Inside the Liberal effort to resurrect Michael Ignatieff

By Paul Wells - Monday, March 14, 2011 at 10:19 AM - 361 Comments

Photograph by Christopher Pike

Michael Ignatieff has been among the people.

“I’m in Newfoundland two weeks ago,” the Liberal leader said over tea in the sunroom at Stornaway, the official Opposition leader’s residence. On the wall behind him was a landscape by the Winnipeg artist Ivan Eyre, all slate-grey skies and autumn foliage. “And I’m in a training centre run by the operating engineers’ union. Great union. And this training site is training people in heavy machinery. Everything from bulldozers to cranes.

“A third of the kids in the course are women. Half of the women are on social assistance. They’re desperate to get a union ticket to be bulldozer drivers or crane operators. They’re fabulously determined. It’s a tough course. They put me into these damned cranes and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and they look fabulous. One of the women said to me, ‘You know, this is my ticket out of here. This is the ticket that allows me out of social assistance. This is my ticket that allows me to feed my kids. But I can’t do this if I don’t get child care.’

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Stephen Harper: new ideas, old tactics

By Paul Wells - Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 9:50 AM - 170 Comments

Michael Ignatieff’s reputation for arrogance, tailored for him with care by his Conservative opponents, never survives three minutes in his actual company. The Liberal leader is genial and accommodating to a fault, if those can be faults, and there are days in his endless battle with Stephen Harper when they probably can.

Ignatieff welcomed a visitor to Stornoway shortly before Christmas with coffee, small talk and a chuckle at the first question: does he have any New Year’s resolutions? “Keep smiling,” he replied. “Work harder.”

He will have to do much of the latter in 2010, after 2009 strained his ability to do the former. He jettisoned much of his senior staff in October and many of his assumptions soon after. He has failed to close the polling gap he inherited from Stéphane Dion. Now he will try again to be relevant. His aim is to be the guy who thinks about the future while the Prime Minister thinks only about tactics.

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The Mailbag: Tiger Woods, a pair of beavers, Michael Ignatieff's eyebrows

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:25 AM - 39 Comments

Welcome to the Tuesday Mailbag on Wednesday, where we answer all the pressing questions of the day, save for the question of why I lied just now when everyone knows this column is in fact all about boob jokes and David Hasselhoff references.

Queries for future mailbags can be submitted in the comments below, sent to me via KITT or dispatched using electronic – or “magic” – mail at scott.feschuk@macleans.rogers.com. Next week’s mailbag will give priority to questions dealing with your most personal and intimate problems, including relationship queries and urgent medical advice. So staunch that bleeding and start typing.

Remember – there are no stupid questions, unless Helen Thomas somehow gets involved.

•

Dear Scott:

What would you do right now if you were Tiger Woods? – Dan222

Dan –

Right now? I’d duck. In fact, I’d probably spend most of my time around the house ducking. But when I’m not ducking – which wouldn’t be that often – here are some of the things I might do – duck! – if I were Tiger Woods:

1. Start doing porn. Sounds insane, right? But think about it. He’d get to have all the sex he wants, plus at this point porn stars are actually more highly regarded and respected than Tiger by society at large. Two birds, meet one stone. (That could also be the title of his first movie.)

2. Pay a guy to get rid of this whole so-called “Internet.” Shut ’er right down. Bury it in a landfill somewhere in Jersey. Damn thing is nothing but trouble.

3. Construct an alternate reality in which Continue…

Political Yearbook

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 6 Comments

It's a very vertical DonOLO

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 12:11 PM - 126 Comments

It’s Peter Donolo day here on the Hill — pasta and vintage movies for everyone! Especially the vaguely-familiar names on the org chart the Liberal Opposition sent out this morning. Meet the hardy band of scrappers who move on to the next episode of Survivor: Fourth Floor, Centre Block:

Now I’m going to make some general comments on this crew and the way they’re organized. Continue…

Ask Andrew transcript

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 12:56 PM - 12 Comments

• Andrew Coyne:
  Hello, everybody. Coyne here. Fire when ready.
• Crusk:
  Hi Andrew. In the past you have argued for a decrease in personal income tax, but why would a decrease in corporate taxes while maintaining high income taxes not be a better answer to productivity and equality concerns?
• Andrew Coyne:
  Well, of course, we could do both. Ultimately, all taxes are paid by people, so whether you cut corporate or personal income taxes is not hugely important — either way, what you want to do is make sure that the tax burden is spread fairly, and spread evenly, with as few exceptions or preferences as possible.
  What I’d really like to see is a rebalancing away from income taxes altogether, in favour of consumption taxes, which are far less damaging to economic activity.
• Critical Reasoning:
  Andrew, what are your thoughts on the Charles and Camilla visit? Do you think there is still a broad base of support for the monarchy in Canada?

