Thoughts from Canadian Readers on the Election Results? (Leiter)

A news item about the election is here.  Comments are open; they may take awhile to appear.  I'd be interested in your thoughts on what it signifies (if anything) and what the future may hold.  Non-anonymous comments will be very strongly preferred.

Comments

[Tom Hurka]

I wouldn't exaggerate how far Canada has "swung to the right."

1. The current Conservative party, though descended from the more radically right-wing Reform Party of the 1990s, is much more moderate. They had to become so in order to win the election. For example, the social conservatives in the party were pretty much muzzled during the campaign. The leadership knows those guys are vote-losers and will keep them quiet. The party has also committed itself to maintaining the current medicare system. Even slight hints that they might not do so cost them badly in previous elections. They will be more conservative than the Liberals, but not much.

2. The Conservative government won't have a majority in Parliament -- not even close (125 seats when they need 155). To get legislation through the House of Commons they'll need the support of one or more of the other parties, all of which are to the left of them.

3. The Liberal Party did much better than the polls were predicting: 103 seats. If that's how well they do after corruption scandals, a gaffe-filled campaign, and a long time (13 years) in office, they're still a powerful force, still very much the "natural governing party." The prize of the Liberal leadership, which would not have been very attractive had they won, say 65 seats, is very attractive now. There will be a serious race with serious candidates and a re-invigorated party should emerge from it. (Michael Ignatieff is talked about as a candidate. But the lesson of Paul Martin's failed Prime Ministership is that there's no substitute for political judgement, which his predecessor Jean Chretien had in spades but Martin hadn't picked up in 17 years in politics. Why should the Liberals believe Ignatieff has any given his zero years in politics?)

4. More generally, there are two possibilities. One is that the Conservatives govern from the right -- in which case they won't last long in government. The other is that they govern more from the centre -- in which case they won't be so much of a change from the Liberals. Either way, looking at it long-term, the "swing to the right" will not be large.

[Colin Farrelly]

You win some, you lose some...

I guess Canadians wanted change, and thankfully the change was only a minority for the Conservatives (some thought a majority was possible going into the final days of campaigning). I agree with Tom Hurka’s assessment of the strength of the Liberal party. They fared much better than expected and will no doubt re-build the party and come back stronger. Stephen Harper (the Conservative leader) has a formidable challenge ahead, given the strength of his adversaries. He will have to either make serious compromises or Parliament will be toppled again a year or two down the road. I suspect the former will occur and then the public can blame him for not making good on his promises! (what goes around comes around!)

So while I has disheartened by the election outcome, the great thing about democracy is that one lives to fight another day. And I believe this small victory for the Conservatives does not mean that Canadians have made a serious shift to the right.

[Brendan]

What is interesting is how the numbers broke down for seat in the house of commons: even assuming that the Conservatives joined with the New Democractic Party (which the leaders of both parties have suggested is possible, since they do have some common ground even though the NDP is very much a leftist party) that would not give them the majority of the vote in the house.
There are 308 seats in the house. Conservatives have 124 (not 125) and the NDP have 29. That gives them 153 were they both to vote along party lines. The Liberals have 103 and the Bloc Quebecois has 51, which gives them an edge of one vote were they to vote along party against the Conservatives and NDP. There is also one independent, who might have an interesting role to play were a vote of no confidence to be taken.
Of course, if either the Liberals or Bloc paired with the Conservatives on a vote they would easily have the majority of the votes. How likely (and often) that is to happen, however, I am not sure.
All this is just to point out how divide the seats are in the house, and anything brought before the house of commons is going to have to have a lot of bipartisan support.

[Matthew King]

I think everyone underestimated the volatility of Quebec voters. The Conservatives had been polling under 10% in Quebec for the last decade; I don't think anyone gave them a realistic shot of winning seats in Quebec in this election, and I expected Harper to avoid campaigning in Quebec for fear of splitting the anti-Liberal vote. (The first "gaffe" of the campaign--and maybe the only significant one from the Conservatives--was Harper apparently not knowing the names of the Quebec candidates he was supposed to be introducing.)

