The political landscape has massively changed, and it’s about time the federal Liberal Party got with it. That means fighting fire with fire, says the party’s interim Liberal leader Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.), who told The Hill Times yesterday in a phone interview about how he plans to rebuild the party.

Mr. Rae, 62, said the Liberals need to become a “very focused political organization” when it comes to fundraising, in between election activity and broaden general support. He said the party plans to respond immediately and effectively to attack ads, and revamp the fundraising machine to appeal to supporters’ issues. It doesn’t necessarily mean always fighting back with negative attack ads, or borrowing from the Conservative strategy of wedge issues to attract donors, he said.

The Liberals won only 18.9 per cent of the vote in the May 2 election, dropping to 34 seats in the House of Commons from 77 in the previous Parliament and lost its official opposition status. The party’s support has continually decreased since the 2004 election and Mr. Rae’s task is to restore this support. He was appointed as interim leader on May 25. Although he said he will be rebuilding the party over the next two years until a new leader is chosen, he said it’s not a thankless job.

1. You've got quite the challenge. How do plan on rebuilding the party and how long will it take?

“I think the renewal of the party is a continuing process. It never stops, but my job will stop with the election of a new leader which will come in 2013. I think the exciting part is that there’s a lot of goodwill in the party and I think there’s a lot of interest in the party and a lot of spontaneous activity already taking place. That’s a very positive side of what we’ve seen since the last election. I think people realize that it’s not just a job for one person or one group of people, it’s a job that everybody who wants to help out the Liberal movement in the country is going to be involved with.”

2. You said on Tuesday that the Liberals have to be in a position to respond to attacks and that you can't leave your leader exposed to artillery fire. What's the plan for preventing that?

“Well, I don’t think it’s a matter of preventing it. I mean, the fact is the Conservatives have demonstrated a determination to do it. It shouldn’t take us two elections to figure this out—that when there are attacks that are made, they should be responded to in an effective way and that means that the party itself has to be turned into a very focused political organization. It also means that everything we do in Parliament and elsewhere sort of has to be connected to that. Financially, we need to reorient our budget so that we’re focused on building up a capacity to respond as well as obviously raising more money and spending it in a more focused way.”

3. Attack ads in between elections is a recent phenomenon in Canadian politics. How important are they and how does this change Canadian politics?

“I think it’s a mistake to think that you can make up for a lot of lost ground in the 35 days of an election campaign. The fact is that we’re in a mode that has to be seen as a ‘permanent campaign’ and that’s the way in which we have to structure our responses.”

4. Are you worried that federal politics will be dominated by negative ads in between election campaigns?

“I don’t like it. I don’t like negative ads. I don’t like the way in which the landscape has been changed; but having said that, I think that it would be very foolish to say, ‘Well, because you don’t like it, you’re not going to do anything about it.’ The fact is that we’re not in a position to change any rules. We’re not in a position to change the election laws. We’re not in a position to deal with the amount of spending that goes on outside the period of an election writ, so we have to deal with the world as we find it, not as we might like to find it.”

5. Do you think it will turn people off from politics?

“I do think negative advertising can have that effect. It can have a suppressive effect, so it’s not so much that one necessarily has to respond to negative ads with equally negative ads, it’s more a way of understanding the nature of the game we’re in. I think that for a lot of people, people felt that well, nobody will believe ads, or nobody will like these ads, or there’s something somehow ungentlemanly about playing the game this way and, in fact, this is how the game is being played. If this is how the game is being played, we better figure that out.”

6. Can you describe the aggressive fundraising blitz that you're planning. What will you do? And how successful do you think it will be?

“It’s more a matter of doing everything we do on a sustained basis and a sustainable basis. I mean, I believe that the most successful efforts at fundraising follow people’s engagement and people’s beliefs. I don’t think it’s a matter of continually blitzing people and asking them for money. I think it’s a matter of showing people what you need the money for and also money follows allegiance, money follows emotional support, money follows other forms of engagement and other forms of volunteering.

“I think we have to continue to broaden the base of the support for the party and obviously be drawing as effectively as we can on lists of supporters and doing a better job of coordinating the information that we have and making sure that we really understand what the fundraising rules are all about. I don’t think there’s any point in focusing all one’s attention or too much attention on people who are going to give large amounts of money, because the fact is you can’t give large amounts of money. The change in culture that’s required has just taken too long. We need to get at it now.”

