The last time the Liberal Party was in Opposition for the annual Caucus Christmas Party was in 1992. If I remember correctly, the Christmas Party was held in the Hall of Honour of the House of Commonswith barely 4-500 people in attendance. In 1990 or 1991 it was even smaller and held buffet-style in Room 200 of the West Block.
Using those examples as a barometer, and given the fact that 10,000 Liberals converged on Montreal 2 weeks ago - it was pleasantly surprising to arrive at a nearly full Ottawa Congress Centre for a Christmas Party with 1500-1800 people.
The mood was upbeat. Everyone that I spoke with was coalescing around the new leader. He spoke well - although there was a problem with the audio that made it very difficult to hear him well. Technical glitches aside, the scuttlebutt was all about transition, with Mr. Dion joking that he wished that it were all completed by now. Mr. Dion is to be given full marks for calling and personally thanking the people who volunteered for him and worked on his campaign. We will see how well he does at the merit principle versus the reward principle in staffing the office and assigning critic responsibilities - but that is for another day.
There was another positive piece of news tonight, to follow-up on the appointments of George Young as LPC Natioanl Director (George says it is like the movie Ground Hogs Day) and Andrew Bevan as Deputy Chief of Staff: Eleni Bakopanos is being appointed as Caucus Liaison. Eleni is a bright, hard-working, multilingual allophone woman from Montreal who was an effective MP for the last decade and will do very well in that role. It remains to be seen whether she will be running again in teh Ahuntsic riding in the next election - personally, I think that she can win in a cakewalk under Stephane's leadership.
Another interesting tidbit is that the new leader will be hitting the hustings for the next couple of weeks to fundraise some cash to help the leadership contestants pay off their campaign debts.
The one piece of grumbling that I heard tonight, which is becoming louder is the lack of Francophones and women in key positions in the operation, this despite today's commitment to 1/3 of candidates to be women in the coming election. This will need to be addressed before it becomes the same problem that saddled Paul Martin's PMO.
A key battleground to test the one-third policy in operation will be in winnable seats like Ottawa-Centre, where Penny Collennette should have the best shot.
Finally, it will be interesting to see who is asked to run the Liberal Research Bureau...hopefully someone with good people skills...stay tuned.
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