Instead, they shot out of nowhere in the last three weeks to capture more of the Quebec vote than the Liberals, and almost as many seats (13-10). If this isn't just a flash in the pan, and if it indicates that Quebec soft nationalists are returning to the Conservatives, it could be the last piece put back into the old Mulroney PC jigsaw puzzle--ah, the ironies of history, an original Reformer reassembling the Mulroney coalition--and it could be the end of the Bloc Quebecois. (If the NDP could ever catch some of the fragments from the left of a disintegrating Bloc, it might finally achieve the breakthrough in Quebec that would make it a real national player.)

As for the Liberal leadership, I don't think Ignatieff is a real contender; apart from his war-related baggage, inexperience, and lack of connections in the party (though that could be a plus, in some ways, right now), he's simply not likeable enough.

One thing that's really interesting about the leadership race again relates to Quebec: not a single one of the usual suspects (Ignatieff, John Manley, Bob Rae, Brian Tobin, Frank McKenna (the current ambassador to the US and the current heavy favourite)) is from Quebec. I'd venture that this is the first time that has been the case since the 19th century, and if I were a Liberal, I'd take it to be a very worrisome sign.

And as for what the election result means for Canada: the natural effect of a Conservative-Bloc controlled House of Commons would be an acceleration of the decentralization of the Canadian federation. So much of that has already been going on under Martin, though, that the difference may not be that noticeable. (And it appears to have been made inevitable once the Mulroney contitutional negotiations brought the premiers together to gang up on the feds.)

Finally, it should be noted that the Conservatives did not win a single seat in Canada's three biggest cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) or in the biggest city in Atlantic Canada (Halifax). The urban-suburban-rural splits on the popular vote should be quite striking.

[Jason D'Cruz]

I think many Canadian expats living stateside felt two distinctly unpleasant emotions on learning of the Conservative victory: distress, and even worse, embarrassment. But I agree with all of Tom Hurka's comments above. I think that a thin Conservative minority is too precarious to do serious damage on major issues (same-sex marriage, Kyoto, abortion, stem cell research). They might still do some ugly things, like shift government funding from public transit to "highways and borders".

There was an interesting urban vs. rural/suburban split in the vote. The Conservatives were completely shut out of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver and garnered all of their support from smaller centers, rural areas, suburbs and ex-urbs. It seems that suburban sprawl is as deleterious for political consciousness as it is for the environment.

[Matt]

Extensive, suitably philosophic coverage at Long Sunday.

[Mohan Matthen]

The Conservative Party, which has just been elected to a minority government, contains many Members of Parliament of distinctly regressive views. However, there is very little reason to fear US-style consequences. Here's why.

1. The Prime Minister designate, Stephen Harper, has promised a free vote (i.e., one not subject to party discipline) in the House of Commons about whether the government should bring forward a bill about gay marriage. There is no reason to think that this will have any effect at all. In the first place, it will easily be defeated: the Commons is still dominated by progressive legislators. Secondly, Harper himself has pledged that he will not over-ride the Charter of Rights on this issue. (The Canadian Constitution permits an over-ride, which must be renewed every five years.) The Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled that gay marriage cannot be banned. So the likely effect of the free vote will be to defuse the issue by allowing social conservatives to vote.

Very much the same thing happened twenty years ago when the then Conservative government brought forward a free vote on the death penalty. The penalty was defeated, with many conservatives voting against it. The issue was already dead in Canadian society, and if an Aristotle scholar can say this, it is even deader today. Nobody raises the issue, even with gun-crime on the rise in cities like Toronto.

2. Some speculate that abortion rights might be curtailed under a Conservative government. I can't see that there is much danger of this. Harper has actually promised to try and prevent any private member bills on this arising in the Commons.

3. Financially and economically, there will be very little change in the course of the Government's policy. There will be some adjustments -- a cut in the sales tax instead of a cut in the income tax, a tax credit for children under six years old instead of subsidized day care. But these are, for the most part, details.

