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Beware the curse of Copps

By Kevin Steel ⋅ January 30, 2006 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

The former Liberal front-bencher heaped scorn on her former colleagues

“Are you going to kill her, Mike? Because, after this farce is finished tonight, you’re going to be wishing you did.” Those were the words that longtime Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella claims he told a member of Prime Minister Paul Martin’s team one night in March 2004, when Sheila Copps lost the nomination of her riding. “You’re going to wish you killed me, too. Because, Mike, you aren’t going to be able to shut us up.”

Kinsella’s words, as he recounted them on Dec. 21, 2005, on his weblog, would prove prescient. After dispensing with Jean Chrétien as party leader, in 2003, Martin’s troops ruthlessly pushed out Chrétien loyalists at the riding level to make room for their own pals.

In Copps’ case, it was Tony Valeri who got her seat in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek. Ever since, Copps, Kinsella and others have been keeping the promise that Kinsella made: they haven’t shut up about the flaws in Paul Martin’s government. That has had Martin facing fights on two fronts this election: a united opposition in the Conservatives, and an increasingly fractious gang of Liberals.

Kinsella’s been most relentless, highlighting on his blog and cackling over every minor (and major) misstep of the Martin camp. And there have been plenty (ironically, the “Mike” he warned in 2004 is rumoured to be Mike Klander, the Martin adviser forced to step down in one of December’s ugliest moments, after he made vulgar comments about NDP Leader Jack Layton and his wife, Olivia Chow, on his own blog). Carolyn Parrish, a Chrétien Liberal booted out of Martin’s caucus for insubordination (she’s not running for re-election), has called the Liberal campaign “a meltdown, a disaster,” while applauding Harper’s platform.

Copps has been using her regular column in Canada’s Sun newspapers to heap scorn on her former colleagues. The former deputy prime minister has backed the Conservatives’ day-care allowance, opposed Martin’s handgun ban and dished openly about internal Liberal fights going back 12 years. She says that losing might be good for the Liberals. “There is something to be said for change in government, for a sense of newness, idealism, and eventually it becomes about survival. When you have been around in government for as long as the Liberal party has, you have a lot of people who are hanging around for the political droppings of power.”

Behind the scenes, there are plenty crossed by Martin who are probably just as satisfied to see him imperiled. Copps says she knows of about 30 people like herself deliberately done-in by Martin’s operatives, but there are more with bones to pick. “I get calls from people in ridings you may not even have heard of and these people are still seething,” Copps says. Of course, those grudges were there last election, too, notes Nelson Wiseman, a University of Toronto political science professor–and they were one of the reasons the Liberals ended up with a minority. But the difference this time, Wiseman notes, is that the Tories are running a better campaign, and Martin a worse one. And when the chips are down, a politician really needs his party to pull together. If Martin can’t count on that, he has only himself to blame.

[This article appeared in the January 23, 2006 issue of the Western Standard.]