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Remembering the Chrétien PMO: will that be Donolo's way?

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:18 PM - 23 Comments

Peter Donolo returns to Ottawa enjoying high standing among the media and political insiders. That’s justified. Donolo was undeniably an effective communications director under Jean Chrétien, and he also happens to be a likeable guy.

Yet I can’t help but think that something central is being missed in the way his return is being cast. One of the main things I remember from having covered the Chrétien Prime Minister’s Office—especially in, say, its first five years—was having to get used to its obsessively tight control over both the government and the Liberal caucus.

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Peter Donolo and the Curse of the Mummy's Hand

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:34 AM - 171 Comments

It is always interesting (well, to geeks anyway) to see how a prime minister’s communications director decorates his office. They spend so much time shaping someone else’s identity that it’s instructive to see how they express their own. Kory Teneycke had three laminated political posters — a vintage Reagan Morning In America; a PM for PM poster from Preston Manning’s unsuccessful run for leader of the Canadian Alliance; and a Libranos parody poster (Chrétien and Gagliano photoshopped into a Sopranos family shot) from the Ezra days of the Western Standard — along with a World War II morale poster with the slogan, Attack on Every Front! Francie Ducros had only a huge map of riding-by-riding results from the 1995 Quebec secession referendum. Peter Donolo, famously, decorated his office with huge posters from classic Hollywood movies. (Even older Ottawa veterans than I will be needed to remember what the movies were.)

I don’t know whether Donolo has seen The Mummy’s Hand, a jaunty little Universal horror flick from 1940, but I’m going to bet he did. I have been thinking a lot about that movie’s opening sequence lately, as I contemplate the mess the Liberal Party of Canada — not only Michael Ignatieff, but the whole organization — has gotten into. The Mummy’s Hand opens with a long vignette about erased memory. So, lately, has the Liberal Party.

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John Manley says he wasn't a player in the Donolo move

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:26 AM - 18 Comments

Among some versions swirling around Parliament Hill of how Peter Donolo was recruited as Michael Ignatieff’s new chief of staff, John Manley’s name figures prominently.

But Manley categorically denies reports that Ignatieff asked for his advice, or that he offered it. And he says he is mystified by a related rumour that he circulated word that Donolo was returning to Ottawa.

I have not spoken to Manley directly on this (he’s not in Ottawa today). But through staff at the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, he told me he has not talked to Ignatieff since August, when he briefed him on the situation in Afghanistan. Manley said he was not in the loop in any way on the Liberal leader’s deliberations about shaking up his staff.

In fact, Manley, who held a series of senior cabinet positions in Jean Chretien’s government, has generally been keeping his distance from Liberal party matters since June, when he was appointed as the next president of the CCCE. His term there begins officially on Jan. 1, 2010, but he’s already moved into an office at the umbrella group for Canada’s top corporations.

Political genius defined, more or less

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 11:38 PM - 39 Comments

A profound or important, or possibly just amusing sentence, from a bulletin announcing the addition of Peter Donolo to Michael Ignatieff’s office.

Among other things, Donolo helped persuade Chrétien, then 59, to pose in a blue denim shirt for the 1993 Liberal campaign poster, which Chrétien won in a landslide.

Mr. Ignatieff wore a blue button-up shirt in his most recent television ads, so he is perhaps already halfway there.

Peter Donolo comments (cautiously) on his return to Ottawa

By John Geddes - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 10:28 PM - 33 Comments

Peter Donolo, whose appointment as Michael Ignatieff’s chief of staff was announced last evening, emails the following comment on his new job:

“I’m very pleased to be joining the team.  The Liberal Party is an important and vital institution in our country, with an unequalled history and an exciting future.  Its leader, Michael Ignatieff, is an outstanding Canadian who I believe would make an excellent prime minister.  I am fortunate to be building on the work initiated by Ian Davey.  And I look forward to working with Mr. Ignatieff, the members of the Liberal caucus and Liberals across Canada in the coming months to help in the revitalization of the Liberal Party.”

