The Denigration of Stephane Dion

Since the 2008 Federal Election, I have felt concern over the ridicule of Dion in the Conservative and New Democratic campaign propaganda¹. I found this particularly disconcerting as even some left-progressive netroots New Democrats adopted this attitude ²(at least rhetorically) that Dion is a blundering fool. The most disconcerting part of this attitude was the harm it caused to left-progressive policies: a carbon tax was abandoned alongside the chance for an effective majority coalition (something which would have brought Canada closer to the more effective parliamentary democracies of the industrial world and further from the legislatively anomalous United States).

My Assessment of Dion

A large portion of my distain for attacks on Dion stems from my own admiration of his character. Among high ranking Liberal politicians he is an anomaly: he has integrity and was willing to run on ideas. For recent Canadian politics, his 2008 campaign was remarkably positive and issue oriented. Dion was quite willing to share the “Green Shift” proposal with anyone interested and it took real gull for the leader of a centrist party to openly campaign on such an innovative proposal ³. He extensively provided the details of his plan ⁴.

In many ways, I agree with Jack Layton’s statement after Dion won the 2006 Liberal Leadership Race (and before ugly politics reared its head):

“… [Stephane Dion is] a committed Canadian and a man of principle and conviction.” – Jack Layton ⁵

This is not to say that Stephane Dion is an unequivocal left-progressive and would have tailored legislation beneficial to the vast majority of Canadians had he been given a majority Liberal Government. He was committed to principle, alright, but those principles were of a green, yet centrist, Liberalism rather than to social democracy. He stood for further corporate tax cuts ⁶while the social safety net lay unstrung, in disrepair, due to its assault by neoliberal former Finance Minister Paul Martin as a global recession loomed! He was no friend of organized labour, already in decline, as he thwarted anti-strikebreaker legislation. ⁷

Nevertheless, he was a decent Liberal politician. He displayed sympathy for electoral reform ⁸, used his powers as Leader of the Official Opposition to present an alternative Government which would offer a realistic prerequisite for electoral reform ⁹, and was the only major ¹⁰ political party leader to champion a progressive carbon tax. His denigration and fall as Liberal Leader is, therefore, tragic to left-progressive hopes across the nation.

Smear Tactic # 1: Dion as Incompetent


Shortly before Election Day, a peer of mine uttered a backhand comment describing Dion as “stupid”. This is one example of an overall trend: viewing Dion as bumbling and generally inferior to his cunning opponent, Stephen Harper.

Stephane Dion did possess two vices which rendered him unsuitable for our televised political discourse: he spoke English in an idiosyncratic fashion and refused to reduce complex policy ideas into crude sound bites. The latter vice¹¹ was his most serious and enabled a cynical and amoral¹² attack from both the Conservatives and New Democrats.

With such an opening and persistent theme of “Dion’s incompetent”, it was only a matter of time before the vice that renders elections in the United States¹³ vacuous afflicted Canada: personality fixation. The carbon tax was still attacked and misinterpreted, but Dion’s incompetent appearance held centre stage for most of the campaign.

The Conservative Party led the way in personality-centered, negative campaigning. They launched a serious of attack ads under the theme “Stephanie Dion is not a leader”. The assault began well before the election and persisted throughout.

The initial ad featured clips from a Liberal Leadership debate¹⁴. Michael Ignatieff criticizes the lack of Liberal progress under the Chrétien -Martin years and Dion falls into the trap of acting as the apologist for the Ancien Régimes. Dion’s apology consists of stating the difficulty of prioritizing, which (while true to some extent) does not excuse the stasis of the Liberal years after eliminating the deficit. The first ad does address some issues in addition to personality, but the issue was obscured through the demonstration of Dion’s rhetorically ineffectual response. This focused the ad more on his style than his policy record.

Subsequent Conservative attack ads continued to reinforce the notion of Dion as weak and ineffectual. Be it on Senator disobedience¹⁵, taxation¹⁶, or even the quirky name of his dog¹⁷, issues took a secondary role to personality. The substance was not the heart of the attack ads: Dion’s personality was. This whole propaganda (or PR) campaign culminated in an entire website being dedicated to denigrating Dion (funded by the Conservative Party): Not a Leader.

