CLIPPING: Carlyn Bennett attacks Volpe campaign

Globe and Mail

July 14, 2006

Liberal leadership race: There's an elephant in the room
CAROLYN BENNETT

Young Tory bloggers, and their pals in the conservative media, have
taken to hurling the epithets "hypogrits" and "fiberals" at the
Liberal Party in the last little while. The insults would sting less
if we weren't facing an "integrity gap" with many Canadians.

Most candidates in the Liberal leadership race know we need to win
back the confidence of former supporters, and we need to start by
offering a new and different vision of politics.

There is, sadly, an elephant sitting in the middle of this race that
prevents this. We cannot keep pretending it is invisible to us or to
the country. That elephant is "old politics," and one candidate's
team is using our collective blindness to hide behind it.

During this year's election, we felt the pain of voters' anger over
sponsorship. Whether we think that anger is fair or unfair, we need
to acknowledge that the Liberal brand has been tarnished. As leaders
of our party, we must do everything in our power to remove those
stains.

Paying for memberships or delegate fees is against the law. Signing
membership forms on behalf of others has always been illegal. Not
getting caught is no longer good enough. Never again should the first
Liberal Party experience for a young voter be signing a membership
form illegally. It is an offence to ask and offence for someone to
swear they paid for their own membership when they have just received
the $10 bill to staple above their signature.

Some candidates' teams, some Liberal Party elected leaders, and many
journalists don't seem to get it. When you are caught breaking the
law -- in spirit or in statute -- as a leader, you have one
obligation. You take responsibility for it and resign. Apologies,
restitution and defensive evasions don't count.

Let's remember: The law requires a donor to swear that the money she
gives is hers and hers alone. That does not mean a gift from someone
else with the expectation, explicit or implicit, that it will be
passed to a candidate. The jokes about raiding children's piggy banks
continue to ricochet in the blogging world.

This leadership race is about rebuilding our party from the bottom
up. The best candidate will emerge as our new leader. We must ensure
that the leader is supported by a revitalized, renewed party. That
won't happen if thousands of Canadians, many of them unhappy former
Liberal voters, see a party that casts a blind eye to evidence of the
"old politics" among it own leadership candidates.

Dozens of liberals across Canada have said to me that the most
important criteria for the new leader will be a demonstrated
willingness to listen to, and to act on, the values of the history
and grassroots of our great party.

Our grassroots activists are angry that our party's credibility on
reform has been compromised by the use of children as fundraising
targets. Today, voters demand that we hold ourselves to a higher
standard. As candidates, we need to ask ourselves: Is our conduct
winning back the confidence of Canadians, or is it reinforcing their
skepticism?

I want to encourage young Canadians to participate in -- and, yes
make contributions to -- the parties and candidates they support. But
we need small donations from thousands of ordinary Canadians, not big
cheques from the children of rich patrons.

Since I was elected, I have campaigned against our party's reliance
on a small group of big donors. We need to compete against a party
where 80 per cent of the total Conservative dollars raised were from
contributions of less than $200!

Canadians' unhappiness with our party was never about our
achievements or policy. What we achieved -- a robust economy, the
Clarity Act, progress on early learning and child care, Kyoto, the
Kelowna accord -- were great public policy, and supported by a
majority of Canadians. What they didn't like, and are still angry at,
is the perception of how we governed.

Most of us travelling the country in this campaign have heard what
Canadians want. They are very clear: clean, innovative leadership
that listens, leadership with integrity and transparency.

When the behaviour of a minister's department sours Question Period
daily, when that minister becomes a drag on the reputation of the
government as a whole, he has one obligation. When a candidate's
campaign behaviour has the same impact on his party, he has the same
obligation. Until Joe Volpe puts his lifelong commitment to this
party ahead of his candidacy, we risk failing to achieve the renewal
our party and our country so urgently needs.

Carolyn Bennett, a candidate for the Liberal leadership, was minister
of state for public health in the Paul Martin government

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