Chantal Hébert (Toronto Star): Battle still on, but leaders stall

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Toronto Star
Dated Friday May 20

Battle still on, but leaders stall
By Chantal Hébert
National Affairs Columnist

Ottawa—Today is the first day of the longest election campaign in Canadian history.

Over the eight months between now and the Prime Minister's self-imposed deadline to call a general election — 30 days after the Gomery report next December — every federal party will be on permanent campaign standing.

That was obvious last night as both Paul Martin and Stephen Harper delivered their take on the tie vote in the House of Commons on national television.

But that does not mean the coming action need necessarily continue to rivet Canadians to the goings-on in Parliament.

Read more.

[getmeouttahere]

1. Canada, please say NO to Stephen Harper....

and the conservatives...certainly you must see what a conservative government is doing to us here in the states.

BTW, is Stockwell Day still a player in federal politics? Was he ever?

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Ms. Hébert seems to think Canada will say no to conventional politics

Perhaps my Canadian friends can clue me in, but Ms. Hébert appears to be a reporter on the line of David Broder in Washington, more concerned about reporting facts and sorting out possibilities than expressing an opinion or being at all prescriptive.

I found this interesting:

If an election had taken place this spring, both Martin and Harper would have had a hard time winning a viable government.

Contrast that with the third parties.

Today, more than ever, the Bloc Québécois stands head and shoulders above the pack in Quebec.

The frantic Liberal efforts of the past few weeks have only increased the sovereignist lead in the province.

In the rest of Canada, the NDP is on the rise, its leader Jack Layton the only moral victor of the whole episode.

What the Bloc and the NDP have had in common over the past stormy weeks is that, through all the manoeuvring, they never lost sight of who they were.

Is the two-party system in Canada broken? Ms. Hébert appears to believe that is possible.

[Pierre Trudeau]

4. there never was a 2-party system

Federal politics in Canada has always featured a third party, and sometimes several. Yes, the Conservatives and Liberals have always been the main two parties, and the only parties to ever form a government in Ottawa (with the exception of Robert Borden's "Union" government of 1917-1920, a combination of conservatives and "progressives" representing farmers... those two parties later merged into the Progressive Conservative Party, R.I.P.), but third parties such as the CCF, NDP, Progressives, Social Credit and others have always played a significant part, in some cases holding the balance of power and influencing the governing party's agenda.

Those third parties have had much better luck in forming provincial governments, especially the NDP which often runs Saskatchewan, sometimes Manitoba and B.C., and once even had a majority government in Ontario! Social Credit used to be a major force in the west, frequently forming the BC government, but it no longer exists.

In 1993, after eight years of majority government, the Progressive Conservative Party was slaughtered in the polls (winning only two seats), and had already begun to splinter into the Reform Party (right-wing western neocons & rednecks led by Preston Manning who's no redneck but still an evangelical social conservative) and the Bloc Quebecois (founded by Lucien Bouchard, former conservative who stabbed his buddy prime minister Brian Mulroney in the back and started this new sovereigntist party to represent Quebecers). With the right wing split and the social-democratic NDP burdened with uninspiring leaders, the Liberals under Jean Chretien were able to hold onto government for three successive majorities. Only last year did the Reformers and what was left of the old Progressive Conservatives finally re-unite to found the new Conservative Party of Canada, whose main distinction for most Canadians is that they are NOT "progressive". Consequently they perpetually have trouble getting many votes east of Alberta (which is the Canadian equivalent of a "red state").

In contrast to the US, the multi-party environment has often served the country well, and it is not unusual to have a "minority government", as we currently do in Ottawa. In fact, some of our best governments have been minorities.

Probably the best example is the Pearson government of 1963-1968. Lester B. Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize winner, inventor of UN peacekeeping, and surely one of our most undervalued prime ministers, never managed to win a majority for the Liberals in parliament. Nevertheless, he forged ahead, working by consensus with the other parties, and managed through two minority governments to build our health-care system, rev the country up for Expo 67, and gave us our national flag, among many other accomplishments which helped to define the Canada we know and love today.

Similarly, Bill Davis was Premier of Ontario for 14 years, most of the time running minority governments. Affectionately known as "Brampton Billy", Davis is the kind of guy who gives conservatives a good name. Eschewing ideology in favour of governing in the best interests of all Ontarians, Mr. Davis gave us our beloved public television network TVO, created a progressive educational system, worked with Trudeau to repatriate the constitution, and presided over what is generally considered to be a golden age in Ontario.

Incidentally, according to early news reports, it was a speech given by the now-retired Davis that inspired Belinda Stronach to cross the floor.

Phew! Um, that's today's history lesson. :eyes:
I don't know if I answered your question.
I would agree with Ms. Hébert that the NDP came off looking the best out of the last month's escapades, and hopefully will gain some support in the polls. After all, most Canadians seem to prefer having a Liberal minority government with the NDP holding the balance of power, which is essentially what just happened.

But in politics, things can change pretty quickly.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. Thank you

I'm rummaging through the Wikipedia site looking up some of this background.

In US politics, we very seldom have a Congressman from an organized third party (as the result of a fluke, the California state legislature actually had a sitting Green for a brief time a few years back). Usually, third parties are organized as a vehicle for an independent presidential candidacy such as George Wallace in 1968 or Ross Perot in 1992. That, of course, makes little sense in Canada's parliamentary system.

