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Peter C. Newman: A Liberal Revolution National Post
Sat 23 Sep 2006

One week from today, the Liberal Party of Canada will pick the 5,000 delegates who will go to Montreal on Dec. 2 and elect the party's new leader. If present trends hold, Michael Ignatieff will lead the pack on the initial ballot, though that is no guarantee he will emerge as the ultimate victor.

Still, his run has been remarkable. From a standing start -- he had spent the previous 30 years in distant academic puddles -- Mr. Ignatieff has fielded a masterful campaign. It is based on the identical conviction that has fuelled his university, literary and social activist careers -- namely, that the world exists to be put in order, so that its scattered details make sense. That takes more guts than brains, or at least as much of each. Why else, to pick the most outrageous example, would he advocate constitutional reform, which has ensnared every Canadian politician brave enough to venture into its labyrinth?

When we look back at his campaign, it seems as if he woke up each morning, mumbling to himself: "Which beehive should I poke today?" At times, his approach smacked of the worst kind of amateurish attempt to grab headlines, hoping public exposure would translate into delegates' votes. At the same time, he never developed the swordsman's eye for being alert to counter-thrusts, so that he frequently had to wrap his sallies in retroactive, explanatory nuances the next morning.

In fact, there was nothing accidental about any of his remarks, no matter how casual they might have sounded. He may have the manners of a prince, but he has the mind of a chess master. Every detail of his strategy and every word of his bravura declarations had been carefully programmed by his retinue of two dozen advisors -- really a private think-tank -- which secretly plotted his strategy, from day to day and debate to debate. No campaign has been so minutely planned since the 1968 leadership run by another party outsider, Pierre Trudeau, who similarly appeared to grab startling pronouncements out of the breezes, though he was actually programmed down to every shrug.

Because he was the outsider in a field of party veterans, Mr. Ignatieff decided early on that he had to differentiate himself from the pack. He did so with a vengeance. He jettisoned many of the political verities that kept the Liberals in power for most of the last century, and the first half-decade of this one, because he found them outdated and not in tune with current realities. Instead of treating the party as the sacred instrument of sedate populism that legitimized its claim to being "Canada's natural government party," he has, to coin a graceless metaphor, pushed the envelope out of the ballpark. His campaign was aimed at nothing less than creating a new political movement with a contemporary vision designed to win both the final delegate count on Dec. 3 and the general election, which he feels is certain to follow in the next six months.

This has been a gamble that Kenny Rogers might have envied. As one member of the Ignatieff inner circle confided to me, strongly suggesting that I don't use his name, "We're all saying to each other, 'Jesus, is he going to blow himself up before he gets there?'" The answer to that question -- "you bet" or "not bloody likely" -- will determine his political future. His handlers point out that this week's informal polls of delegate preferences did not include the party's ex officio voters whom they expect to drive his lead on the first ballot to at least 25%.

His fate will depend on whether he will grab the opportunity to make a convincing case for the political revolution he has launched. One test of that precarious endeavour will be the perception of whether he was just making trouble or actually stands behind his contentious pronouncements. According to his political intimates, he does. Every damn word. One of his most influential advisors compares his determination to the 16th-century theological reformer Martin Luther's famed cry: "Here I stand. I can do no other."

Ignatieff's chief strategist has been Ian Davey, 42, the son of Senator Keith Davey, who earned his title as "The Rainmaker" during the three decades he spent in Ottawa modernizing the Liberal party, as its national director. "A lot of Liberals are frightened by the Ignatieff campaign," Davey told me, "and you know what? They should be. We're trying to change the culture of the Liberal party, and it's not easy. We have this unbelievably bright group of young advisors who have never been in politics before, and don't see why they shouldn't be led by possibility -- by what should be instead of what is. This is no longer Liberals against Conservatives, but Canada against the world -- to ensure that we make the most of our potential."

The impressive collection of policy wonks backing Davey are in their 20s or early 30s, mostly from outside the party. (The sidebar to this column contains a partial list.) Some are former Ignatieff students, most are independent-minded, bushy-tailed activists, others are professional experts who were approached, not on the basis of seeking their endorsement, but their advice. "I came to Michael's team without policy experience and no hidden agenda," I was told by Brad Davis, the campaign's National Director of Policy and Internet Strategy, a perky 33-year-old (which makes him the oldest of the Ignatieff policy advisors) who has taken a leave of absence from his law firm. "Michael is offering Liberals and Canadians a series of progressive policies built on the premise that the federal government has one sole overriding purpose: to secure and maintain the indivisibility of Canadian citizenship."

An Ignatieff-led Liberal party will continue to attract the best and the brightest, who recognize his immense capacity to effect radical reform. There is, in this process, a generational change and the development of a mentoring system that can only happen in the perfect storm that is Michael's campaign led by Ian Davey. This must be contrasted with the "play it safe" tactics of Bob Rae. The leadership convention is now shaping up to be a simple ballot question: Does the Liberal party really want genuine renewal and regeneration? We're betting on the answer being, yes.