The New Democrats, while including more issues into the mix, still followed the general theme: Dion is ineffectual¹⁵ while Harper is decisive, even if harmful and plutocratic¹⁹. The New Democrats were innovative in their Dion attack: he is also out of touch.

But what did the massive, Conservative led attack on Dion’s character first (and issues, obscurely, second) led to in terms of policy? It led to a free pass, an entirely negative campaign. For the Conservatives refused to issue a platform until the endgame²⁰. The most innovative progressive policy in a decade had been effectively demolished in the process: a carbon tax.

Smear Tactic # 2: Axe the Carbon Tax²¹

One issue was repetitively addressed, albeit dishonestly: the carbon tax. Dion’s most daring and innovative proposal was a progressive carbon tax. In this one respect, Dion was to the left of Canada’s New Democrats. The New Democrats campaigned on solely a cap and trade system²², which gave more leeway to polluters to work a cap and trade bureaucracy. The Dion plan would, much more directly, tax the polluters with provisions for the less wealthy.

In the US of 2000, Gore tried such a proposal. It could very well have been implemented in the United States, Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and he lost the Electoral College very narrowly (with a decent chance of malfeasance). In 2008 Nader alone championed a carbon tax, as a centre-right Obama extolled a cap and trade system by itself.

But in Canada, for the party of left-progressives to advocate a sole cap and trade system, is unthinkable. This holds true if one fails to look at the case of British Columbia.

In BC, the neoliberal BC Liberal Party introduced the carbon tax to appease the massive base of environmentalists in that Province. It was one of the few progressive policies of the Party. The BC NDP moved to oppose it, from a populist stance. The tax, they said, would hurt the working and lower middle classes. Surly, targeting only corporate polluters with a cap and trade system would be much more equitable. Direct taxation of any carbon emission, even by a working poor mother just trying to buy enough petroleum to drive her children to school, would be much more inequitable.

The crux of the argument is that the carbon tax would be a regressive tax. Poorer households would pay more money for carbon emissions proportional to their overall incomes than the more wealthy (including corporations). However, personal and corporate income taxes are reduced with a carbon tax, these reductions given out to households (and corporate offices) as tax credits. The economist Marc Lee determined that two fifths of households gained under a carbon tax system in BC for the 2008-2009 fiscal year: on average, a net gain of $40 or 0.2% of their income²³. He did note, however, that if the household tax credit is not adjusted, the tax losses its progressive nature by the 2009-2010 fiscal year, serious concern to be sure and likewise deserving an address in subsequent budgets (perhaps even a legislative mandate to increase the credit proportionally to the carbon tax rate). But the tax does not deserve outright dismissal without discussion nor does it deserve sheer ridicule.

The Federal NDP followed their British Columbian counterpart’s example and denigrated the “Green Shift” (Dion’s carbon tax plan). With rhetorical populism, Layton blasted the “Dion-Campbell” carbon tax as detrimental to working families²⁴. The most explicit of Layton’s statements was as follows:

“As Prime Minister, I’ll make sure a federal carbon tax never sees the light of day.”

This phrase is awfully disconcerting, nonetheless because Layton’s NDP counterparts in BC finally came to their senses and supported a carbon tax²⁵. Layton’s assault represented a purely unthinking populism, one unable to come to grip with the nuances of a carbon tax or the fact that an initially regressive tax can be made progressive with appropriate tax credit measures.

The NDP could have been part of a constructive discussion on the details of a carbon tax plan. They could have pushed to ensure that the tax never became regressive, that credits were thin for corporations but thick for low-income families, and that it was structured to remain progressive forever. They could have tabled a counter carbon tax proposal, ensuring little corporate tax reduction and prudent use of the carbon tax revenue in constructing public transit and repairing infrastructure. Layton could have, but did not, initiate such a discussion, to the detriment of left-progressivism across the nation.

Sole cap and trade systems (as opposed to a hybrid of cap and trade as well as carbon taxation, which the Liberals had proposed) suffer from loopholes. Corporate polluters can “buy” enough credits or (worse) offsets, ensuring no actual carbon emission reduction. Lobbying for higher caps (quotas) is another problem faced by such systems, a series of faults aptly demonstrated in Europe (where the system was initiated)²⁶. Emissions rose in spite of a cap and trade system.

