OTTAWA - It genuinely pains me to be participating in the media's mass genuflection to the Liberal Party of Canada.

For a party relegated to third place in the past federal election, the LPC's woes have created an unusual amount of ink for Canadian opinion columnists.

Part of me can't blame the commentariat for its addiction to the Liberal tragedy. It has all the compelling elements of a grand drama: a mighty king in Canadian politics, reduced by corruption and intellectual laziness to a withering shadow of its former self. None the less, the grand drama is taking up far too much space in Canadian newspapers. Besides, it is an opera coming to a whimpering crescendo. The Liberal Party is happily killing itself.

Take for example the so-called Liberal "renewal" process.  Andrew Coyne of the National Post believes "much will be decided at this convention". Indeed, this weekend's Liberal Party Biennial Convention will determine much. But what it determines will not be existential. Rather, it will be a taking of the temperature. Elections to the Party's executive, particularly the race for the Party Presidency, will lay out the feelings of Liberal members and their enthusiasm for change.

Coyne also believes the key to Liberal renewal is in grassroots engagement:

"The question before the Liberals is existential — why be a Liberal, rather than a member of one of the other parties? What do we offer that they don't? And part of the answer to that has to be: as a Liberal you will actually have a say in how the party is run."

This is the quintessential fallacy of the theory of Liberal renewal: that a more open and "grassroots" party machine will lead to a Big Red revival. It is a fallacy rooted in a more devious Liberal myth, that Canadians are natural Liberals whom have been led astray by a malevolent Conservative attack mechanism. "We have the right ideas," Canada's Liberals will declare in Ottawa this weekend. "We just need a more open process and Canadians will flock to our welcoming embrace!"

The big secret to Liberal failure is much more simple. The party is bankrupt of ideas. The ideas it does support are ancient, tired, and overused, an ironic state of existence for a party supposedly committed to progressive politics. The party is too temperamentally conservative: too resistant to change, too much a defender of the status quo. It has become a party rooted in defending the Liberal legacy of the past, rather than forging a new one for the future.

Every tiny inch of change Stephen Harper's Tories make, no matter how pragmatic or cautious, is met with the same cry of outrage. Often, the outrage is rooted in Conservative changes to Liberal legacies. It is an attitude seen in battles over the long gun registry, Senate reform, the Court Challenges Program, and other sacred Liberal idols. Changes to otherwise bad and failed public policies are met with the same tired Liberal refrain. In the words of Peter Newman, that any change to the Liberal status quo represents a shift so titanic that Canada "might even have to change its name since it will no longer be recognizable."

Therein lies the rub. The biggest secret of the grand failure that is the modern Liberal Party: Canadians don't want Canada to be the same. After handing mandate after mandate to an organized, disciplined, and competent Conservative government, it is clear they don't want the old Canada. The innovative spirit is alive and well in Ottawa, and its in the Conservative Party. The party stuck in the past, stuck in old attitudes, is the Liberal Party.

As Liberals travel to Ottawa this weekend, many of them will fall for the myth that an open policy process and new grassroots participation will save them. But the reality is harsher than the myth. There is no Liberal grassroots. Their coalition is shattered; their historical fortresses in downtown cores, Quebec, and the heartland of Ontario have all fallen. Even now as they sorely need innovative policy leadership at the top, they will attempt to shape their rusty party machinery into a new model of participation and openness. That will only work if those who fill the vacuum are willing to embrace real innovative thinking. If, like their predecessors, they instead embrace the old Canada and the old relics of the same old Liberal policies, they will suffer electoral embarrassment.

It is hard to tell if Liberals will come to embrace the new, confident, and muscular Canada. But if precedent is any indication, it does not seem likely. What is the Liberal Party but the home for those whose ideas are trapped in a past long abandoned by Canadians?