Angry in the Great White North

Has anyone noticed that in the media coverage of the Liberal leadership campaign, there hasn't been any real issues? There has been plenty of politics, of course.

The Joe Volpe donations scandal.

The problem with French fluency for Scott Brison, Caroyln Bennett, Ken Dryden, and Hedy Fry.

The dithering and confusion over what to do with Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

But no policy debates that have reached the pages of the newspapers Canadians read.

There have been two debates so far. I can't recall anything of substance to come out of them.

Jim Karygiannis quits as Joe Volpe's manager, leading to speculation about where all those members he signed up would go.

There are some issues that started to be talked about. The Middle East, of course, but with Borys Wrzesnewskyj's incredibly bad judgment and subsequent self-immolation, I expect that most candidates will stay mum. So push and pull on Kyoto, but not much to differentiate the candidates.

About the only issue that I think has gotten any serious play is whether Michael Ignatieff is "too American" to be considered as leader. That's political too, but underneath are policy questions. But even here no one is actually talking too much about the policies themselves, just whether or not Ignatieff's position on these policies exceed some forbidden threshold of American-ness.

Part of this is because the Liberal Party is staging a huge policy renewal effort, with literally dozens of committees reviewing all sorts of policy areas. But that is being done in parallel with the leadership campaign. How can leadership hopefuls enumerate policy positions while the party is doing the same?

Consider the Philosophy team:

What are the basic values of Canadians? How well do they conform to the philosophic core of liberalism? What is the right vocabulary for reflecting those values back to Canadians in ways they can recognize?

Isn't the leader supposed to do this? Isn't the point of a leadership campaign to test the ability of the candidates to speak to Canadians and move them with their words?

And for that matter, isn't a leader's personal philosophy supposed to drive the policies of party?

This is a head-scratcher for me. Maybe I'm just being impatient. Maybe things will heat up in the next couple of months, and real differences will emerge. But I get the feeling that the renewal commissions will deliver their reports on what the Liberal Party stands for on women's issues, on social justice, on foreign policy, on immigration, on aboriginal issues, and so forth, after the leadership campaign is finished. The candidates will keep mum when it comes to substance (Scott Brison and Carolyn Bennett being two notable exceptions with the Wrzesnewskyj issue). Then the best looking or wealthiest or most underhanded candidate will win two things in December.

First, the leadership of the Liberal Party.

Second, soon after the convention is finished, a report from the renewal commission containing everything he or she is supposed to believe in.

That's leadership?