The New Liberal Initiative

It’s not just an Alberta thing. Nationally and provincially, Liberal organizations share long term difficulties that need to be addressed before the downturns we face become irreversible and liberalism is wiped off of the Canadian landscape.
 
 

 

Alberta Liberal Party

 
In every election since 1993 the Alberta Liberal Party has reduced in popular vote count, while our population has skyrocketed: Between 1993 and 2008 the total number of votes the Alberta Liberal Party received dropped by 36% while the population of the province increased 36%.

And since that election, if you are elected leader of our Party you are more likely to get to lead us through no election at all than get to lead us through two.

In a depreciating fashion, there are Liberals both within Alberta and without who like to think this is a unique to us: an idiosyncracy of our province, a branding problem. That the centrist philosophy we market is a solid product, and our problems can be fixed with a new coat of paint and a new leader.

But the Liberal Party of Canada has fared no better.
 

Liberal Party of Canada

 
Since 1993, the Liberal Party of Canada has increased its popular vote count only once, and has lost more than 51% of its vote since that time – all while Canada’s population grew by 20%.

In fact, in every election since 2000 the Liberal Party of Canada has lost 30 seats or more. With only 34 seats remaining, the need to remedy this problem is dire. Our showing of 18.9% in 2008 only barely tops the 16% the PCs got in 1993 when they were reduced to only two seats.

The reason we avoided similar decimation and held on with 34 seats carries its own grim realities. Our routing was not as complete because our support had already dropped to almost zero in large swaths of the country. Even before the last election, we had surrendered rural Canada and the West and become a party of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver and the Maritimes. When you are only getting 3% of the vote in an inner-city riding in Edmonton, you know something has gone horribly awry in the so-called “Natural Governing Party”.

In the past decade we’ve tried to fight our way out of this situation by loading up our pistols with silver bullets: a new leader, coalition agreements, another new leader, buying Barack Obama’s database system, etc. But it has become increasingly clear Facebook Apps and new management aren’t going to save us.

* * *

Alberta has been the canary in the coal mine, but Liberal parties across this country are in decline. And just as our rivals on the right and left have reinvented themselves, it’s now our turn, and we have to do it better.

We need to stake our ground and transition “Liberal” from being a name used by disparate parties back into a pan-Canadian movement with a bold vision for politics.

My thoughts on that tomorrow.