The Shifted Ground

It's funny how an election that started with a whimper, ended up shaking the Canadian political landscape in a way not seen in nearly 20 years. In one foul swoop, the Harper Conservatives secured their first majority, the Liberals were near fatally wounded, the Green Party finally landed on the board while the Bloc Quebecois was nearly swept off it, and the NDP had their single greatest election victory ever, not only hitting triple digit seats but became the Official Opposition for the first time too. If you look at the CBC's election map, you'd swear Canada were the new Edmonton Oilers logo (and perhaps given the winner of last night's election, the allegory is apropos).

Now the question is, what will these results mean for the next four years to Canada, and will the political map keep this new order or is it a one-time glitch. Let's break it down:

Conservatives - 167 seats - 39.62 per cent of the popular vote

The third time's the charm. Stephen Harper has secured his majority, but a lot of the problems that plagued him and his party remain. There's the small matter that despite winning a majority of seats, the Conservatives only gained two points in popularity. It makes a case for some serious voting splitting on the left from one end of this nation to the next to the next, as the combined NDP-Liberal vote won nearly 50 per cent of the popular vote. Three out of five people voted for someone that doesn't make up the government. (Incidentally, I think every election now makes a stronger case for electoral reform, but that's another discussion entirely.)

While basking in victory, the morning after analysis might offer some strong sobriety. There were licks taken in this election about the party's secretiveness and limited availability, the fact that they are just a little less of a non-entity in Quebec than the Bloc, and the little change in popular support despite a majority. Given these conditions, can the frequently cited "radical right" agenda people fear about Harper be enacted to its fullest? And the problem remains that Harper still has no obvious successor as the Conservatives are as much a cult of personality as they are a political party.

The fact of the matter is that the people voted for an end to elections every two years. Come what may, we know that the next election is four years away now, and for some people, that's all the piece of mind they need in Harper's Canada. (Or at least for 40 per cent of the 61.4 per cent of eligible votes that rolled out to the polls yesterday.)

NDP - 102 seats - 30.62 per cent of the popular vote

It was a wild night for Jack Layton. Thanks to big, huge gains in Quebec the NDP leader finally broke through and became the voice of Canada's left, and the official Opposition Party. A good question is, what happens now? A better question is, how did it happen in the first place?

While no one can doubt that there was a sudden and complete shift to the NDP in Quebec, I have yet to hear a complete analysis of the reason or reasons. Layton's debate performance? Well, it was a delayed reaction if that's the case. Some talk show appearance? Well then, this must have been the most politically important talk show since David Frost interviewed Richard Nixon. The real picture, again, I think comes down to fatigue. The average Quebecer, seeing no progress in the representation of French issues by voting Bloc, and being reticent about supporting the Liberals again - or heaven forbid, the Conservatives - were looking for a new direction, and by process of elimination, that choice was the NDP.

From here on, one of two things can happen. The next four years could see an NDP building strength and support, gaining the confidence of more and more Canadians and poised for a breakthrough to, at the very least, a minority government situation of their own. But Quebec is the X factor. Will French Canadians be satisfied by NDP representation? Do the NDP know what to do/have what it takes to keep French Canadians in the supporters column? It should be interesting to see what the new Quebecois influence will have on the New Democrats.

Liberals - 34 seats - 18.91 per cent of the popular vote

Ouch. There are no words. This is easily the most crushing defeat of a major Canadian political party since the PC's in 1993 (with one exception discussed next). Michael Ignatieff, once the promise of a new generation of Liberal power, is defeated on almost every level, including personal, losing his own riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore by nearly 3,000 votes to Tory Bernard Trottier. The case of Ignatieff is that once again the candidate that looked good on paper did not translate into ballots checked. The Liberals were too soft in response to Conservative attack ads and just couldn't get past the assault. A prime minister and party censured for the first time ever by Parliament, accusations of secret keeping and other shadowy activities, and an economy still in a relative shambles, and the Liberals still weren't able to capitalize. Where was the disconnect?

The answer to that is, in part, because of Ignatieff's charisma gap, but it's not all on him. The NDP surge was too strong, and the momentum was with Jack Layton. The Liberals couldn't make the point to vote strategically, and if they could, people were already starting to think of the NDP as the strategic option. Where does the Liberal Party go from here? Well, not gently into that good night. There may be an opportunity for rebound, if only because the party still has nearly three dozen MPs in the House, and a storied history that goes back to Confederation. The gap may still be too wide for official merger talks with the NDP, and Layton may not think he needs the help, but there is the possibility, and likely probability, for more collusion. As for leader replacements, that's going to be tough; tough to see who might step in, tough to see how anyone can turn the boat around. But if the Liberals could say one thing this morning, it's that they aren't the...

