I am about to kick the Liberals while they are down but maybe the ‘natural governing party’ will actually listen to some survival tips.

As I watch Iggy’s mea culpa speech it has too little ‘mea’ and too much conservative ‘culpa’. He has learned nothing. Painful. 

But it is one word he said that irks me the most and goes to the heart of the Liberal problem: Tradition. 

Iggy and the campaign team (maybe even candidates) believe that the grand Liberal traditions of the past still matter to today’s Canadians. 

THEY DON’T! 

Canadians want a reason to vote for the Liberals (or any other party) that is relevant to today.

Reality check: Canadian values are no longer synonymous with Liberal values.

So Liberal Party here’s what you need to do to survive:

1. Stop clinging to the ghost of the glory years and find out what Canadian values are TODAY. (Let Chretien and Copps RIP…retire in peace).

2. Figure out who you are as a party and why your vision for Canada is the best one (your Unique Selling Proposition).

3. Turn step 1 and 2 into a Value Proposition for Canadians so that in 5 years you may have something real to offer us. (Why should Canadians care about what you have to offer? How will they benefit?)

The only constant is change, and unless the Liberal Party stops using their past as a crutch they will not be a party in the future. 

Given what we are witnessing in the pro-democracy revolutions across North Africa and elsewhere - where people are giving their lives for the very rights we may take for granted - there is no doubt Canada is one of the best democracies on earth.

But is our democracy under attack from within? I have been disturbed by an insidious theme in this election – one that suggests that debate, access to candidates, and even the election itself is somehow a burden. That the process of discussing ideas and wanting our leaders to be accountable to us (the simple people) to earn another term in office is somehow not practical and is somehow a threat to our momentum and even economic recovery.

It may have started as a clever campaign strategy to get the ruling minority party a majority. But it has become more than that as you can see in this fiery clip.

It has come to a point where some are actually suggesting that participating in debates is non-strategic or even non-essential to the democratic process. Harper famously tried to reduce the dissenting views of the opposition parties to “partisan bickering”. We have been told repeatedly that the only way to stop this laborious election process in the future is to give the Conservatives a majority with unchecked power and that too many questions from the media or more than one televised leader’s debate in either language is time-consuming.

When you take all of these statements together and repeat them across Canada, a campaign strategy for a majority government becomes a troubling narrative that moves us farther away from the democratic principles of Freedom of opinion, speech, press and mass media, General and equal right to vote (one person, one vote), and Good Governance (focus on public interest and absence of corruption).

I’m not suggesting any of our political parties are anti-democratic. I am suggesting that some of the rhetoric of this campaign if unchecked can lead us down a precarious path. 

 No government winning a majority is worth promoting to Canadians that our election process with all its frustrations is anything less than precious.

I know, I know, Harper won the debate. No argument here – he didn’t get defensive, didn’t take the bait, didn’t even break a sweat.

Iggy was nervous, stumbled on his words and seemed to reboot himself throughout. Not the great Harvard debater we were expecting. Even when he made a dent in Harper’s impenetrable veneer he looked down with self doubt. He has to get rid of that nervous lip licking too.

Layton had some good moments like the Iggy attendance expose, but the old lame NDP complaints bogged him down (they are too lame to relist here – trust me you know them). I was reminded of a line from Dickens’s Christmas Carol when he lamented how Harper had changed “You are changed Ebenezer, gold and gain are all that matter to you now!”. And I would be remiss not to mention the yellow complexion – for a man fighting against concerns his health problems are hurting his party’s vitality, he should really have made sure his make-up artist got the tone right. Awful.

And then there is Duceppe, well, he is Duceppe. Punchy, funny, and surreal to watch a separatist argue in a federal debate. Can’t take him seriously in that format and I was raised in Quebec – I care about that province and what the Bloc has to say, so I can be informed enough to protect our national unity. (His god awful 8’0s tie and the piercing-eyes-of-hate didn’t help him either).

So given the decent but unremarkable performances of the opposition, Harper clearly won by not engaging them in their attacks, but instead sticking to his message like crazy glue.

Here is where he did not do himself any favours. While his performance definitely did not hurt him (and I can almost feel the hangovers this morning of elated Harperites) it did not do anything to advance him or address his major negative: 

The impression that he has to TOLERATE the Canadian people’s interference in his efficient operating of the country.

In the debate his decision to keep referring to the parliamentary debate process as ‘bickering’, and his assertion that an election was an interruption to more important things like running the country was disconcerting to say the least. Doesn’t he get that we are watching the debate because we are engaged in the election? That the election matters because every leader must be held accountable? That the cost and time spent on elections pales compared to money being spent on let’s say – fighter jets – and the time is well worth it to preserve our way of life? Who does Harper think Canadians are?

Looking exclusively at the camera to connect with us at home showed a dismissive attitude towards the others and the debate itself. Explaining policy positions like we are all slightly inept didn’t help either.

As a result of the debate I still don’t know who I will honour with my vote. The opposition leaders didn’t impress. And while Stephen Harper didn’t add to his negatives, he did reinforced them.