Editorial

Labour Rides to the Rescue of the Liberal Party

Last week, Jean Chretien officially announced that he would be stepping down as leader of the Liberal Party in February of 2004. It is generally recognized that this was an act of desperation designed to head off a leadership challenge by Paul Martin early next year, a challenge which Chretien had no hope of winning. While Liberals are claiming that this announcement will put an end to the infighting in their party and allow the government to concentrate on governing, in reality it merely moves the fight to a new level.

By delaying the date of his resignation by an additional year, Chretien has bought time for his faction, and whomever he has picked as his successor, to chip away at the insurmountable lead that Martin has built up. Despite Chretien's insistence that any other leadership hopeful must await his authorization before raising money or campaigning, it is a foregone conclusion that he will do everything possible to stack the deck in favour of his chosen favorite.

The squabble within the Liberal party reduces the level of politics in Canada to a new low. It signals in the clearest possible way that the parliamentary parties in Canada are political in name only. The struggle between Chretien and Martin has nothing to do with their respective visions for the future. Both of them have made it clear that they owe their allegiance only to the rich and powerful, both have championed massive cutbacks to spending on health, education and welfare (the anti-social offensive), and both have overseen the dismantling of the Canadian nation and the sale of our sovereignty to the United States. Theirs is a fight between two egomaniacs over which will get to utilize the power of the state to enrich themselves and their friends.

As this unprincipled battle has unfolded, the popularity of the Liberal party has steadily declined, just as that of the Canadian Alliance declined when they went through a similar struggle. As the Liberal infighting continues and intensifies over the next 18 months, the popularity of that party will continue to drop, because Canadians are fed up with these kinds of parties.

Within this situation, we are once again witnessing the emergence of various spokespersons for Labour who are desperately trying to save the Liberal party from self-destruction. The same people who called on Canadians in 1993 to vote Liberal in order to defeat the free trade agenda of the Tories, and who called on Canadians in 1997 and 2000 to vote for the Liberal free traders in order to stop the Canadian Alliance, are now raising the spectre of a Conservative-Alliance-Bloc Quebecois coalition to stop Canadians from deserting the Liberal party. They are suggesting that, despite his flaws, Chretien and his faction of the Liberal party are further to the "left" than Paul Martin, whom they describe as "the darling of Bay Street". They are asking Canadians to ignore their actual experience with Chretien over the past decade and accept him as a "man of the people", a Liberal with a social conscience.

There may well be differences of opinion within the Liberal party, but those differences are not of an ideological or strategic nature. They are tactical differences, differences over how best to keep the Canadian people passive while they sell out the nation to the highest bidder. Chretien and Martin worked closely together in pushing the anti-social offensive. However, Chretien proved incapable of delivering Quebec and Alberta and a significant section of the Liberal party thinks that Martin can do so. Any other differences between Chretien and Martin are purely personal.

The Liberal party has ruled Canada for most of the past 50 years on the basis of its alliance with Labour. At this time, the Labour section of this alliance is promoting Chretien and whoever from his faction may emerge as his potential successor. But if Martin is chosen Liberal leader, then all of the rhetoric about how evil Martin is will disappear in a hysteria about the need to block the "right". This Liberal-Labour alliance remains the main force blocking the road to advance and protecting the status quo. Until it is smashed, the political crisis gripping Canada will continue to deepen and broaden.