7. So will the Liberals copy the Conservative fundraising tactics using wedge issues or fear to get people to open up their wallets?

“I don’t think it’s a matter of following Conservative tactics. I think it’s a matter of looking around the world at efforts that have been successful around the world and also talking to progressive groups around the world that have been successful in raising money. I don’t think one needs to only look at the political world. One needs to look at successful environmental groups and advocacy groups and others that have been very successful at raising awareness and also raising money.

“When we look at how we’re doing we need to compare ourselves and broaden our sources of comparison to look at other organizations that are engaged in the kind of advocacy work that we’re engaged in. I think that means also looking at the experiences of other countries. We need to learn more from what the Americans are doing, from what the Brits are doing, and as I say what other progressive groups around the world are doing. I’m hoping to be able to do that and being in touch with people and learning more about what they’ve done that’s successful and how we can keep doing it.” 

8. How will the Liberals adjust to not receiving the per-vote subsidy?

“We have a period of adjustment to go through. The subsidy doesn’t end tomorrow. It’s something that’s being ended over time. Obviously, if you look at what the per-vote subsidy would mean now, I mean, there are two issues. One is if you get fewer votes, your subsidy goes down. We’ve received a million-and-a-half fewer votes this year than we did in 2006, so clearly we have a major problem. That problem has been apparent for some time. Our vote base has gone down significantly in the last two elections and that’s affecting the subsidy as much as [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper’s decision. That obviously requires us to build up a stronger and much broader base of support.”

9. Do you think it’s something that your party will reintroduce if you form the next government?

“No. I do think in a subsequent Parliament, I’d like to have a discussion with all the other parties about what kind of financing reforms they’d like to see. I don’t think financing reform should be a partisan issue. I don’t think it should be an issue that is seen to benefit one party or another. I think the most successful financing reforms that have been carried out over the years have been reforms that have received support from all parties, so I’m very much of the view that if there’s a different kind of government after 2015, if another party forms the government, or if we form the government, however it works out after 2015, I think it would be a good idea to perhaps review where everybody is and try to make an assessment as to what the fairest system might be. It’s not a matter of going backwards.”

10. How important is a summer tour for you as the party leader and where will you be going?

“I don’t see it as anything particularly unusual. It’s what one does in the summer. As a political leader, you’ve got to get out and connect with people and meet folks and sit down and talk to people about the issues that are on their minds. I think there could be as many as five summers before the election, so obviously there will be a lot of activity through those five summers.”

11. The Liberals were once the grand “natural governing party.” What's morale like in caucus now? What is it like being the third party?

“I think a lot of this ‘natural governing party’ stuff has been completely overdone. The fact of the matter is the political system now is subject to all kinds of changes and all kinds of evolution and that to me is much more natural. Having spent a lot of time in the provincial scene in Ontario for a long time, people said the only party that could form a government in Ontario was the Conservative Party, and they governed for 42 years and then there was a period when they didn’t, and then there was a period when they came back. I think a much more plausible way of looking at the world is to say that elections are such now, political loyalties have changed so much now, that everybody should go into an election believing they can win. The public will respond to that.

“I think that the change of the political base of each of the major political parties changes all the time, and I don’t see these things frozen in time. Two weeks before the election, we were 10 points ahead of the NDP and you know, six or seven points behind the Conservatives and when the election was held, we were 10 points behind the NDP and 20 points behind the Conservatives. So, of course things can change, but I think it’s a big mistake to think that these things are permanent one way or the other.”

12. Do you think the Liberals needed to be defeated so badly to spur the renewal and rebuilding?

“No, I don’t think so, but again, you know, I’m a great believer that whatever is, is. This is what’s happened. It’s not a bad thing in life to try to make the most of a bad situation. I don’t think anything is inevitable, but I do think if we work hard at it, our recovery is entirely possible. I really do think that people, people including journalists, tend to over-read mandates, tend to over read the meaning of elections, and they tend to draw huge conclusions from a set of disparate facts, and I don’t fall for that.” 

13. Did you learn anything from this defeat? Did the party learn anything? Has the internal fighting stopped within the party?

“I don’t think it ever stops entirely. I think only time will tell the extent to which some of these lessons have been learned. I do think the culture’s beginning to turn around a fair bit. I think people are being constructive, pretty positive, and I don’t think anybody’s looking for magical solutions. I think people understand that there’s no real substitute for hard work and the kind of work that we have to do to get ourselves back in shape.”

