Perseverance is a trick of the mind. It’s intangible. It’s your best tool for survival but you can’t hold it in your hands. For me, perseverance is conjured from equals parts blind stubbornness, creativity, toughness, solidarity, problem solving, humour and belief. Whatever it takes to keep getting up after you’ve been knocked down. Whatever it takes to keep going, keep looking for ways to make things better.
The strongest part of my political perseverance is simple. I believe in a Canadian Liberalism that’s bigger and stronger than any single political party.
When you get right down to it, a political is really no more than a meeting place where like-minded people with similar goals can come together and connect to make things happen. When a political party ceases to connect people and becomes only about winning and gaining power, the thing that makes it work begins to ebb away.
Winning is another intangible. Politicians are always looking at other successful models for a winning formula they can apply to their own needs.
The Conservatives have looked to American Republicanism. The NDP to British Labour. The Greens to the European Green Movement. Some Liberals have looked to the American Democrats for a way forward. But all we need to do is look to the challenges facing our country for our inspiration.
Stop fixating just on threats to the party itself. If all we ever talk about is fighting other politicians and political parties then we’re not doing what our country needs us to do. If all we ever talk about are Liberal civil wars, internal divisions and our own defeat, we will never persevere.
Winning is not just the opposite of defeat. Winning is doing what’s necessary for our country whether the party wins or not. Political parties that only care about winning have nothing to say to Canadians. As for power as a means to a higher end, political parties in government often fail to serve the people who put them in power.
Liberalism, as personified by the Liberal Party of Canada, has succeeded and failed over the years to live up to its mandate but it has also continually evolved and changed to meet the challenges of each new era. Sometimes for the better but not always. This is a truth we can accept that will make us stronger if we stop looking backward for inspiration and keep our eyes on what our country needs today.
One of the greatest ironies of Canadian politics is that Canadian Liberalism has become a part of the DNA of every political party in Canada whether the partisans of those parties choose to admit it or not.
Each of the Canadian political parties, even the Bloc, has at its core, a desire for freedom and equality in some form or another. Some political parties also have a score to settle and that often becomes their focus before everything else.
Politicians talk about political doctrine like it’s a religion and that’s by design. They need followers to win. Politicians talk about who you have to be to get their attention and who gets their scorn. They give us each labels that make us smaller, reduce who we are to an easily digestible demographic. They divide and conquer, distract us and separate us from each other by asking us to only identify ourselves and others as hockey moms, working families, the job creators, big labour, traditional families, interest groups, patriots, radicals, ordinary Canadians, Quebecers, Westerners, immigrants, rural folks, city slickers and the list goes on as far as the eye can see.
Is this what Canadians really want? To be divided into warring tribes that only serve the power agendas of political parties?
Witness the recent Alberta election. Faced with a horrible choice, people all across Alberta made a hard decision and voted PC. They abandoned their partisan ties, put their political beliefs aside and did what had to be done. They stopped a political party whose members espoused views that clashed with their basic Canadian belief in freedom and equality. Against all odds and the predictions of pollsters and pundits, they did what was required.
Whether the Liberal Party of Canada ceases to exist or not, Canadian Liberalism will never die as long as people like you and I continue to persevere. As long as we have a vision of this country that’s bigger than our divisions, as long as we believe we are stronger together, that whether we like each other or not, whether we agree or disagree on the details, all of us must be free and equal or none of us are.
That’s Canadian Liberalism, at its core and at its best.