4. There is a strong prospect of legislature that will devolve some federal powers to the provinces, and this may lessen the threat of separation. This is, of course, a good thing. It is worth remembering that the last constructive move made on this front was made by a Conservative government, and defeated by some mad-dog federalists in the Liberal Party, former Prime Minister Trudeau at their head.

Two things I do worry about are the environment -- Harper is heavily obligated to the energy industry, and may ditch Kyoto -- and the slowing of initiatives to address the plight of Canada's aboriginal peoples.

Another thing to worry about is funding for Canada's public universities (i.e., all of them). As head of the National Citizen's Coalition, Harper was strongly opposed, and though public opinion now strongly supports education-spending, he and it may still be hostile to the humanities. I would not look for increases to the budget of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and for that matter I would expect the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the National Film Board, and other cultural agencies to take some bad hits. Very bad thing for philosophers, but maybe we can go back to the Liberals when they have flushed out some of the crooks that have been running the party in recent years.

Mohan Matthen

[Martin Martens]

Tom Hurka has a pretty dead-on analysis of the situation regarding the results of the election. It isn't much of a swing to the right.

One item he did not discuss is what happened in Quebec. The Conservatives picked up ten seats in Quebec (compared to none in 2004) by mostly defeating Bloc Candidates. In those ten seats, the Conservatives pushed out Bloc Candidates in nine and a Liberal in one. The increase in support for the Conservatives in Quebec is a huge defeat for the separatist Bloc. They were expecting to 65-70 seats and more than 50% of the vote. Ending up with fewer seats and a 6.5% decrease in popular support in Quebec is a strong repudiation of the separatism.

[Tom Hurka]

1. There surely will be Quebecois candidates for the Liberal leadership, e.g. Martin Cauchon. Stephane Dion is an intriguing possibility: very smart, an effective debater, and with political successes to his credit, e.g. his letter-writing campaign to sovereignists and the Clarity Act. But he's probably too federalist (in fact, way too federalist)to be acceptable in Quebec. Pity.

2. Mohan simplifies a little the Mulroney free vote on capital punishment. Before the vote a lot of people thought it would favour reinstatement, given the huge Conservative majority in the House. But the vote went the other way because so many of the new and unknown Quebec Conservatives opposed reinstatement. That was an early indication of how on social issues Quebec may be the most liberal part of the country.

3. I don't know about university and research funding: it's part of a "productivity" package the Conservatives might like. (It was Mulroney who first set up the Networks of Centres of Excellence that are the model for so much current research funding.) And how could they not like the CBC given the overwhelmingly favourable coverage they got during the campaign? An "At Issue" panel with only Chantal Hebert and Andrew Coyne -- could you get more anti-Liberal than that? But Mohan's probably right: the Conservatives will ignore all that and cut CBC and arts funding. Wait for the wailing to start in "deepest Annex."

[Mark]

I noticed:
"There will be some adjustments -- a cut in the sales tax instead of a cut in the income tax," in the list of changes that will happen under a conservative government.
This may be my American ignorance, but sales tax being a flat rate, it, at least down here, quite regressive, even compared to our rather sickening income tax structure. Its not clear why this would be a conservative move. In my home state of Ohio, we usually see income tax decreases accompanied by a slew of increases in our other taxes - sales, property, etc., which usually worsen the blow already taken by lower financial strata and poorer schools. Some conservative tax critics in the states have lobbied for abolishing income tax and having only "consumption" tax. I'd be interested to know why Conservatives in Canada are going the opposite direction from American conservatives on taxation.

[Toby]

Other comments have already indicated this, but it's worth making explicit: American readers should keep in mind that the meanings of terms like "left", "right", and "centre" vary quite substantially between Canada and the US. With respect to contentious issues in American politics (abortion, sexuality, death penalty, healthcare, the war), the Canadian political centre is probably somewhere in the vicinity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in America.

