It’s rare to see people react with such sadness to an event that was as predicted as Jack Layton’s tragic passing. We all heard his voice and saw the cake makeup on his face in his last press conference and yet his optimistic attitude that so captured our national attention in the recent federal election made us all believe that if ANYONE could beat cancer again it would be Jack.

You may not agree with his politics or even his approach but there was something about his attitude that was truly contagious. It woke us up in the final stages of another  dull conservative VS liberal election and made us think that this guy could be Prime Minister. 

Why? The NDP platform hadn’t changed. Their tactics hadn’t evolved. His party wasn’t much more electable. It was Jack – his sheer will to lead, his optimism for unprecedented results for his party, and his hope for a better Canada that inspired a cynical country.

And that is why his optimism matters – he translated his personal optimism into hope for a nation.

His final missive sums it up best:

“My friends, love is better than anger. Let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.  And we’ll change the world” – Jack Layton, August 20, 2011.

 Words for us all to embrace and live by.

A fascinating result of the recent federal election is the role that young people - Generation Y in particular - will play in Canada’s political future.

We have all heard about Canada’s youngest ever MP - the new 19 year-old NDP and his caucus colleague the young mom who spent part of the campaign vacationing in Vegas.  

Most comments and editorial cartoons mock their inexperience, revel in the challenge Jack Layton will have controlling them, and some even fear it is the end of parliamentary decorum.

In conversations I have had over the last week with people from all over Ontario, I think there is a cynicism under all of this…a jealousy that they will get the big paycheck so easily and a fear that change is actually afoot… that the power is indeed slipping from the old guard.

You can look at the Arab Spring in Africa and the Middle East and see evidence of the impact of politically active people under 30.

But there is evidence of the youth political phenomenon closer to home and it is not just the chance election of those NDP MPs in Quebec.

While participating on the inaugural podcast for Pundit Central last week I was struck by the fact that at my youngish age of 38, I was probably the oldest pundit on the show (a first!).

And in listening to intelligent, passionate pundits from all three national parties defend their positions it occurred to me that they were convinced that the political landscape was changing and their generation was leading the change.

Leading it. Not sitting at the feet of the elder party statesmen. Not waiting in a queue to get the authority when someone tells them they have earned it. In fact as one responded to a challenge I made about the sad state of the Liberal party - watch the young Liberal groups. That is where the real action is.

So look past the fear-mongering around young MPs and rid yourself of the notion the old guard still has all the control.

Today’s under 30s aren’t going to wait a few decades to run things. 

They are starting to change our politics right now and that may be a very good thing.

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. 

No matter what happens tomorrow, the NDP are likely to have the best showing ever in a federal election - a victory for a party that has never been able to ‘break through’. 

As exciting as it is for the party, the pundits, and the people of Canada to watch the phenomenon of the Orange Crush, let’s not kid ourselves in thinking that the NDP have earned this surge in popularity.

There are only two reasons that they will have wins tomorrow - the arrogant attitude of the other parties and the popularity of Jack Layton.

Let’s start with the Bloc. A new friend of mine (a French butcher from the Eastern Townships) shared with me yesterday that the self-congratulatory hoopla last year about Duceppe’s 20 years in politics made Quebecers question what exactly voting for the Bloc has done for them. Answer: not enough when the economy is in rough shape. 

Add to that the perception of corruption in the provincial Liberal Party and the general repudiation of Harper’s social conservatism and you are left with… NDP by default. Jack’s performance in the French debate impressed and made him the surprising alternative.

The Quebec polls touting the NDP surge got the rest of the country to take another look at the NDP.

In orange strongholds like Hamilton, the NDP candidates are hard working and well-loved (incumbents in 3 ridings). But Hamilton is an exception not the rule and the NDP fielded some unprepared and unimpressive candidates in many places.  Their platform is ideological and untested.

But no matter, because the Conservatives and the Liberals have made enough mistakes to clear the way for the NDP to come up the middle.

Harper may have won the messaging war in this election but his message of “give me a promotion or else” was hardly inspirational and smacked of unabashed arrogance.

He aimed low and may hit a low target. Add to that the foolish negative attacks (which works in a two-party system because you are the only one left standing - but with a plurality of parties you may destroy one rival aka Iggy only to have another one benefit aka Jack).

And then there is the imploding Liberal party - so far away from their peak power years that they embarrassingly have had to truck out the likes of Copps and Chretien to rally the troops (and one sound bite from him yelling “Vive le Canada” had more energy than Ignatieff managed the entire election.)

Ignatieff started on the defensive against Harper’s Coalition attacks, failed to sell a succinct platform, and frankly looked downright insecure in the televised debates. They are so sure they will be in power eventually they ran an unfocused, lazy campaign which ultimately lacked leadership.

So that brings us to Jack. While Harper’s negativity and Iggy’s incompetence underwhelmed Canadians, Jack’s friendliness, optimism, and energy excited us in the final days of a boring campaign.

He’s the guy with the highest favourability which really matters when you have an election without an issue.

The last minute attack on his integrity with the lame wanna-be massage scandal just shows how much the other parties fear how much we like him.

So when the NDP wins what it will tomorrow the credit goes to Jack.

The other parties should ask why they rubbed us the wrong way.  

 The answer is arrogance. Plain and simple. 

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.