Canada: Snap Reaction to the Elections --- "How Very Un-Canadian"

It may not receive much international attention, but Canada just had a very interesting federal election.

Canadians have become experts in the area, with five elections between 2000 and yesterday. That expertise extended to minority government --- the elections of 2004, 2006, and 2008 all ended in a “hung Parliament”, with a single party is unable to command a majority of legislators.

That all changed yesterday, as the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper finally won its coveted majority government. Although the Conservative share of the popular vote rose by only 1.8% from the previous election, the First Past the Post electoral system gave the party an additional 20 seats, enough to push it over the 155 needed for a majority.

The fact that more than 60% of Canadians did not vote for the Conservatives is a tale in itself, offering further ammunition for those arguing for the reform of First Past the Post systems. But the main story besides the Harper majority is the party that came second.

The New Democratic Party, with roots stretching back to the early 20th century and parallelling the Labour Party in the UK, had its best-ever showing with more than 100 seats in the Parliament and 30% of the vote. Almost 60 of those seats came in the province Quebec, which overwhelmingly went for the NDP.

The big loser was the Liberal Party, Canada’s traditional governing party and one firmly entrenched in the centre of the political spectrum, and its leader Michael Ignatieff. It had historic lows in terms of number of seats (35) and popular vote (18%), and Ignatieff was defeated in his own riding. Although he didn’t resign, his political career is over; undoubtedly he will skedaddle back to Harvard and Oxford and the safety of an academic office.

So now to the meaning of the result. Does it represent a realignment of Canadian politics and the death of the Liberal Party --- just as the Liberal Party in the UK fell in the path of the Labour Party in the early 20th century)? Possibly.

Even more important, and more certain, is that the future for Canada holds a double dose of polarization. First, there will be the ideological polarization with a governing party of the right squaring up against an official opposition party of the left. The Harper Conservatives are not traditional Canadian conservatives but in many ways represent the triumph of the Reform Party of Canada, a breakaway right-wing western populist party which first sent Harper to Parliament. The party has taken strong ideological stands on a number of issues, including repositioning Canadian foreign policy with strong support for Israel.

With a majority government, there may now be a move into issues that appeal to social conservatives, such as abortion. Although there is little stomach among the wider Canadian public for such debates, it is an important issue to many Conservatives --- already one Conservative MP has predicted that the Canadian government will cut funding to Planned Parenthood.

The second polarisation is geographic. From the late 1960s until 2006, central and eastern Canada dominated the political system. Indeed, the Trudeau Government in the 1970s and early 1980s managed to govern Canada with almost no representation in parliament west of Ontario. Now geographic power has shifted, with the Conservatives enjoying strong support from Ontario across the west to British Columbia.

The Conservatives, despite their majority, lost all but six seats in Quebec amidst the NDP landslide. Coupled with a Quebec provincial election which will likely see a separatist party take power --- in contrast, the separatist party from Quebec was almost completely wiped out at the federal level --- this will undoubtedly lead to a new bout of federal-provincial conflict, even though Harper has in the past argued in favour of provincial rights at the expense of the power of the federal government.

So an election which many thought would yield more of the same has led to dramatic results that could represent long-term historic change. How exciting. How very un-Canadian.