Ignatieff's policy shifts illuminate not only interesting future options but his perception of the failures of current Conservative -- and Liberal -- policy lapses. He is asking Canadians to rethink their self-perception of peacekeeping, made and kept in the face of terrorism. Interestingly, Romeo Dallaire, who knows more about the subject first-hand than any Canadian, has endorsed his candidacy. Unlike his opponents, Ignatieff admits that Canada will not meet its first Kyoto targets and has argued for a tax on carbon emissions as the core of his policy on climate change.

Those who championed Kyoto within Liberal circles, especially Stephane Dion, are angry at him. To some of his critics his approach smacks of a confiscatory, anti-Alberta approach. Yet many oil patch executives are remaining silent or calling his plan "gutsy." At the same time, he advocates a new era of trust in pursuit of aboriginal self-government, and the dismantling of the Department of Indian Affairs. He has pushed that debate beyond its "post-Kelowna" phase, with new initiatives on self-governance, aboriginal health care, aboriginal environment and aboriginal education and training. In the process Ignatieff has quietly lined up the support of most of the new-generation native leaders, beginning with Gary Merasty, a Grand Chief from Saskatchewan and Liberal MP. His call for a "new citizenship contract" that grants rights and imposes responsibilities -- as a framework for Canadian multiculturalism and diversity in the 21st century -- has brought aboard such minority community MPs as Raymonde Folco, Susan Kadis, Albina Guarnieri, Ruby Dhalla, Paul Zed, Herb Dhaliwal, Paul Szabo, John Cannis and Gary Merasty.

The deal breaker could well be his determination to recognize the Quebec and aboriginal nations. Almost every English-language newspaper editorial in the country has come down hard on his pledge, labelling it dangerous folly, while the French press has applauded his courage.

It's hardly news. Fifteen years ago, in Blood and Belonging, Ignatieff described Quebec as a civic nation. Somehow he has to make the case that it's mostly symbolic and that he is not rejecting the Trudeau vision of Canada, but helping it come true. "Quebec is a totally flourishing distinct society and it has all the powers it needs," he has declared.

Ignatieff is deeply disturbed by Quebecers who are socially progressive leaders in the province, but now voting for the Conservatives. He claims it's because the Liberals haven't made themselves relevant to Quebecers. He believes that labelling Quebec a nation doesn't have any kind of ethnic overtones. "This isn't any threat to Canada, this is just part of the patchwork of our diversity," he told a friend recently.

It will be a hard sell.

Because the Liberals have become a big-city, Ontario-centred party, Ignatieff spent nearly three-quarters of his campaigning time outside Ontario in rural constituencies. That's where the push has to come, if his visions are realized. Michael Ignatieff has already proven that history is no longer the domain of scholars leafing through dusty archives. Now, as well as writing it in his lively fashion, he wants to make some history of his own. The ballot count next weekend will decide whether he gets the chance.

IGNATIEFF ADVISORS

The core group of Ignatieff volunteer policy wonks includes:

Mark Sakamoto (27, a CBC lawyer from Medicine Hat)

Dan Brock (a former staffer with Irwin Cotler when he was justice minister)

Sachin Aggarwal (27, lawyer, Torys, former staffer on Manley's campaign)

Alexis Levine (27, son of uber-agent Michael Levine, now in charge of Ignatieff's Ontario campaign)

Leslie Church (26, an Edmonton-born London School of Economics grad and former Rae PSE commission member, Edmonton)

Marc Gendron (22, Montreal, International Liberal Youth executive)

Jason Rosychuck (27, Calgary, lawyer)

Jon Penney (27, Halifax, a Department of Justice lawyer, now completing his LL.M. at Oxford)

Sachin Aggarwal (now National Director of Operations)

Ellis Westwood (30, Ottawa, LSE grad, now analyst with Ascentum)

Mike Pal (29, Moncton, now at U of T, former staffer for Gerard Kennedy at Queen's Park)

Jeff Anders (28, Montreal, student of Michael's at Harvard)

Julie Dzerowicz (Toronto, staffer for Gerry Phillips at Queen's Park)

Clint Davis (33, Inuk from Labrador, Director of Aboriginal Banking BMO)

Taylor Owen (32, Vancouver, now Trudeau Scholar at Oxford)

Blair Stransky (29, LSE grad now an analyst with Fleishman Hillard in Ottawa)

Jamie Macdonald (28, from Vancouver, staffer for Stephen Owen)

Nigel Marshman (31, Ottawa, counsel on Air India Inquiry)

Alex Mazer (31, from P.E.I., now at Harvard Law School)

Brian McQuinn (33, on leave as Assistant Director of the Carter Centre for Conflict Resolution in Atlanta)

Will Amos, 32, (former staffer to David Anderson, now lawyer with CRTC)

Patrice Ryan (Montreal, son of Claude Ryan, Quebec Policy Chair)

Alix Dostal (31, from Halifax, former staffer at Queen's Park, now lawyer at Torys).

Senior advisors include Senator David Smith, Stephen Owen, Alfred Apps, Dan Brock and Paul Zed.