Heavy Boozing in the Liberal Camp

As Rex Murphy put it in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, the week of the Christmas break may have been “the bleakest week of the entire campaign” for the Liberals. I’m sure there was some heavy boozing in the Liberal backroom on New Year’s Eve to ease the pain.

Overheard at 24 Sussex: “The fact is that, uhm, I was very, very intoxicated on uh, New Year’s Eve, and uhm… just as Scott Reid was about to put another bag of popcorn in the microwave, uh, the news broke that Ralph G. uh, ran into uh, well let’s just say he’ll be talking with the police next week.”

I lost count, but here’s a few to name:

• Shootout in downtown Toronto during Boxing Day shopping
• The RCMP announced a criminal investigation into the Finance Minister’s Office and its role in an alleged policy change leak
• Ontario Liberal staffer way crossed the line in a post on his blog that compared Olivia Chow with chow chow dogs

We can’t draw too much of a correlation between a Liberal government and the shooting, but it further exposed the lack of action on gun crime. The Liberal response to gun crime issues in this campaign has so far been fruitless: the new handgun policy, while a nice gesture, is nothing more than an acknowledgement that a problem exists. The new reverse-onus bail policy is equally lame and may not even survive a constitutional challenge. The gun issue in Canada is years-old, complicated, and serious. It requires a coordinated response, not a last-ditch set of election-time policies of little force and effect.

The RCMP investigation into Ralph Goodale’s office couldn’t be timed more poorly for the Liberals. At this point, the sponsorship scandal is old news and whatever damage it did to the Liberals has already been done. The income trust leak allegations have just re-ignited the flames surrounding the “Liberal Old Boys Club.”

The jab at Olivia Chow doesn’t boil down to much more than an idiot with a blog, but it points to a critical necessity at this stage in the Liberal Party lifecycle: a massive purge.

Although I genuinely loathe the Conservatives, a part of me wishes for a Liberal defeat on January 23. Stephen Harper’s line, “put this government out of its misery,” is starting to have a nice ring to it. Think of the possibilities: the Conservatives win a minority, Paul Martin gets scorched at the Liberal leadership review and an internal Liberal shuffle ensues, the Conservatives pass a bit of legislation with the support of the Bloc but fail to find common ground with the NDP, the Conservatives are defeated and they become tired of Stephen Harper, who also gets scorched at his leadership review. In the end, we end up with two new parties and half the fat.