
They say that the Devil sits on your left shoulder, tempting you and this is why you throw salt over your left shoulder – to blind him. Well, if this photo from the National Post’s website is any guide to eternal temptations, it places Bob Rae right in the ‘hot’ seat.
All the talk this past month about the Liberal Party of Canada and the National New Democratic Party merging in to a new ‘SuperParty’ called the Liberal Democrats has pundit tongues wagging furiously from every side of the political spectrum. While the leadership of each party is quickly denying that this is happening, the truth is likely that this was a trial balloon, raised by the parties involved to measure if this idea has wings in the wider Canadian public’s opinion.
I for one really like the idea. There are a number of really compelling reasons for each party to get solidly behind such a merger, but in the end the most important reason is power.
- The NDP will not likely form a government in my lifetime, they are just too extreme in opinion or too beholden to unions for far too many Canadians to trust them with the future of their nation.
- The Liberals have the great challenge of forming a majority government without a traditional support base from Quebec that has been permanently usurped by the BQ. These ridings are never coming back as the most likely future of these seats will reside in a foreign nation.
- The Conservative Party resisted amalgamation for much of the decade after Mulroney left the party a ghost of its 1984 power zenith. Only through the elimination of vote splitting between competing right-wind parties did the right had any realistic hope of forming government.
- Merger with like minded competitors has a very potent and successful track record in recent Canadian electoral history;
- Consider the ‘BC Liberal’ Party in British Columbia – formed out of the ashes of the Social Credit and Liberal Parties when they merged together in the early 1990s and are now in power.
- The Wildrose Alliance Party in Alberta – formed out of the merger of the Alberta Alliance Party and the Wildrose Party. Some political commentators (and politicians) fear that this young party will form the next political dynasty in Alberta.
- The Saskatchewan Party – a party that was formed out of the rump of Grant Devine’s Saskatchewan Progressive Conservatives and some frustrated members of the provincial Liberal Party now in power.
Of course, the biggest obstacle to this proposal moving forward is the entrenched interests. There are plenty of people in both the federal Liberal and NDP parties who are very comfortable with the roles and privileges that they currently enjoy that may not come their way in a Liberal Democrat party. In this case, however, the courage of a commitment to something bigger than one’s own self interest must overcome comfort.
Hopefully the results of this trial balloon will lead to brave and bold moves to form Canada’s next great federal party – the Canadian Liberal Democratic Party. As the right succeeded by blending in the more extreme Reform / Alliance in with the historic Progressive Conservative Party, so too must the Liberals meld together with the NDP – and provide Canadians with a single and stronger left-wing federal option to counter the now-unified right. To fail to do so will result in a long power drought for the Liberal Party of Canada.