Bloc Quebecois - 4 seats - 6.05 per cent of the popular vote 

Considering the enormous personal popularity of Gilles Duceppe, it seems that Quebecers left the party like rats fleeing a sinking ship. I don't think anyone called this reversal of fortune for the Bloc, even me. As I pointed out the day before the election, the Bloc surges and then it ebbs. But in this case, it's like the tide went out completely, and the question is will it ever return? Can the Bloc come back from this defeat? It depends on how you answer this question: Is separation still important to a significant percentage of French Canadians? If the answer is yes, then the Bloc will be back in some form in 2015; if not, then this might be the last we've seen of the Separatist Party. 

Green Party - 1 seat - 3.9 per cent of the popular vote

Elizabeth May finally won her seat in the House of Commons, but the cost seems to be a loss of about half of the Green Party's popular support over the 2008 election (in '08, that was 6.8 per cent). Really, the Greens were as much a victim of the NDP's surge as the Liberals, but that didn't stop May from making history by becoming the Green MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands. (And not only that, but she defeated Conservative incumbent Gary Lunn by over 7,000 votes.) The question is what happens now? Can May be effectual in the House as a party of one? Where do the Green Party's fortunes go from here? One thing's for sure, no one will be able to block May from a leaders' debate again.

But no matter what happens next, this is what Canada looks like today. Who would have guessed that 40 days ago...?

Coalition of the Willing

Someone on my Facebook - someone of the Conservative persuasion - posited that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff should be asked in tomorrow night's English-language Leaders Debate about why he wants to ruin Canada by having a political threesome with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe. The rhetorical flourish of that question is mine, but the intent is the same: A vote for the opposition parties is a vote for some kind of Voltron government that's both unlawful and unwanted.

Except that it isn't. Not only is a coalition government perfectly legal and constitutional, but I think it's what Canadians have been asking for the last seven years. If you just scoffed, I don't blame you. A Globe and Mail/CTV poll from last week showed that 49 per cent of respondents had a negative or somewhat negative reaction to the idea of a coalition government; 40 per cent had the opposite reaction and the rest was made up people who were uncertain.

While a poll can certainly be scientific, I have a much more scientific polling option: the results from the last election. I have put to a couple of the candidates, namely Bobbi Stewart and Frank Valeriote, their point of view about a coalition. My thesis is that the way Canadians have been voting in the last three elections (and seemingly for the fourth) it seems that what they're looking for is a coalition. If you think about it, the parties are more or less breaking down regionally. Tories cover the Prairies and the West, as well as southwestern Ontario; Liberals take urban and suburban areas in southern Ontario, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and the Maritimes; the NDP in denser urban areas, coastal B.C., urban Manitoba, northern Ontario and parts of the Maritimes; and the Bloc takes most of Quebec outside Montreal and Quebec City.

So what's wrong with this picture? Well, you'll notice that aside from the Bloc Quebecois, there's not a regional area in this country where the parties don't have influence (and some would argue, especially in the coalition debate, that the Bloc's influence does extend beyond the Quebec border). Even the northern territories are evenly split with one riding each for the Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP.

To me, this suggests that the country is rather schizophrenic about where it wants to be. They like the idea of economy-centric priorities and tax cuts, but there still remains that concern of an un-Canadian social policy that many think lingers immediately behind a Conservative majority in the House. People like the Liberals fine, but without a strong voice and constitution they come across as U.S. Democrats: a party of big ideas incapable of executing. Everyone loves the NDP, but the fiscally-conservative half of our collective brains remember how NDP governments provincially have chased a road of good intentions down a financial rabbit hole.

Still, what if we took the qualities we liked from all the major parties, and combined them into some kind of super-government. On the campaign trail, Prime Minister Stephen Harper paints a picture of disorganization and instability. On the stump, he's been equating the need to give his party a majority as a matter of national security. “These series of minority Parliaments, in my judgment, is becoming a dangerous game for this country," Harper said in Guelph last week. "This election needs to put an end to that political uncertainty and focus on Canada’s security.”

Harper can make an argument for that, although I think its fundamentally wrong. A majority government unchecked could just as well be a force for instability, and the truth of the matter is that the current election began with the government's refusal to be completely open and honest with the Opposition - even in a minority situation. The more troubling aspect, to my mind, is the inference that a coalition is illegal or that somehow it constiutes a conspiracy to usurp the will of the Canadian electorate.