'We have bonded ourselves to our fantasies'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 11:27 AM - 40 Comments

Glen Pearson responds to Peter Donolo’s response to that Conservative fundraising letter.

How does getting anyone angry over nothing assist the political process? It doesn’t. In fact, it demeans it. Proof of this just came out over the weekend. New statistics were released showing how people view our federal political system, specifically for the years between 1999-2009.  Approval of the federal system during that decade dropped to 50% from 65% in Atlantic provinces; to 55% from 68% in Ontario; to 54% from 61% in Manitoba and Saskatchewan; and to 40% from 64% in Alberta.

The awful thing about this is that all parties know it, especially the present government, and yet it continues. Why talk about democratic renewal within parliament when we’re all bleeding voters in the country through a collective act of self-flagellation? If we admit that the more negative we get as parties the more the voter turnout declines, then why do we do it?  The answer? Because the first party that blinks could get crunched by the one that doesn’t. And so we continue, one maddening negative ad after another.

'Mine the anger'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 3:58 PM - 7 Comments

Peter Donolo finds hope in fury and indignation.

“[The Finley letter] is right on target in terms of the type of appeals they make, and Liberals in opposition need to be able to mine the anger, anxiety, concern that is out there with a large cross-section of the population that they hope to win votes from and translate into cash,” Mr. Donolo said.

To eat or not to eat

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 10:32 AM - 13 Comments

Amazing, the trouble one wafer can create. Stephen Harper took a rhetorical drubbing yesterday when footage surfaced of him palming a communion host during the funeral of former Governor General Romeo LeBlanc. Monsignor Brian Henneberry, the vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint John, described the incident as a “scandal.”

PMO officials quickly issued assurances claiming the Prime Minister ate it off-camera, leaving lay people to wonder exactly what Harper did that was so terribly blasphemous.

Nothing, say experts experienced in government protocol. In fact, Harper may have been wrong to eat the wafer—assuming the PMO’s version of events was anything more than an after-the-fact whitewash. “If you are not a Catholic, you should not, in fact, you cannot take holy communion,” a retired senior federal protocol official—who happens to be Catholic—told Macleans.ca. “It’s considered apostate, and it’s hypocritical to do it.”

“Ideally, the prime minister’s team would have informed the organizers what time he would be arriving, asking them where he would sit, what he would be expected to do. And when told he will be invited to take a communion host, they would say, ‘He is not Catholic and therefore it would be ideal for him to recuse himself.’”

The key word here, of course, is “ideal.”  Sometimes unplanned incidents arise, and the official, who asked not to be named because he is still working in public service, acknowledged there are no black-and-white rules when those moments occur during religious rites. In this case, Harper found himself stuck in a front pew of dignitaries receiving communion from the priest; it wasn’t as if he were invited to line up in the aisle. So, faced with this awkward situation, “the right thing to do would be to accept it with his hands,” said the official.

Whatever the correct reaction, the controversy highlights the protocol minefield modern leaders face as they try to appear inclusive, tolerant and diplomatic in the modern public arena. Elected officials are increasingly pressed to participate in religious ceremonies that fall outside their own denominations and faiths, notes Peter Donolo, the former communications director to Jean Chrétien. Donolo, who also served as Canada’s consul general in Milan, recalls countless instances in which Chrétien was asked to join rites that could easily have gone awry. That’s why the former PM’s handlers usually spent hours poring through protocol documents to ensure he didn’t touch the wrong person, say the wrong thing, kneel in the wrong direction.

Not least among the concerns in such preparations, of course, is ensuring the leader doesn’t look silly to his own voters. For that reason, says Scott Reid, a longtime aide to former prime minister Paul Martin, the work of advance teams is critical to ensure a proper balance between the integrity of the rite and the politician’s dignity. Think of it as the “no silly hats” rule. “For years, politicians of all stripes have found themselves wearing a scarf when visiting a mosque,” Reid noted in an email by way of example. “That’s because it’s the tradition, as dictated by the faith hosting the event. The fundamental rule of thumb is two-fold: know what to expect, and honour the faith of which you are a guest.”

As for those rare occasions when the unexpected does arise? Well, a lot hangs on the poise of the leader involved. And let’s face it: Harper has a long history of standoffishness in what would otherwise be poignant moments (remember him shaking hands with his kids?). As such, Reid—ever the partisan warrior—doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for the PM in this case. “Palming your wafer like you’re a pulling a street corner card trick,” he said, “is something that many who take the sacrament would find offensive—as the PMO has been reminded.”