A "swing to the right" (which, as pointed out, didn't really happen) would not have meant anything like a Republican-style government in Canada (although the Liberals tried to use that notion as a campaign tool against the Conservatives).

[Ravi Malhotra]

As one of the 100+ law profs who signed the recent gay marriage statement in an open letter to then Opposition Leader Harper, I am not so sure I am convinced by Mohan's analysis on that issue. Didn't plenty of Blue Grits (right wing Liberals) vote against gay marriage? Doesn't this mean gays and lesbians will have to relitigate the issue for years to come? Opposition to gay marriage defies all logic, especially in a country where I hardly know any (non-ethnic) heterosexuals under 30 who actually get legally married.

[Steve McKay]

Martin Martens interprets the results of the conservatives in Quebec as "a strong repudiation of separatism." I think this is inaccurate. In the past, a substantial number of Bloc Quebecois voters were not separatists, but "soft nationalists" who wanted to "send a message" to the Liberals. (At the time, the Conservatives were dead in the water in Quebec and they could not be used to send a message to the Liberals.) If we analyze the ridings that voted Conservative in Quebec, we notice a few things. The ridings are all around Quebec City. These ridings have been voting ADQ, a right wing party similar to the Conservative Party, for the last few elections. In the 1995 referendum, these ridings voted against separation. So, the separatist movement did not lose votes in this election. Most surveys show that the separation is still supported by roughly 40-50% of Quebec population. Nothing changed yesterday.

My greatest fear with this Conservative government is that it will gain wider support by means of tax cuts and other populist measures, call a snap election, and get the majority of the house against a weakened Liberal Party.

For those of us who are separatists, a Conservative government can be seen as a blessing in disguise. Indeed, people in Quebec being more to the left could decide to leave Canada if the central government is too much to the right.

Tom Hurka is correct when he says that Stephane Dion would have no chance in Quebec. His condescending comments over the years towards people of Quebec have completely destroyed is political capital among separatists and even some federalists.

[Mohan Matthen]

A quick response to Mark: since a sales tax hits everyone, it is regressive. It follows that a cut to a sales tax is progressive. So the Conservative proposal isn't necessarily conservative. (We've talked in Canada for a while about big-C and small-c conservative. Some details though: the Goods and Services Tax doesn't apply to food and some other goods that poor people spend a larger proportion of their income on. So the amount they will save is moot. On the other hand, the cut in the income tax is a percentage on the "lowest" income bracket: but of course the very lowest bracket pays zero, so again, how do the poorest benefit? The fact is that both cuts are very small and the difference between them even smaller.

A quick response to Ravi Malhotra: yes, some legislators from the Liberals would vote against gay marriage, but look, the majority of the Commons will support gay marriage, the Senate will, and the Supreme Court has already ruled on the matter. So really, there isn't a danger on that front. And if it wasn't already clear: I agree that revoking gay marriage "defies all logic". Sometimes a logical conclusion is affirmed by an illogical process.

Let me confess. One of my daughters, worried about restrictions on abortion said: Dad, if you vote Conservative, I hope one of your daughters gets pregnant and you have to look after the baby. Fair point, but as a Bayesian, I don't feel I need to worry about this. For at least two reasons.

As for Tom: I agree that higher education is part of a productivity package, and now (thanks to Paul Martin) very popular, including among the Conservatives. But there may still be cuts to the social sciences and humanities. Isn't this sort of imbalance what happened in Australia?

[Martin Martens]

Steve MacKay is correct in that Harper's Conservatives could be a blessing in disguise for separatism. If Harper repeats the mistakes or dredges up the ghosts of Mulroney, the separatist cause will improve.

But M. MacKay is wrong if he thinks that it isn't a repudiation of Separatism. Duceppe had the conditions to capture 54% of the Quebec vote and 65 seats. He musing about the meaning of a vote above 50% was one of the causes of the decline.

A significant percentage of the Bloc vote is still made up of soft nationalists. In many, if not most, of the seats where the Bloc defeated Liberal incumbants, the difference was the soft nationalists who wanted to punish the Liberals.

