National Affairs
Where's the media maelstrom?
Claire Hoy

We whisk you back to the opening hours of the 1993 federal election campaign when our hapless prime minister Kim Campbell, asked about social program reforms, was clueless enough to say: "This is not the time, I don't think, to get involved in a debate on very, very serious issues."

The words were barely out of her mouth when the media maelstrom began, dooming her campaign - aided by several other mistakes - to the most inept in Canadian political history, leaving her to watch helplessly as her party collapsed from a majority in the Commons to just two seats.

Fast-forward to the current federal Liberal leadership campaign. Like Campbell, Michael Ignatieff, the apparent front-runner, has also been busy shooting himself in the foot - e.g. calling for Quebec to be a "nation" and accusing Israel of "war crimes" - and the media has, again quite properly, roasted the pointyheaded academic for his political dullness.

That's how it should be.

All politicians, whatever their political bent, should be held to account for what they say, whether it helps or hinders their campaigns. But a funny thing is happening on the way to the leadership convention. While Ignatieff continues to be strafed by the media for his statements - and for his lengthy absence from Canada - his main opponent, former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae, enjoys a kid-glove treatment from the media by comparison.

To illustrate, harken back to Campbell's ill-conceived notion about a campaign being the wrong time to discuss issues, a quote which ranks in anybody's list of the top 10 stupid political remarks of all time. If campaigns aren't the time to tell people what you believe, when, pray tell, is the right time?

Enter Rae. In a Sept. 26 Maclean's Magazine interview, he said his leadership bid is "not a campaign about ideas. You're electing a leader, you're not electing an agenda." Huh?

So where's the media maelstrom? Unlike Campbell - and Ignatieff - Rae continues to enjoy relatively favorable media coverage. Apart from that initial reference, this correspondent can't find another reference to Rae's remarkable contention that somebody running to lead a national party - and potentially the country - has no obligation to reveal his ideas.

Much is made of the fact that Ignatieff spent most of his working life outside of Canada -not working for the Liberal Party - but little is said about Rae's extraordinarily sketchy connection to the Liberal Party or to his disastrous one-term run as Ontario's only NDP premier. During the last two federal elections, Rae was asked to run for the Liberals - once by Jean Chretien, then by Paul Martin - and refused. He did, however, find it in his heart to make several financial contributions to the NDP, a party he now claims to have tired of years earlier.

If I were a Liberal - a stretch, I know - this would get up my nose given that we're talking about a man who now wants to run a party he spent all of his adult life attacking or rejecting.

Then there's his record as premier. It was no accident that during the delegate-selection weekend in early October, Rae finished a distant third in his home province, well behind both Ignatieff and former Ontario education minister Gerard Kennedy.

What does that say to both Liberal delegates and to the media covering this race about Rae's popularity in Canada's most populous province, a province that the Liberals must win to have any hope of electoral success? Rae apologists - many of whom carry well-known media bylines - continue to spin the pro-Rae nonsense that his deplorable economic record as premier was the fault of an international economic recession that coincided with his term of office.

There was a brief downturn, but that's it. And while Rae is best remembered - and most reviled - in Ontario for his infamous "Rae Days," his overall economic record is a far worse debacle.

Under Rae, Ontario - which saw welfare rolls explode to the highest per capita in Canada -personal income taxes were hiked by 7 percentage points, giving Ontario the highest marginal personal income tax rate in North America.

As a pro-Ignatieff (but deadly accurate) writer recently pointed out in letter to the Toronto Star, Rae as premier, "closed 20 per cent of the hospital beds in Ontario, cut nearly 7,000 nurses between 1992 and 1995, cut the number of places in medical schools, cut $200 million from the ministry of the environment, eliminated grants for students and increased tuition fees more than any of the last five Ontario premiers, including Mike Harris."

Think of the damage he could do if he had a national budget to work with.