The Conservative Party, unsurprisingly, smeared the tax relentlessly. Rightwing populism, be it the “anti-Costal elite” variety of US far-right ultra-conservatives or the more mainstream anti-taxation rhetoric, is usually vulgar and unthinking. It exploits subconscious prejudices and feelings. Nothing is so easy to exploit as a tax scheme, given the difficulty to explain its nuances, benefits, and justification. The Conservatives had tremendous and cruel fun with the tax, spewing out radio ads and campaign literature denigrating it as a “permanent tax on everything”^{27 28 29}. The NDP, already axing the carbon tax, offered no left opposition to this cheap tactic. The Liberal Party establishment, being rather lukewarm on fundamental change and distrustful of Dion (with scheming to overturn his leadership) offered no real help (let us not forget that the Party was bankrupt as well). So, the carbon tax was publically demolished, with any hope of a progressively refurbished version to confront carbon emissions.

This is not to say that Dion’s hybrid plan was the saving grace of progressive environmentalism. It had shortcomings, including the essentially nonexistent (instead of, preferably, beneficial) effect it had on lower income households ³⁰ and its tax reducing effect on corporate tax rates (rather than using the money for public transit and a Green Jobs initiative). Yet it represented a step in the right direction and had the NDP critiqued the devil in the details instead of labeling the plan as inherently anti-working family, than we may still have had a chance for a continually progressive carbon tax.

Post-Election Redux

The election over, a carbon tax ridiculed and demonized, with a belittled Dion, Stephen Harper was re-elected with yet another “landslide minority government”³¹. The Conservatives formed government while over sixty percent of voting Canadians³² opposed their party. With such a weak mandate and a looming economic crisis, Harper chose to issue a lackluster financial update and attack the public financing of parties.

These political conditions led to an opportunity for a drastic change in Canadian political culture: a majority coalition government. These are commonplace in the much more representative democracies of Western Europe. An effective and stable coalition would provide a perquisite for further democratic reform: it would show that parties can cooperate at a federal level to form effective governments.

This would set the foundation for any attempt at proportional representation, by showing that an electoral result representative of voter intention could, indeed, form a stable government. It would end these manufactured majorities³³ and “vote wasting” which renders such large populations of nonvoters. It would, in short, be healthy for our parliamentary democracy.

The progressive coalition also offered an opportunity for popular citizens’ organizations to get involved: unions³⁴, environmental groups³⁵, and women’s associations³⁶ all advocated a coalition. This was a chance for citizens’ groups and ordinary people to have more direct than usual input into parliament, bringing Canada closer to a third world (yet, just recently, highly democratic) country like Bolivia³⁷.

Had the NDP been more constructive in their critique of a carbon tax, focused on the devilish details rather than the overall positive notion, a progressive carbon tax could have came out of such a coalition. Nevertheless, a cap and trade system and simulative economic measures were sure to arise from such a coalition.

If only it could be so.

The Dismemberment of a Possible Coalition

Rage over a progressive majority coalition stretched across all Conservative sectors. The minority political class in Alberta, Conservative voters, was furious³⁸. Ultraconservative radio screeched with demagogue denunciations of the Easterners trying to seize power from the West³⁹(Did the low voter turnouts of the West indicate, at all, that perhaps Western Conservatism is not a truly representative phenomena?).

Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party were out with the anti-coalition propaganda. This was an attempt to “overturn the election” or “seize power”. The coalition, less effectively, countered with its own propaganda. Citizens groups also took part, many displaying “the 62% Majority” on their websites.
The Harper Conservative assault on the coalition as “anti-democratic” is disgusting for a few reasons:

• Canada is a parliamentary democracy and as such voters elect parliamentarians not governments.
• A majority of parliament (by this I mean the lower chamber of it) was not Conservative.
• Harper, himself, had advocated (an unrealistic, given the progressive nature of the other opposition parties) the possibility of a coalition while Leader of the Official Opposition, revealing a better understanding of parliamentary democracy than he currently possesses.



Needless to say, Harper got out of this one rather nicely. He utilized his Prime Ministerial power to prorogue parliament⁴⁰. In the meantime, the establishment of the Liberal Party turned on Dion.

