Andrew Coyne has a must read column for those interested in Canadian politics and tomorrow’s election. That includes you Americans, by the way. You cannot understand Canada and our schizophrenic foreign policy without a cursory understanding of the political system and regional idiosyncracies that have allowed a single political machine to install itself in virtual perpetuity.
Andrew argues that this machine is on the verge of finding itself dismantled.
For the country’s sake, I hope he’s right. The tentacles of government have been increasingly rewoven under the Liberals to entrench that power. Majority governments hand 95% of the decision making power of parliament to the office of the Prime Minister, and challenges to the constitutionality of legislation are adjuciated by a Supreme Court – also appointed by the Prime Minister. New campaign finance laws shovel out taxpayer cash to parties on the basis of the votes they garnered during the previous election – and forbid corporations and unions from contributing at all, giving the governing party a financial edge. Private interest groups and individuals are gagged by strict spending limits in elections, effectively muzzling all but the political parties and the media. That media that includes a government funded CBC with it’s own self interest in conflict with the prospect of Liberal party defeat.
Short of reform from within – highly unlikely – the only hope for cutting those tentacles permanently is from the outside, and I will argue, like Andrew – the outside represented by the more inately democratic political mindset of western Canada.
Whatever the precise result on Monday, and whoever forms a government, one thing should by now be clear: the political landscape of Canada is on the verge of historic change — radical, permanent, and mostly for the the better. Eight decades of Liberal dominance, punctuated by occasional Tory interludes, are about to come crashing to an end. This isn’t 1984. It isn’t 1979. It isn’t even 1957. It’s something completely new.
We shall see. Go read it all.
The Liberals have held power for the majority of the time simply because the majority of Canadians lean left in their politics. 2/3rds lean left while only 1/3rd lean right. All other reasoning is BS.
Explain the provincial governments.
What about them? Except for Alberta and Ontario, the provincial governments have been widely in favour of either the Liberals or NDP. A few are about a 50/50 split over their history but some have nearly always had one of the left leaning parties in power. It’s currently a 5-5 tie between the ten provinces.
In the case of Ontario, I believe its just a matter of balancing out the political equation. There is a near perfect correlation between the Libs in power on the federal level and the Conservatives in power on the provincial level. As for Alberta, its really the only province that can claim to have a conservative population.
But more importantly, even most conservatives aren’t really true conservatives. How many times have you heard one say they are fiscally conservative but socially liberal?
Are you suggesting the federal Liberals have held power because they’re seen as socially liberal? There’s a whole spectrum of reasons – most of them hinged in recent years on the split on the right – Reform/PC, Alliance/PC, etc.
With the preponderance of seats in Ontario and Quebec, the west has been shut out and the Atlantic of little importance. Conservative support is more or less evenly distributed across the country – on many social issues Canadians are relatively conservative. Most do not support gay marriage, albeit bya slim margin. In Saskatchewan, an NDP province for much of the past three decades, over 60% want to tear up Indian treaties.
But I’ll agree about one thing – there are no true right of center political parties in Canada. The Conservatives are center left, and everyone else is leftward of there.
I really don’t know why the extreme left gets their panties in a wad over the “right” wing. The extremists are on the left – sympathy towards terrorists, no abortion law whatsoever, appointed courts striking down free speech in elections, laws enabling police to search property without warrent…
Are you suggesting the federal Liberals have held power because they’re seen as socially liberal?
No, I’m stating that the federal Liberals have held power for most of the time because Canadians are socially liberal and the Liberals identified with that more so than the Conservative Party is.
By the way, your last paragraph is twaddle. It makes you out to be a wingnut and Harper a wingnut by association.
You can’t possibly believe that the majority of Canadians cast their votes on the basis of “social” issues.
And no party that has committed to preserve a system in which a commodity (health care) has been designated a state funded “right” with universal access, regardless of means, can be called “right wing”.
That issue – allegedly the top priority of Canadians, and the number one issue in Canadian politics – places the Canadian Conservatives far to the left of the Democrats in the US.
By the way, Robert – your international reputation as a troll is noted. I won’t be dragged into lengthy back and forths with you, and I encourage others to keep this in mind should you persist in hanging around.
your international reputation as a troll is noted.
And the right whingers reputation for labelling anyone with an opposing view remains intact. Good save Kate. I was worried you weren’t going to carry on the party mantra. Gawd, I’ve never seen a group of people so quick to find reasons to dismiss opinions different than their own on the most asinine of reasons. Oh, wait. Yes I have seen that before. It was back in the first grade when us boys wouldn’t talk to girls because they all had cooties.
Nothing quick about it, Robert. You show up everywhere, and your arguments never progress beyond the vapid illogical stuff you posted here.
Therefore, no matter your political stripe, you get the troll classification.
Kate, anyone who considers the Conservative party a centre left party really shouldn’t be talking about left-wing extremists.
arguments never progress beyond the vapid illogical stuff
But that is your opinion of anyone who disagrees with you so it’s meaningless. By labelling someone a troll, all you do is signal your intentions to stick your fingers in your ears and not listen anything further that person has to say.
Robert, you equated declaring war with capital punishment. That’s worthy of a junior high school debating class.
And Bob, I stand by my statement. On balance, the Canadian Conservative Party is a center left party. There is no program to dismantle the Canadian Welfare State[tm], denationalize the health care system, or end provincial transfer payments, agricultural subsidies, grant programs, government funding of cultural programs. Need I go on? None of these would be tolerated by anyone on the extreme right economically. Nor would a complete absense of abortion law or race based and affirmative action-ish hiring practices be tolerated by an extreme right wing social conservative.
The Liberal Party does not have divine right to unilaterally redefine the political left-right continuum by virtue of pushing their own agenda further to the left while declaring themselves “the center”.
We can’t afford medicare as it is, but it didn’t stop the Liberals from campaigning that they’d make government subsidized and licensed child care the sacred entitlement cow of the next generation.
Robert, you equated declaring war with capital punishment.
No I didn’t. I said going to war as a way to enforce UN sanctions or punish Iraq for allegedly still having a WMD program or working with AQ was analogous to a capital sentence in a criminal trial.
Kate the problem with labeling the Conservative party a centre left party is the fact that the term centre has no meaning outside of the society to which you are referring.
By your logic the U.S. Democratic party is a right wing party, a position I actually agree with, but only when considered in relation to Western democratic society as a whole. There can be no doubt that the Democrats are on the left of the U.S. political spectrum, the same as the Conservatives are on the right of the Canadian political spectrum.
The fact that the Conservatives do not offer an ideologically pure form of laizzez-faire capitalism combined with government regulation of private lives (Devil’s Dictionary definition) is simply a reflection of the fact that the vast majority of Canadians do not support this platform. The platform they do advocate is to the right of the Canadian political spectrum, further to the right then the old PC’s and I believe to far to the right to ever have a chance of forming a majority government.