If you havent been paying attention or you simply dont care, the number of declared candidates running to be leader of the Liberal Party of Canada now stands at 11.
Lets stand up and cheer. It doesnt matter if youre a Liberal or not. Canada needs more than two main parties to combat ugly partisan politics àla U.S.A.
Among the usual suspects are former astronaut Marc Garneau and previous leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay, but other impressive candidates (lawyers, a retired female lieutenant colonel, an economist) indicate the party is not as moribund as many Canadians believed and nor is the leadership race. Given the results of the 2011 federal election, in which the Liberals won a mere 34 seats, the Grits need all the help they can get to restore their credibility. A leadership contest always helps.
So what does it take to be a prime minister?
A strong vision and an ability to inspire are key, but bilingualism also ranks high on my list of skills to be PM. Blame that on my Quebec roots. That many of the leadership candidates did not grow up in Quebec but can speak French speaks volumes about where our country is at on the language front.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper deserves kudos for working hard to improve his French. He realizes the importance of being able to communicate with all Canadians, including the seven million whose mother tongue is French. (Whether he does a good job of that in either language is open for debate.)
Regular Courier readers already know that a Mount Pleasant resident is among the 11 candidates wanting to lead Canadas oldest federal political party. He is Alex Burton, who was featured in the paper not long after he declared his candidacy in October. Hes not the only British Columbian. There is also Joyce Murray, MP for Vancouver-Quadra, who speaks French and has done many interviews in French. And in Victoria, there is lawyer David Merner, whose fluency was on display during an interview with Société Radio Canada show a few weeks back.
That three of the 11 contenders live in B.C. makes the race even more exciting. Its no longer all Ontario/all Quebec all the time as it used to be. Thank goodness.
Justin Trudeau appeared to be predestined to be the Liberal leader, but hes no longer a shoo-in given the high quality of other candidates running, including Burton, who learned French in the Ontario public school system, and, bizarrely, became comfortable in conversational French in China where he travelled around for three months with a French couple. A tutor continues to help him improve his French.
The person eventually chosen as the Liberal leader in April must be able to verbally spar with the NDPs fluently bilingual Thomas Mulcair and be as good if not better than Harper at French if they want to seriously revive the Liberal Party.
At 44, Burton is only a few years older than Trudeau, the youngest of the leadership contenders, but the Mount Pleasant resident probably has more smarts and depth thanks to his education and work experience. Hes a crown prosecutor in the organized crime unit of the AGs office. He earlier earned his keep as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan working in special narcotics and the money laundering and tax crimes unit. He also sits on the board of the Mount Pleasant Community Centre Association.
And he plays ball hockey with a Courier staffer.
I caught up with Burton on the phone from Toronto, where he met a lot of francophones and had to do some interviews in French. Given he fine-tuned his French in China, I asked him which language was more important to learn in B.C.: French or Mandarin. Can I say both? he asked laughing.
Being bilingual is an asset to our country, said the father of two. It should not be seen as a hindrance but as a resource. That being said, were a multicultural, multilingual country. Learning any second language should be seen as an advantage. We really do live in an amazing place with generations of people speaking a number of languages... It should not be a competition between languages.
Consider Burtons run for the leadership a coming out. Hes a long shot, but its a relief to know he intends to run as a riding candidate should he lose the leadership contest. I hope each of the 11 candidates has the same intention. Its difficult to trust people who only want to be leader. It smacks of a lack of commitment to the party, not to mention a supersized ego.
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