14. How do you respond to people like Gerry Nicholls who say the Conservatives are trying to kill the Liberals by becoming the Liberals? Where do the Liberals stand now in terms of policy within the political spectrum?

“I think what Mr. Nicholls is noting is something which is kind of obvious, which is that most of the effective political competition in the country is a debate around the middle. I think that’s where most people are so I think the people who think that you’ve got to become radically different in order to offer people a choice are making a huge mistake because in fact that’s not where most people want to be. Now, how successfully political parties can do that we’ll just have to see. Again, I don’t think anything is written in stone here. I think it’s just a matter of who can most credibly present themselves as a party which speaks to the pragmatic and thoughtful sense that most Canadians have about the sort of thing they’d like to see in politics.”

15. Do you think the caucus in general is united then?

“Yes, I think the mood in caucus is pretty good. I think people are in a pretty good state of mind.”

16. You're taking on the rebuilding of the party and then basically just handing it over to the next leader to try to form government.

“Yeah, the sense in the party was that there was a lot of discussion that needed to be held and needed to happen, that it should be free from the kind of political competition that revolves around leadership. There are some issues that go beyond leadership and then yeah, there will be a leadership race and that race will decide the new leader and the new leader will then have two years to build further on whatever modest changes we’ve been able to make.”

17. Is it a thankless job though? Why do you want to do it?

“No, I don’t think it’s thankless. I find it quite enjoyable. I enjoy politics. I enjoy the political process. I think people are quite receptive to what we’re trying to do. I don’t find it thankless at all. I find it very enjoyable.”

18. Is running for the leadership in the future really out of the picture?

“I think the party’s rules are pretty clear on that. I accepted this job knowing what the rules are, so that’s the way it is.”

19. I know you have a lot of caucus support, but I spoke to a Liberal who said that the party’s grassroots see you as “a self serving ambitious politico.” How do you respond to that and other critics?

“I don’t know how you want me to respond to that. What am I supposed to say when an anonymous person makes a comment like that?”

20. But, is there a gap between the grassroots and the caucus?

“I don’t think it takes a lot of imagination to find unhappy people in any walk of life, so frankly, all I can do is ignore that kind of nonsense and just get on with the job.”

21. So what drives you or inspires you to do what you do?

“I enjoy people. I enjoy the political process. I enjoy working with people. And I enjoy getting things done. I like the practical approach to things, and like the positive approach to things. That’s generally speaking, how I like to do things.”

22. Who is your favourite Canadian prime minister and why?

“I guess I would say there are two. I’d say [Wilfrid] Laurier has always been a source of inspiration for me. And I think [Lester B.] Pearson’s capacity to do what he did in a relatively short period of time and to leave his mark despite the fact that he was only prime minister for five years has always been something that I’ve admired.

“I think Laurier had an incredible gift for politics and for inspiring people and for motivating people. He led the party as opposition leader through two elections and then as prime minister through three elections and again in opposition so he hung on. He saw his job as one that carried on whether you were in government or opposition. I think even at the end of his life was able to provide some considerable inspiration to people about what modern liberalism was all about.”

23. What do you like best about being in public office?

“I think to me what has helped to define politics is that you’re out there. You’re not just observing or watching or criticizing or taking note of it all.  You’re actually engaging in it. I’ve always admired people who had the courage to do that and who put themselves forward and present themselves as candidates and I felt that was something I wanted to continue to do. Having said that, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the times in my life when I haven’t been in politics, and that time may come again, but for the time being, at this moment, in this time, that’s what I’m engaging in, and I’m enjoying it quite a lot.”

24. What books are you reading this summer?

“My bedside has got a number of books I’m exploring. I’m reading a book about Europe just before the war, called 1938. I’m reading a very long history of Christianity. I’m reading a great story called The Tiger by John Vaillant, which is a fun book. And I’m reading a book called Champlain’s Dream [by David Hackett Fischer].”

25. Who are some your favourite musicians and what’s on your iPod?

“I’d say Oscar Peterson is right up there as a favourite musician. He certainly features prominently on my iPod. I have such a range of music, I like everything from Beethoven, piano concertos to country and western. I have a pretty wide taste in music.”

26. How is life as the leader treating you overall?

“Pretty well, I’d say. I’ve been a political leader before. It’s something I’m familiar with. It’s always a challenge to keep things in perspective, but it’s going pretty well.”

bvongdou@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times