In Guelph, Harper asked: why Ignatieff was forcing an election. “We all know why," he told the crowd, "because Mr Ignatieff doesn’t think he needs to win this election. He thinks he needs to just hold us to another minority government and after the election, he can make a deal with the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois even if he lost the election.”

Leaving aside Ignatieff's election day proclamation that he had no intention of forming a coalition government, he didn't have to go to an election to get it. A vote of non-confidence doesn't mean an automatic election, it means that the party that forms the government no longer has the confidence of the majority of Parliament. The Governor-General can turn to the opposition parties and ask them if they can see clear to form a government of their own before dropping the writ.

As for Ignatieff and his coalition promises, I can say that from my point of view it's short-sighted. In 2008, the Conservatives formed the Government of Canada in spite of the fact that 62.4 per cent of those that voted, voted for any party or candidate besides Conservatives. Many of those coveted victories by the Conservatives in southern Ontario were won by razor thin margins, and not because the Conservatives were so successful in converting voters, but because a lot of Liberal voters stood at home. I understand that from Ignatieff's point of view, he can't kick off his campaign from the position of "here's something I can do if I don't win," essentially a defeatist position, but by discounting it completely, he opens himself up to the very charges Conservatives are levying against him if he ends up going through with it after Election Day.

To discount a coalition for any reason is simplistic. It fosters a zero sum approach to politics I find distasteful, and it further fosters partisanship and general extra-party negativity. An election victory does not mean universal acceptance of your agenda, especially in a minority situation. But compromise is seen by some politicians as weakness, and if you're weak you can't lead. This is the spirit of Harper's march against the coalition; a campaign against compromise, participation, and engagement.

“You are here for one thing," he told the gathered Guelphites last week. "You are here for Canada. And your fellow citizens here in Guelph and throughout southwestern Ontario believe deeply in this country, and they are not going to choose members of Parliament who are going to sign on to Mr. Ignatieff’s reckless idea that he can lose the election and then run the country with the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois.” 

Well, if the polls show anything right now it's that they are, and they might. "Reckless" though it may be, if the election were held tomorrow, it'd be another minority Parliament that sits. And maybe that's how Canadians want it. Ultimately though, it seems silly to base your campaign on hypotheticals when there are much more tangible issues on your agenda, like accusations that all that money on the G8 was misspent, or that political staffers in Ottawa may come off financially better secure if their party loses than if they win.

Really? Again? Elizabeth May and the Debate

I can't believe I have to write this again. The consortium of Canadian broadcasters that set the ground rules for the Federal debate have decided once again, in their nowhere near infinite wisdom, that Green Party leader Elizabeth May will not be part of the National Leaders' debate. Really? We've got to do this again? Here's how it will go: the people will complain, the other party leaders will say that they want to have May in the debate, the broadcasters will relent, and May will debate. Why? Because she was in the debate last time!!! What's changed? She can debate last election, but not in this one. They tried her out one time, and decided that May wasn't appealing to the TV audience? That's right, Elizabeth May is the Cousin Oliver of Federal politics, I guess.

Well, in more interesting debate news, Stephen Harper said yesterday that he was willing to include Elizabeth May in the leaders debate, the are other possibilities. “We could also have a debate between Mr. Ignatieff and myself since, after all, the real choice in this election is a choice between a Conservative government or an Ignatieff-led government that all of these other parties will support,” Harper said.

Michael Ignatieff accepted the challenge (exact Tweet: “A one-on-one debate? Any time, any place.”), but what happened after that in terms of trying to set this up is a "He Said-He Said" of epic proportions. “Mr. Ignatieff insisted that his first preference was to have his coalition partners there at the debate, so that’s the format that was proposed and we’ve accepted it,” Harper told journalists in Halifax today. “If Mr. Ignatieff wanted that debate, he could have chosen that debate, but he didn’t.”

First of all, is anyone else sick of the coalition drum banging? It's like Stephen Harper is Swan from The Warriors, leading his rag-tag crew through the menacing streets of Manhattan under attack from all sides by a "coalition" of other gangs - The Turnbull AC's, The Baseball Furies, The Lizzies and The Gramercy Riffs - as they try to get back to Staten Island. The Conservatives have been the government for five years, they lead the polls, they've got momentum and funding, yet somehow, they're the underdogs. 

I can understand why Harper would like to face Ignatieff one-on-one, Layton, Duceppe and May can be scary when their Irish is up, but you can't paint them with the same brush as if they've all fallen under the spell of Cyrus in the middle of Van Cortlandt Park asking them if they dig it. After all, we all know Michael Ignatieff charisma level is more on par with Billy Ray Cyrus, than ambitious, and fictional, New York gangsters.