There is a certain distaste I have for the Liberal Party establishment. It is awfully corrupt and almost aristocratic. The Liberals are not called the “Old Boys Club” for nothing. A distain for the electorate and parliamentary democracy in general drives most Liberal politicians.

Working with other parties, even parties whose platforms they disingenuously run on, is repulsive to the established Liberals⁴¹. Our Party alone or not at all! The fact the populace voted in other parties to represent them is repugnant and must be ignored. Manufactured majorities are awfully comforting to Liberals: a true representation of popular will is not.

This distain drove the Liberals to reject Dion’s democratic proposal. He, under Party pressure, stepped down. Ignatieff, without member consultation or any popular/democratic process, gained control of the Liberal Party. The media lauded this, noting how the former leader was democratically chosen yet ineffectual⁴². This shows the extent of distain for democracy in the media establishment: parties ought to field candidates we choose from. We mustn’t dare field our own candidates; such an idea is truly banal so the commentators go.

Ignatieff, a man who has praised US foreign policy as establishing some new “liberal” and “humanitarian” empire, now holds the reins of the Official Opposition. His first act was to dismember a progressive Coalition with the NDP/Bloc Quebecois and form a de facto Grand Coalition with the Conservatives.

Epilogue

Dion’s denigration and fall is tragic for left-progressivism across the nation. Here comes a man who, while imperfect, was negotiable to left-progressives. He tabled a carbon tax which, had the forces of left-progressivism effectively addressed it, could have been transformed into a progressive carbon tax. There would have been hope with Dion and a possible progressive majority coalition. In its place we now have a Grand, Conservative-led, coalition government.

Ignatieff leads the Liberals. He is a man who, until recently, was an apologist for the Iraq War⁴³. He defends torture and extrajudicial techniques in a “War on Terror”⁴⁴ as “lesser evils”. He supports a carbon tax⁴⁵, but most assuredly a regressive one: focused on corporate tax reductions. Whereas with Dion there was leeway and negotiability, a chance to make his plan progressive, Ignatieff offers no such opening. He is, through-and-through, a blue Liberal.

Jack Layton’s comment of Dion as a principled man was followed by this statement:

“And therefore almost certain not to be elected leader of the Liberal party.”

Had Layton’s statement been “therefore almost certain not to retain the crown of Liberal leader” he would have been spot on. Dion’s, few but noticed, progressive sins led him to be detested by the Party establishment. His integrity and awkwardness on television led him to be the Audrey McLaughlin of the Liberal Party. His former sin, more than anything, contributed to his ousting.

Now we have the bluest Liberal imaginable, a liberal hawk and apologist for imperialism, one who distains the democratic wishes of Canadians who elect oppositional parties⁴⁶, with power. A man who left-progressives have no chance of negotiating with, a real obstacle to reform, is at the helm of the Liberal Party with a cozy Party establishment and a media salivating at his vacuous oratory. This is the true tragedy for Canadian left-progressivism.


