Joe Volpe must have some strange ideas about political leadership. Either that, or he is extremely shortsighted. Volpe is a Toronto Liberal MP who has represented the riding of Eglinton-Lawrence since 1988.
He was the minister of citizenship and immigration in Paul Martin's government and is critic for the Treasury Board in the current session of Parliament. He is also running for leader of the federal Liberal Party.
Those who aspire to lead national political organizations usually try to build broad coalitions with representation from all provinces and as many sectors of society as possible. Smart candidates try to be inclusive and go to great lengths to avoid excluding or alienating people.
Volpe appears to believe he can win the leadership, and one day the country, by doing just the opposite. Consider his actions when the House of Commons' 11-member operations and estimates committee met in mid-May to question Gwyn Morgan, the former president and CEO of Calgary-based EnCana Corp., a leading natural gas and oil producer.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper had chosen Morgan to lead a new commission that would review government appointments to ensure that candidates were being selected for their abilities rather than political affiliation. Morgan had agreed to serve for $1 a year, a practice introduced during the Second World War by former Liberal industry minister C.D. Howe, who called upon senior business executives to serve their country.
The prime minister's appointments commission was a good idea and Morgan was a sound choice to lead it.
But the six opposition MPs on the committee roasted Morgan on completely spurious grounds - a reference to immigration and crime in a speech he made to the Fraser Institute late last year.
For the record, what Morgan said was: "Immigration has a social side as well as an economic one. The social side is all too evident with the runaway violence driven mainly by Jamaican immigrants in Toronto, or the all-too-frequent violence between Asian and other ethnic gangs right here in Calgary."
The opposition members seized on this comment. Some said it had racist undertones. Others deemed it out of sync with Canadian values. After impugning Morgan's character and integrity, the six opposition members, including, Liberal leadership candidate Volpe, outvoted the five Conservative members and rejected the Calgary oilman.
Many commentators were appalled at the tactics of the opposition MPs and warned that the mistreatment of Morgan would discourage other business leaders from offering to serve the country in such a public capacity. This is true, but there is more to the story than that.
Peggy Nash, a left-leaning rookie NDPer from Toronto, led the attack on Morgan. She had the whole-hearted support of Volpe and another Toronto-area MP, Omar Alghabra. This was nothing more than a small group of politicians from Fortress Toronto delivering a sneaky, underhanded jab at a government with its roots in Calgary, which is arguably Canada's most dynamic and entrepreneurial city.
It was a replay of an old and sordid saga - Toronto's desperate desire to set the agenda for the rest of the country and to ward off all and any challenges from upstart westerners.
Liberal leadership candidate Volpe, a man who aspires to be prime minister of Canada one day, participated in this tawdry exercise. By doing so, Volpe made no friends in the oilpatch and he unquestionably made enemies. It is no exaggeration to say that, in the process, he wrote off Canada's No. 2 business centre.
It all seems inconceivable until you recall the lessons of history. This is the Liberal way. Liberals have resented Calgary since the first oil shock of the early 1970s, which threatened the entire order of things in Canada - a political system dominated by two provinces (Ontario and Quebec) and three cities (Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal).
Pierre Trudeau saw oil industry revenues as wealth to be plundered for the good of the federal government and won his last election in February 1980 by pitting the interests of eastern consumers against those of western producers.
Fast-forward a generation and Paul Martin becomes prime minister promising reconciliation and an end to western alienation. And what did he do during the heat of the June 2004 election campaign? He saved his political skin by warning Canadians that Stephen Harper and Ralph Klein were planning to dismantle medicare - a wild charge based on some mild Alberta government proposals for health-care reform.
Liberals can't resist beating up on Alberta. In fact, it's almost a pathology with the party. That's why the prospect of Joe Volpe as leader is not only strange. It's appalling.
(D'Arcy Jenish can be reached at jenish@businessedge.ca)
