Canada's election: moving right and moving left
Monday's election was a political transformation that saw the sudden collapse of the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois, and the surprising rise of the NDP. The real winner, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has turned squareness into charisma.
A few years ago, Canada was a contented center-left country whose conservative party had been nearly obliterated by scandal and ideological infighting. In national elections Monday, however, while their southern cousins were reveling in the death of Osama Bin Laden, "True North" voters quietly lurched both right and left simultaneously. They gave Conservatives their first majority government in a generation, yet also elevated the left wing New Democrats (a former fringe in Ottawa) to the stature of leader of the opposition. They also destroyed Quebec’s separatists as a national party and reduced the long dominant Liberal party to an electoral after-thought.
It was a political transformation. For the first time in many years, Canada is dividing along the left-right axis familiar to other Western countries.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper this spring asked Canadians for"“a strong, stable national majority" and, against the pollsters’ predictions, voters gave it to him. Tories won about 167 of the 308 seats in Parliament, shaming the opposition parties’ strategists who in April pushed a "no confidence" vote on Harper's minority-led government and brought on the election. For two of the opposition parties, at least, it was a big mistake.
The formerly third ranking party, the left wing New Democrats (NDP), perhaps did not conclude that the election was a mistake, however. Promising to spend generously on any program someone could imagine, the NDP was persuasively more anti-Tory than the Liberals and appealed to young voters and restless progressive Quebec voters ready to abandon the Bloc Quebecois.
The NDP’s ebullient Jack Layton, encumbered by a cane from recent surgery, appeared to engage in campaigning as physical therapy and wound up waving his cane around like a sword. Layton led his party to a second place finish with about 102 seats. The Tories employed the apparent surge of the NDP to scare business-minded liberals into defecting to the Conservatives.
Here's what else the election did:
• The formally separatist Bloc Quebecois, having only narrowly failed in its effort to disassemble Canada in the '90s, is now down to a mere four seats in Parliament. Bloc leader Giles Duceppe lost his own riding (district). Some 59 of the NDP's 102 members are freshmen from Quebec, most of them in seats gained from the Bloc.
• The long dominant Liberal Party was nearly, but not completely, ruined, winning only 34 or so seats. If Layton was the Hubert Humphrey-style happy warrior of the campaign, former professor Michael Ignatieff was the Liberal Party version of Adlai Stevenson: a cheerful intellectual, a bit aloof in spite of himself, and ill at ease as a campaign scrambler. He asked for this election, and this election spoiled his electoral future. At least we will have in tomorrow's Michael Ignatieff one political scientist with practical, if disappointing, campaign experience.
• The Greens' national leader, Elizabeth May, won a seat from BC's Gulf Islands, the Sunshine Coast; it’s her party’s first seat in Parliament. Greens will be further emboldened in the future, further diluting any chance for electoral coalition.
The left in Canada's new Parliament generally will agree to dislike the Tories, and agree on little else. A positive amalgamation is reasonable, but unlikely.
In contrast, expect the Conservatives to expand. Under new federal law the prime minister’s party now enjoys a term of at least four years. That will give incumbents a chance to entrench their gains in Atlantic Canada, recover in Quebec, maintain their big margins in the West, and cultivate their vital 16 new seats in vote-rich Ontario. The Tories had breakthroughs in urban areas and among minorities this year. More than any opponents, they are a national party. The NDP is spectral in Ontario, while Liberals are nearly spent in Quebec and the West.
Expect Harper to advance a conservative agenda, but gingerly. His program features spending restraints, but no huge cuts; corporate business tax cuts, free trade, and no cap-and-trade in energy. Tories are moderate on immigration, offer lots of little programs here and there in community development and education, propose a stronger defense (which, in Canada, is not saying much), and promise an end to troops in Afghanistan. Oddly, Canada is supportive of the Libya war, but that didn’t become a campaign issue. Neither did social issues.
In his victory speech Harper seemed unplugged, effortlessly easygoing, thoughtfully considerate of his opponents, and patriotic in the way lately fashionable in Canada. Stephen Harper is a study in squareness become charisma. It's a great feat for a pol, and he finally accomplished it.
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Comments:
Posted Tue, May 3, 5 p.m. Inappropriate
Nice synopsis, Bruce.
Two quibbles and one more subtle distinction. Elizabeth May's riding is Saanich-Gulf Islands. The Sunshine Coast is on B.C.'s mainland, north of Vancouver.
More seriously, the comment about Harper increasing Canada's military presence but it "not being much" is accurate only insofar as comparing any industrialized country's military infrastructure with that of the US is a futile exercise, and particularly the case when considering that Canada has long been content to be under the umbrella. However, this belies Canada's significant contribution to matters past and present. They have endured a greater per capita rate of casualties in Afghanistan that perhaps any other ally. It was probably a similar ratio in WWII.
Harper has staked out a steady but gradual growth in military presence around the world that has certain historical antecedents going back to Lester Pearson's role with the UN.It recognizes that while on the one hand the might of the US can and should never be challenged, and that moreover there is broad agreement with US foreign policies, it has become increasingly important for Canada to adopt a modest amount of independence. This is predicated on at least three presumptions. The first involves the general growth of the North as an energy center, as a shipping lane during climatic change and as a source for sovereignty issues. The second is the shift in global trade emphasis from north-south to east-west has military implications, and the third is (was) the general revulsion among all parties in Canada toward the unilateralism of the US under Bush--which translates to a general concern about American right wing zealotry to spread too deep into the military.
It is both noteworthy and not noteworthy that this military growth in Canada has occurred under a Tory government. As stated, it is more properly a more concrete manifestation of a streak that began with Pearson, then Trudeau et al. Harper just may be the first post-Cold War PM to act on it and is coincidentally a Conservative.
The third area of comment is about reading last night's election returns as illustrating that Canada's politics is polarizing. I believe that to be false. Outliers aside, the spectrum from core Conservative to core NDP is much narrower than their Rep-Dem counterparts in the US. Moreover, the Canadian core is shifted several notches to the left compared to the US. Harper is a just a tad to the right of Bill Clinton and Layton matches up well with Ted Kennedy
That's a pretty narrow range and it immediately lends to a fickle electorate. Combine that into a pot where you have three more or less national parties and the taste of the resulting soup can change each election. Note that last night the Tories received something like 40% of the vote and thus 60% against them, or in round figures a lot of spread around a bland middle--Not much polarity there--how utterly Canadian! Yes, the Liberals are down, but were the Conservatives in the early 90s.
I think that the most significant feature last night was the emergence of immigrants as a major political force nationally (called "visible minorities" in Canuckian). They tend to vote Conservative although that will be parsed by all parties in subsequent elections and is likely to resonate differently as 2nd generation hyphenated Canadians move into decision-making roles. Keep up the good work!
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