Anxiety mingled with snow in Whistler over the weekend as the B.C. wing of the federal Liberal Party gathered for its biennial convention.
The federal Liberals hit a new low this week, as an Ipsos-Reid poll showed their popularity sagging to only 24 per cent - the lowest since Michael Ignatieff became leader last December.
"We've got a lot of work to do," Ignatieff admitted, after delivering an upbeat speech to an audience of 300 party faithfuls. "We've got to earn the trust of Canadians. And you do that doorbell by doorbell, voter by voter, person by person."
In B.C., the Grits are recovering from residual infighting in the wake of leadership battles that pumped the provincial group's rolls to more than 70,000 members before plummeting to a low of less than 10,000 last year.
The 2008 federal election reduced the federal Liberals to only five members in B.C. Two of those were won by razor-thin margins: MP Ujjal Dosanjh won Vancouver South by only 22 votes, and MP Keith Martin won Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca by only 68 votes.
Both ridings are already being worked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada, which needs only 10 more seats to form a majority government.
"If they need a majority, they have to win my riding," Dosanjh told The Tyee. "It's going to be a very tough campaign."
The former B.C. Premier said he's spent more time in his riding this year, as compared to previous years when he campaigned more actively on behalf of the party.
"We need to regroup," Dosanjh said. "There is enthusiasm ... I think there is also worry and anxiety."
While the convention program itself was fiercely upbeat, much of the barroom chatter revolved around the party's lackluster response to Conservative Party assaults. Tory efforts to rebrand themselves as a party of immigrants were of particular concern.
Ignatieff spent the day before the convention in Surrey, where he convened a roundtable with representatives of the South Asian media.
"Anybody with a name like Ignatieff knows how important immigration is," Ignatieff told a small scrum of reporters in Whistler. "But I don't think immigration is the issue. I think the issue is presenting a vision for Canadians of inclusion of all the people who come here from wherever they come."
Read TheTyee.ca for a longer version of this report and listen to Paulsen on CKNW Monday morning.
