeper, when compromise becomes the policy and what may once have been a solid platform is replaced by an elaborate facade of smoke and mirrors.

I still get email from the party with the party telling me they have a plan. They don't though, not really. A plan would be incompatible with their goals, which are to bend with the wind, gather no moss, go with the flow, 'get things done'.

Sure, they'll shuffle things around a bit—some services here, a little austerity there. No destination but were we are, however, and no direction but the way we went yesterday.

Drawing a line in the sand over blanket corporate tax cuts should go without saying. We need more. We demand it!

Spending and jobs are needed, but a deficit-hungry mob cries out for sacrifice. Some low-to-no-interest public lending for infrastructure and real production, green or otherwise, would be nice, but that's just crazy talk. And just about any new tax would be politically difficult and economically arguable.

All but one that is—a magical tax as powerful as Dion's mystical t-shirts, if not slightly more so. A brave and noble tax able to rob from the rich and give to the government, all while regulating the flow of hot money, thereby stabilizing prices. Hurray!

I am, of course, referring to the Robin Hood tax, the Tobin tax, the financial transaction tax. And, of course, our exceedingly fearful Leader of the Official Opposition is not referring to it. Not even a tiny bit.

Until he does, until he can tell you who's going to pay for all those pretty words, don't believe him when he says he has a plan. Don't believe any of them.

The Liberal Party constitution has the following to say, among other things, on the call of conventions:

"The National President, after consultation with the National Executive, may call the biennial convention of the Party and must establish the date and place of the next biennial convention of the Party within 18 months of the conclusion of the last biennial convention of the Party."

Time's up, Mr. Ignatieff. You've made your contribution, spending years and tax dollars playing second fiddle in a Liberal-Conservative coalition. What a time you had mouthing outrage while your voice said nothing. Ah well, fun while it lasted. More time for the family and so on.