It looks like Canadian minor parties fare better. However, going back to about 1935, when the Cooperative Commonwealth and Social Credit Parties first ran in a federal general election, that these two parties never really held a lot of seats and were made even less important by the fact that Liberal Party usually had huge majorities under Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent. It helps a third party to be influential if there's a strong opposition; the Conservatives/Progressive Conservatives don't seem to have had much going for them until the mid-fifties. On the other hand, the Liberals under John Turner were down and out in the eighties, when the PCs were under Brian Mulroney. The fall of the PCs in 1993 was a disaster for Canadian conservatives. That they have recovered is a fact that seems to owe less to their own work as to the Sponsorship scandal, for which the Liberals have no one to blame but themselves.

[Pierre Trudeau]

6. when there's a strong Liberal leader...

It looks like Canadian minor parties fare better. However, going back to about 1935, when the Cooperative Commonwealth and Social Credit Parties first ran in a federal general election, that these two parties never really held a lot of seats and were made even less important by the fact that Liberal Party usually had huge majorities under Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent.

Yes, the fortunes of the smaller parties rise and fall in adverse proportion to the strength of the Liberals. When there is a strong Liberal leadership, such as Laurier, King, St.Laurent, Trudeau etc. they tend to pinch progressive ideas from the more left-wing parties so there is no need to vote for them, and people support the PM. On the contrary, the NDP did best during the last "Progressive Conservative" govt. ever: Brian Mulroney. At the time, the Liberals had a weak leader in John Turner, and there was not yet a Bloc Quebecois breakaway from the PCs, nor was the Reform Party a serious contender. Meanwhile, the NDP had a popular leader, Ed Broadbent, and a majority conservative government for the first time since Dief (and calling the chief "conservative" is a bit of a stretch). That all changed in 1993 with the return of the Liberals under Chretien, the wiping off the political map of the old "Progressive Conservative" party, and the emergence of the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois as the evil-twin residue of the former conservatives. Even the NDP lost seats in the shuffle. And like you said:

The fall of the PCs in 1993 was a disaster for Canadian conservatives. That they have recovered is a fact that seems to owe less to their own work as to the Sponsorship scandal, for which the Liberals have no one to blame but themselves.

It was a disaster all right! Some had already defected to Reform, a western-alienation populist party, with a mixed platform of social conservatism, grievances with federalism, and a neo-neo-conservative platform developed by PNAC-loving professors at the University of Calgary... of which Harper is a prodigal son. Some were gathered up in the dark years by "green conservative" David Orchard who tried to lead the party but was too "far out" for the central canadian and east coast "Red Tories" who mostly just huddled around Joe Clark and wondered which way the wind was blowing. A number, of course, have defected to the Liberals (to whom they are much closer ideological cousins than the gun-loving oil cowboys of Reform), though none has ever topped the spectacular stride across the floor of miss B.S., shedding her erstwhile boyfriend along the way, and I'm sure we haven't heard the last of her yet.

By the time Peter MacKay conducted his own betrayal of the venerable Orchard, the "progressive conservative" pickings were pretty lean. Still, they were reluctantly dragged onto the dance floor with the transmorphing Reform Party/CCRAP/Canadian Alliance to become (hurrah!) the re-branded Conservative Party of Canada. And despite many, er, enthusiastic attempts to find a leader who could appeal to Ontario, Quebec and the east coast (Bill Davis was too old, Mike Harris was damaged goods, Tony Clement was a nerd, Stockwell Day was a raving loony) it came down to debutante Red Tory Stronach vs. Reform's ideological prince Harper.

I guess we know who's in charge, eh?

[Jack Rabbit]

7. And thank you again

That brings us back to Ms. Hébert's point (see post no. 2). Right now we don't have strong leadership in either the Liberal or Conservative parties. Harper is certainly no Diefenbaker and Martin is no King or Trudeau. Thus, the Bloc rises on the right and the NDP on the left. For all the talk this week of Harper, Stronach, Martin and Cadman, the fellow who came out a real winner, as Ms. Hébert points out, is Jack Layton, whose name was hardly mentioned all week.

This could be a consequence of trends seen in my country which, I suppose, as also seen in yours: the increasing maldistribution of wealth. Such a trend does not make for strong centrist political leaders.

[Lisa]

8. Speaking of western alienation, I've already heard ...

... some Western Conservatives trying to spin the Harper/Stronach/MacKay thing like a heartland-hinterland regional morality play ... where Stronach is cast as the evil Ontario urbanite, stringing honest farmer MacKay along, in order to make him (and dear leader Stephen Harper) look bad.

Personally I refuse to refer to the new Conservatives as "Tories" -- it's kind of like those nature documentaries that show caterpillars being hollowed out by the larvae of predatory wasps. The larvae use the still-living caterpillar as nourishment and protective camouflage. (Apologies for the graphic metaphor, but I hang out with a bunch of biologists.)

[daleo]

9. It is an excellent metaphor.

Most apt - I will use it often.

[jim3775]

3. No and no.

He was an embarrassing representative of the old Alliance party and under his watch Chretien won an easy majority. He is the current foreign affairs critic so I suppose he would be a cabinet minister under a Harper government. I doubt his name would garner any extra votes outside of his riding.