Fuzzy left

My decision will change strictly nothing to the outcome in my riding, but for many people, this talk still smacks of blatant disloyalty, and understandably so. I may have a somewhat different view of loyalty however, at least in that it cannot be consistent with the dishonesty that my a priori agreement with everything the leader says would imply. But let me clear up my intentions here: I am actually quite happy with our current leadership, and not because I would hope it won’t last and that I will have appeared loyal in the meantime. Were we to fail forming the next government, I strongly believe that overthrowing our current leader would be, in my very inexperienced and somewhat reluctantly partisan view, a damning mistake in the longer run. If I may say so, reconciling Stéphane Dion’s Canada with Québec is a job that we Liberals should all take a lot more seriously than we are currently doing, a re-uniting that will take some time though, more time that is than what way too many anglos still seem to hope for.

There, I wrote the big word: anglos. This is the number one Canadian taboo (you know, no anglos, just Canadians), but if we truly believed in a country that elevates its political culture beyond all divisions within its citizenry, somebody somewhere would have to accept looking into a longer history than one of 26 years, and realize that, way too often, calls for equality of treatment are just ways to deny inequalities of opportunity in favour of the members of the majority. And language is not a simple issue of identity politics here, so much as one of separate networking, of distinct public spaces, unequal in their reach, hence in the advantages they provide. I will keep the substantial arguments for future posting, yet the policy corollary of this perspective is that some further measure of political asymmetry between the french and english-speaking parts of the nation remains a necessary condition of its future unity, unless of course we can satisfy ourselves with just more coast-to-coast decrease of federal coordination. And it is because this idea still has such trouble sinking into the LPC culture, that yours truly has honestly considered, throughout the last few months, voting for another party in the next election.

It’s easier to talk about it now that I changed my mind, obviously, but at some point I had gotten quite discouraged. Despite my extreme doubts about the choice we had made 18 months ago, I made my peace with these doubts in the following days and weeks, at least until it appeared that Mr Dion had preferred seducing Québec pacifists instead of proposing the bolder vision of this country that I had come to hope from him, and which would have challenged french and anglo nationalisms to cooperate instead of competing. I know, I know, no anglos, just Canadians. Whatever. That’s how the competition is fuelled, my friends. Then, Ms Marois says, no francos, just Québécois. Symmetric centralism and Quebec separatism are just mirror images of the same majoritarian desire to deny diversity. I’m quite sure that Mr Dion understands all this, but political parties are too often slaves to their ideological extremes - the LPC is no exception - and leaders aren’t superhuman. They need us to help them out. And there is absolutely no reason to think that any of the potential contenders for Mr Dion’s position are better equiped at this time for such a task, to be quite frank. Yet maybe something interesting can still happen, especially now that the Afghan question has been dealt with that same kind of maturity that such hard choices require.

Hence, if I’m now being attracted back into the family (yes, I also renewed my membership, finally), it is because I slowly realized that no other party could be interested in dealing creatively with this cultural divide, in finding novel ways that is to promote federalism itself as a bridge across that divide, rather than just deny the problem or create more division. In fact, the final tipping point of this pondering process may well have been due to an unintended consequence of a comment that Mr Ignatieff made in a Radio-Canada interview this last Sunday. As he denied any intent to organize some rebellion within the party, he admitted some Liberals in Quebec had trouble with the organisation and the leadership, and then I couldn’t but complete the sentence: some Liberals also mostly have trouble with much of the ideological un-questioned core of the Trudeau-Chrétien doctrine of purely formal equality, dismissing outright any special consideration for people in special situations, and reducing equality of respect to simple equality of legal treatment under the Chart.

In the fall of 2006, the LPC was heading toward real nasty - well… nastier - infighting until Stephen Harper deflated the immediate danger by offering to recognize the national status of quebeckers. I’m very proud to be part of a party that is led by someone who did not fear granting this recognition, beyond the received rhetoric about the complacent “One Canada” mythology. That debate was quite ugly nonetheless, and it won’t be that much nicer when it comes back to haunt us, but if we really want to win, we should not only unite within this party, we should also unite under a vision of our country that isn’t just shoved in one province’s throat by all others. Prosperity, social justice, the environment and the role of our country in the world are important issues, and they are important coast-to-coast, but if Canadians are to act about these things together, they also have to care enough about each other in the first place. Are we really up to that one? I’m not sure at all, considering what has become the love-it-or-leave-it “pillars” of mainstream Anglo public discussion, but I still think I should try to do my part anyway, at least as long as I have the least bit of hope in this country.

À la prochaine then.