<sup>ENDNOTES
1. Do not immediately balk at the term and infer that I am acting as a partisan Liberal here or, in any case, bending over backwards to defend the Liberals. Every political party competing in elections uses propaganda, public relations (which every political party competitive in any riding and all large corporations would admit to using) is simply a euphemism for propaganda (as the founder of American Public Relations, Edward Bernays, had noted).
2. "Stephane Dion - Strike 1... Strike 2... Strike 3... Unbelievable!!" - Buckdog
3.Yes, I know the Liberals have a track record of running on left-progressive policies and failing to implement them (case in point: a national daycare program promised in their 1993 Red Book).
4.The Green Shift. The Liberal website was filled with references and links to this plan. Before the (successful) propagandistic assault on the Green Shift, Dion hailed it as a central policy he would implement, critical to his plans on alleviating the economy while reducing greenhouse emissions.
5. Jack Layton issued this statement as part of a keynote address at his Party’s 2006 Convention in Quebec. While no longer on the NDP website, you may find the quote here.
6. "Dion proposes "deep" corporate tax cuts" - CTV
7. "Dion heckled off stage at Ottawa labour rally" -CTV
8. "Dion to consider electoral reform" - Toronto Star
9. Demonstrating a working coalition government would have, more than anything, eased worries of the instability a more accurate display of voter trends would allegedly lead to.
10. The Green Party, while championing the carbon tax long before the Liberals, is not a major party by my evaluation.
11.It’s a “vice” in the sense of an electoral-tactical error, not so much as something morally or intellectual faulty (indeed, in terms of morality and intellectual honesty Dion’s “vice” was an upstanding virtue).
12.Not to say that there is anything abnormal about this in electoral politics
13.Paul Krugman offers an excellent article in the New York Times on US elections: “Substance Over Image”.
14.The ad may be viewed here.
15.Dion is not a leader - Senate Edition 01 (Youtube)
16.Radio - Hike Back (Youtube)
17.One of the most inane and obsessive tactics of the Conservative Party anti-Dion campaign must have been their “Kyoto Dog Blog”.
18. "NDP's attacks on Dion could deliver Harper a majority" - straight.com
19.This is exemplified by the “Stephen Harper is a Strong Leader” series.
20. "Harper Went Into English Debate Without a Platform" - Cyberwanderer's Blog
21.To give credit where credit is due, I stole the idea for such a title from Marc Lee’s “The BC NDP’s Axe-The-Tax Campaign”.
22. "The NDP's cap-and-trade plan" -Archived NDP Site
23. "Is BC's Carbon Tax is Fair?" - Progressive Economics Forum
24."Carbon tax will hurt families: Layton - NDP" Website
25."NDP backtracks on carbon tax, opposition to IPPs" - CBC News
26."Cap-and-trade law can't have any loopholes" - Vancouver Sun
27. Stephane Dion's Liberal Party Carbon Tax Trick (Youtube)
28.Stephane Dion's Liberal Party Carbon Tax Trick [2.0] (Youtube)
29."Conservative Certainty versus Liberal Risk" - Conservative Party Website
30."Dion's carbon tax plan" - Progressive Economics Forum
31.The ingenious phrase comes from Air Farce.
32.Not to think of all those who lost so much hope in the democratic system of Canada to not even bother voting. In the most electorally hopeless and despairing regions conservative politicians seem to obtain government: in Alberta (low turnouts constantly yield Conservative rule) and Winnipeg (low turnouts yield a Katz mayoralty).
33.In a “winner-take-all” system like ours, winners with less than 50% of the vote often win more than 50% of the seats. This is a “manufactured majority”.
34. "Press conference: Heads of CEP, USW and CAW Join Forces to Endorse Coalition Government" - Newswire
35. "Support the Coalition Government" - Vote Environment Canada
36."Women’s Groups in Canada Urge Social Infrastructure Spending and EI Reform, and Warn against Pay Equity Rollbacks in Upcoming Budget" -Womanosphere
37. Bolivia, The Most Exciting Place in the World Right Now (Youtube)
38.I’m not saying that Conservatives are a minority of voters in Alberta (they’re not). I’m simply entailing that all people in Alberta who both “vote and are Conservative” constitute a minority of the overall population. Conservatives are the “minority political class” in Alberta in that they are the minority which holds provincial political power.
39."Coalition plan raises dismay, fustration in Alberta" - CBC News
40."GG agrees to suspend Parliament until January" - CBC News
41."Liberal MP speaks out against coalition" - National Post
42.I do lack a precise source for this, for which I am sorry. But I distinctly remember a pundit on CTV commenting on how maybe member consultation was not that necessary after all, as member approved Dion was not that suitable for the general electorate.
43. “The Burden”, originally printed as an article for the New York Times. It contains his thesis of a liberal imperialism, one in which the US fronts a humanitarian campaign to instil democratic values into a corrupt world and where international law is essentially meaningless without a made-in-America gun to enforce it. His recantation was also printed in the New York Times, entitled “Getting Iraq Wrong”, he starts off tangentially on political judgement before ambiguously admitting poor tactical or predictive (yet not moral) judgement on Iraq.
44."Worldbeaters: Michael Ignatieff" - New Internationalist Magazine
45."Ignatieff calls for 'carbon tax' to aid climate change" - Vancouver Sun
46. "This hawk (Michael Ignatieff) Stays tethered" - Rabble.</sup>