Now that they feel that the Liberals were punished, those seats will most likely revert back to Liberal in the next election. As long as Harper does not turn out to be the evil spawn of Satan that Martin and Duceppe tried to make him out to be, the Conservatives will retain and even gain seats in the next election. The Bloc is back to where it was before the sponsorship scandal, on the verge of being wiped out.

The separatists have another problem with Boisclair. The separatists in the rural areas are quite socially conservative in that they won't like the idea of a coke-sniffing gay as the leader of Quebec. Boisclair is also wrong that the expectations for Harper are high. The expectations are quite low because Duceppe and Martin demonised him. As long as Harper leaves Bill 101 alone (which he will), and as long as Harper works with Charest to give more autonomy to Quebec, Harper will come out ahead in the next election.

The fact remains, true separatism is not supported by more than 35% of Quebec.

[Keith Douglas]

Martin is certainly right about support for separation in Quebec. Support for the BQ and the PQ is not the same as support for separatism. Similarly, support for the Conservatives amongst some Quebecers does not indicate they actually agree with Harper's views. In both cases there is a lot of "punishment voting".

Speaking of Harper's views, the most alarming thing about him is the articles in Walrus about him being handled by Straussians. (Yes, those guys.) Apparently, there are some in the University of Calgary's political science department.

I am glad that it is only a minority government, because it will leash the C's. I even had a friend who thought a temporary C minority government might be useful to allow them to implode after showing their true colours.

American readers can note that a lot of the C platform would about as far right as the federal Democrats.

[Gareth Morley]

I generally agree with the "less here than meets the eye" points that have been made. But a big qualifier: Stephen Harper is the first Canadian Conservative PM ever to have ever been a serious student of right-wing thought in the sense it would be understood in the United States. When he was in his twenties, he devoured Hayek, Buchanan and all the rest. There are a number of conservative academics at the University of Calgary, and he is close to them.

On gay marriage, it isn't actually true that the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that it is required by the Constitution. Lower courts have held the common law definition of marriage to be unconstitutional, but Canadian courts give more deference to enacted laws than to common law on the sensible basis that the common law has no particular democratic legitimacy. Moreover, under the common law, gay and lesbian couples were denied legal rights of married couples, but under Harper's proposal there will be civil unions with the same legal rights but without the word "marriage". It isn't clear to me that the Supreme Court would necessarily invalidate that.

Finally, in some ways it was Martin and the Liberals who copied what I think of as the worst aspects of Bushian Republicanism. It was Martin who equated being Canadian with a particular ideological stance, quite contrary to our traditions which has always been to ridicule the idea of unamerican americans. Martin ran a ludicrous negative campaign, at one point hinting that Harper would launch a military coup if elected, and was properly punished for it.

[praymont]

Doesn't this spell the end of the current health-care system in Canada? Harper wants a two-tier system, and this is one issue where he and the Bloc will likely agree on a plan to speed up this change, without nearly as much concern as the NDP and left-of-centre Liberals had for improving the quality of the public system.

[Martin Martens]

As a follow-up: A new CROP poll for the La Presse newspaper showed only 34 percent of Quebecers would vote "yes" in a referendum on whether to split from the rest of Canada, down steeply from 43 percent before the election. The number who would vote "no" rose to 58 percent from 49 percent.

[Safiyyah]

Harper's going to play it safe for a while, particularly since he didn't get as many seats as had been anticipated. But there are already changes - particularly in the introduction of a package of ethics legislation, the new spending for the military, and the movement towards further decentralization (and thus more power handed to the provinces).

I think even for those who might not have approved of the ideas put forth by the Conservative party, there was a real desire for change and a sense that if voters did not hold the governing party to account for the corruption and mismanagement over the past few years, they would be undermining the democratic underpinnings of the Canadian political system. The Liberals had really overstayed their welcome, and they were booted out - with former Prime Minister Paul Martin the first to go come election time.