PARLIAMENT HILL—Former prime minister Jean Chrétien telephoned Liberal MPs who survived the May 2 Grit election massacre to seek support for Toronto MP Bob Rae as the party’s interim leader—signalling at the same time that Mr. Rae intends eventually to enter the race to become the party’s permanent leader.

But, with a decision by the party’s governing board this week requiring candidates for the interim post to promise they will not seek the party’s formal leadership once the race begins, Liberal MPs say it is likely Mr. Rae will not vie for the interim job and instead bide his time for the real contest that could be up to two years away.

“I would think he would be more likely to go for the leadership myself,” Liberal MP Wayne Easter (Malpeque, P.E.I) told The Hill Times.

The disclosure of Mr. Chrétien’s behind-the-scenes lobbying in support of Mr. Rae’s (Toronto Centre, Ont.) leadership ambitions follows suggestions by both Mr. Rae and Mr. Chrétien that the Liberal Party should not rule out a merger with the NDP following the party’s historic plunge to third party status in the Commons, as it hung on to only 34 of the 308 House seats.

The controversial merger question was central to aspects of decisions the governing board took in a telephone conference call Monday night as it delayed an election to replace outgoing leader Michael Ignatieff until May 2012 at the earliest, possibly not until 2013.

In a letter to Liberal MPs and Senators, the board set unprecedented parameters for MPs who want to be candidates over the next week for a caucus election of a nominee for the post of interim leader. Mr. Ignatieff resigned on May 3, and the council had 27 days from that point to find an interim replacement.

The party’s constitution gives the governing board exclusive authority to appoint the interim leader, but “in consultation” with the caucus. MPs have stated since the election that they, not the extra-Parliamentary brass, should decide who will occupy the post. The terms of the appointment, along with the timing of the next full leadership vote, have become crucial to the party’s future and the merger debate.

The board, made up of the party’s national executive and presidents of the 10 provincial and territorial Liberal wings, stated “any candidate for Interim Leader acceptable to the National Board will be bilingual,” dashing the hopes of Ralph Goodale (Wascana, Sask.) who had been quietly campaigning for the job. MPs said the most likely candidate now may be Montreal MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville-Marie, Que.). Mr. Goodale is currently deputy leader, and will likely retain that position. The board also included a clause, in the letter to MPs and Senators, to effectively prevent the interim leader from discussing or negotiating a merger with the NDP without party approval.

Acceptable candidates will have to agree in writing to a “solemn undertaking” they will be bound by the party’s constitution and “will not engage in any discussions or negotiations” that would require a fundamental change to the nature or structure of the party without prior approval by a party convention.

Longtime Liberal MP Jim Karygianis (Scarborough-Agincourt, Ont.) told The Hill Times he was disappointed with Mr. Chrétien, who telephoned Mr. Karygianis soon after the election last week, once he learned it was primarily to solicit support for Mr. Rae.

“I have a lot of respect for Bob, and I think he would make a great interim leader, but I know down in his heart of hearts, he wants to run for leader,” Mr. Karygianis said.

He went on to describe how Mr. Chrétien tried to solicit his support for Mr. Rae as interim leader, and how Mr. Chretien indicated Mr. Rae and his supporters wanted to diverge from what had been—until the party council decision this week—an unwritten maxim preventing an interim leader from running for the party’s permanent leadership. The condition was last employed when former MP Bill Graham became interim leader after Paul Martin resigned following his 2006 election loss to Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.).

“He called to congratulate me and he called to tell me what a great individual I was, and how I supported him, and how he wished that he had put me in Cabinet,” Mr. Karygianis said. “Okay fine, okay next? Boom, he says, ‘Well I’m calling to ask for your support for Bob Rae, he’s running for interim leader.’ I told him if he does that, he won’t be able to run for leader, and he says, ‘Well you know we’d like to change that.’ And I called Bob Rae and I had a conversation with him.”

When he resigned, Mr. Ignatieff indicated at his news conference he expected the party-wide membership vote for his successor would be held in the fall of this year. There have been other indications that Liberals on the centre-right side of the party, who supported Mr. Martin as leader and have long held that spot in the party spectrum, wanted a leadership election sooner rather than later to diminish opportunities for those on the other wing to begin merger overtures with the NDP.

MPs and party activists who want the leadership delayed also argue the party needs time to rebuild and has the luxury of a fixed-date election law Mr. Harper introduced to work from the ground up, over the four years before the next election in October 2015.

“The party needs time, and a rushed leadership race will put all of the focus on the wrong place,” said former MP Mark Holland, one of the 45 Liberal incumbents from the last Parliament who did not survive the election. “This isn’t about just changing one person; this is about rebuilding a party, so it’s got to be a lot deeper than the name at the top of the ballot.”

But a Liberal from the other side of the argument, former party director Steven MacKinnon, who lost an election bid last week in Gatineau, Que., told The Hill Times party rebuilding and the establishment of possible new policies and directions to win back voter support and renew grassroots participation should take place under the new leader.

As the party council and other elements of the Liberal leadership were trying to find a way to forestall the vote for a permanent leader, Mr. McKinnon argued the party had to comply with its own constitution, which, unless it is changed, requires the vote be held by this October at the latest.

“I don’t think we’re in any sort of situation where we can deviate from the party’s most solemn document, its constitution,” Mr. MacKinnon told The Hill Times.

The party’s governing board, in consultation with party lawyers, came up with a plan where party president Alf Apps will next week formally propose a party leadership vote for Oct. 19 this year, as required by the constitution. But in the interim the board has called an “extraordinary” convention for June 18 where delegates will be asked to amend the constitution to allow the board to set a party leadership vote sometime between May 1, 2012, and June 30, 2013, and cancel the Oct. 19 vote.

The board came up with a novel method for the convention to authorize those changes—a special internet-based “virtual” convention of elected party delegates that will be held this coming spring.

The registration fee for the internet convention will be $20.

tnaumetz@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times