Towards a New Liberalism: Re-creating Canada and the Liberal Party

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and author of
War and Peacekeeping and For Better or For Worse.

The federal Liberal Party is undergoing a crisis of identity. With the
governing Progressive Conservatives more detested than any party in the
free world, the road to power for Jean Chrétien ought to be a cakewalk.
But the Liberal leader has devoted himself to invisibility, his bagmen
can raise little cash, and the Liberal policies that he proposes to
implement are unknown to all, in and out of the party. The same thing
can also be said about the NDP, of course, and only the Reform Party and
the Bloc Québécois, fringe elements both, have firm and clear
positions.

The Liberal fuzziness has obviously stirred concern in the party ranks,
and this book is one sign of that disturbance. Some of the writers here
are well-known party figures (Tom Kent, Clifford Lincoln, Paul Martin,
Deborah Coyne), but they are in a minority. Most are unknown outside
party ranks—and some, I suspect, are little known there too. This does
not mean the book is worthless; far from it. It does, however, guarantee
that its impact will be small on the party. Nonetheless, there are
papers here on policy and the state of Liberal party democracy, with the
latter being the most interesting. There are some widely divergent views
on various issues, not least on leadership selection, the problem of
instant Liberal delegates, and party bossism. And yet, the unkind
thought persists that the Liberals are virtually moribund
intellectually, their only reason for existence being the desire for yet
another chance at grabbing hold of the nation’s reins.