A CONVERSATION WITH KEN DRYDEN

Liberal leadership contender Ken Dryden, a Toronto MP, recently
visited the Express to discuss aspects of his political platform.

The six-time Stanley Cup winning goaltender with the Montreal
Canadiens was also a member of Team Canada in 1972.

He was first elected as MP in 2004 and served as Minister of Social
Development.

What prompted you to enter the leadership race?

It's an important time. This isn't 20 years ago when you had the
Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives followed by a change in
government and then six months later you'd see very few changes and
policy directions that were roughly the same.

Now, it is (one way) or it isn't, and the public is going to have a
choice to make. There is also a very different tone to the two parties.

You can see it in program and policy areas.

You can see it in (Prime Minister Stephen Harper not attending) the
World AIDS Conference and the World Out Games.

You can see it in the debate about continuing (Vancouver's) safe
injection centre.

When you are elected the prime minister of this country, you are
prime minister of one hundred per cent of the people. Not 37 per cent
or 45 per cent.

I think the part they clearly want to focus on is to say (to the
Liberals) 'you guys were the promisers and we are the deliverers, and
that's leadership.'

I don't think so. I think leadership is most of all about direction.

Mere delivery isn't leadership.

Leadership is still fundamentally about direction.

What is important about safe injection sites like the one in
Vancouver? (Addicts are provided with clean needles and have access
to detox programs. The Tories haven't decided whether to extend
funding or not).

You've got to take people as they are -- that's the starting point.
Then you try to work with people, you try to help them do better. But
you've got to take people as they are.

You've got to take them in the circumstances in which they exist and
then you work from there.

These are people in tough shape.

What does this program do? It's a place to go when there aren't many
other places to go.

What are the biggest issues facing the Liberal Party today?

We lost, and you don't lose for no reason. What you have to figure
out is what are the reasons.

There are certain tendencies that happen when you lose -- first you
deny it or think everyone else is wrong.

Second, you're disappointed and it takes a while to get over it and
get constructively back in the game with a real appetite for it, and
for winning the next time.

You work your way through to what do we really need to do.

What we most need to do is (build) the will to win the next election.

The Liberal party's basic appeal is broader than any other party's
appeal is. And yet the ways we funded and organized ourselves have
the narrowest base.

You need to get tangible support from a broader range than ever in
order to make yourself function.

We've got to change that, rather than depending on a few givers and
larger amounts and fewer people at the core of running and organizing
the party.

How are people in the west responding to what the Liberal Party is
offering these days?

The most powerful voices, the most powerful worries and divisions
aren't east/west or north/south.

I think they are rural/urban.

What you would hear in Renfrew, Ontario is (similar) to what you
would hear in semi-rural Alberta, Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.

It is the feeling that 'we are basically a one-industry area'.

It may be agriculture, mining forestry or the fishery. They feel the
vulnerability of that.

And what they really feel the vulnerability over is seeing their kids
going and not coming back, and chances are they won't come back.

So what is it like a generation from now?

It's also a feeling of disconnection from power and disconnection
from being at the centre. Everybody assumes it's just them (that
feels that) but it isn't.

We haven't been under Conservative rule for long -- how are they
faring in your opinion?

In the beginning, you are allowed appropriate leeway.

You make mistakes along the way, and the public is very fair.

I think the things I have said are clear in terms of those policy
directions. From my point of view, they would be things I'd be hugely
critical of but they're really there for the public to decide about.

What experiences do you point to as being particularly relevant to
making you a contender in the leadership race?

I remember myself at age 20, and would I have trusted myself as a
goalie in the NHL playing regularly for a team that might be a contender?

I wouldn't have trusted me at all.

But people forget that goalies have been playing that role since they
were seven years old. They were playing the most impactful position
of the game ever since that age.

He was the person the rest of his team had to count on, and that
parents in the crowd had to count on.

People who have lived the experience of playing with something on the
line, of having big stakes -- they've done it for a long time.

There is a responsibility and a role -- that's what we've been living
all of our lives.

People say they know me as a goalie, but really they know me through
being a goalie. They've seen me in all kinds of circumstances and
moments. People talk about name recognition, but it's really person
recognition.

How did your work as minister of social development in the Martin
government help shape you as a politician?

One of my areas had to do with childcare. That had been promised for
a long time.

In all of the training in sports or other things, (you learn) about
what is the real prize.

I didn't care it was a minority government, that there were rumblings
we weren't going to make it.

I thought this is our task, and we're going to get there. I didn't
care that almost all off that 18 months it seemed the only importance
of politics was the game of politics -- was the government going to
survive? Was it going to fall?

There was a purpose in it.

The purpose was to deliver on what the promise was -- to create a
real national system of early learning and childcare, and to never
take your eye off the prize.

How do we begin to balance environmental responsibility with brisk
economic growth?

Environmental policy is also economic policy. And they're both health
policy. They are all part of the same piece.

We separate them governmentally because it's more convenient that
way. But in the end, if you don't deliver good economic policy,
you'll deliver lousy environmental policy and lousy health policy.

We live on one planet there is a relationship between life here and
life on the rest of the planet. Global warming is something that is a
fact of all of our lives and there is not a 'made in Canada' solution
for global warming.

Fundamentally, you can't deal with a number of these things in a
disconnected way.

Part of what matters with Kyoto is that global warming is an
international question. It has to be dealt with internationally.

We've got to work with other countries on it. Yes, there needs to be
a lot more countries that are a part of it but there is some
achievement in having an agreement that involves a number of countries.

Everything we do in our lives -- there are benefits and costs. You
have to connect the two. So the environment and the economy have to
be more and more connected. They are connected in the way in which we
live and the way in which the planet functions.

If you win the leadership race, and are eventually elected as prime
minister, what would be at the top of the priority list?

One of the things I think is really important is to see Canada as a
learning society.

When we look at our community's life, our nation's life, the life of
our economy -- there really is only one security; there really is
only one opportunity and that's through learning. That's how we get
to do better in the future.

The only way you have the capacity of living a very successful,
purposeful and fulfilling life is connected through learning.

As a government, we need to encourage and stimulate that through tax
treatments, scholarships and grants.

What I would love nothing more in looking back 10 years from now, is
for Canadians to have a much better understanding of what it is we
are as a country and of how successful we are as a country.

If we as a country are that good, what does it suggest we could be in
the future?

That's the interesting part. That's the important part.