Horizon

Good grief. That's like expecting Yo Yo Ma to explain nuclear physics...

Hoo-kay. Let's start with identifying the main players in our little drama:

Conservative Party: Formerly the Progressive Conservative Party, a very popular party until Brian Mulroney rode two governments into increasing unpopularity, got off the ship before it sank and left it to Kim Campbell to run an election where it lost all but two seats in Parliament. Traditionally, it's been conservative but with some progressive tendencies socially (in fact, if you look at them in the 1960s and 1970s, they were probably closer to most Democrat regimes in the US). This past winter it merged with the Canadian Alliance Party, a bunch of neo-cons from Western Canada who are looking for their big break East of Manitoba. This has left left-leaning ("Red") Tories out in the cold. It's led by Stephen Harper, whose past resume includes work with the extremely conservative National Citizens Coalition.

Liberal Party: Centrist party that has been in power for the majority of the past century. It tends to the right fiscally, but sways either way on most other policies. Over the past year, the Prime Minister, Jean Chretien was forced out by his successor, Paul Martin. Chretien, on his way out did some fantastic legacy-building
stuff, like not standing in the way of court decisions on same-sex marriage, saying no to going to war in Iraq and a bunch of other stuff that leads me to believe that more governing should be done by septagenarians leaving politics.

At the same time, ministers within the Liberal government were embroiled in a scandal where people in crown corporations got kickbacks off of sponsorships the Federal Government made at various events. Paul Martin, who was Finance Minister most of the time, was surprisingly unaware of such things. And over 12 years Chretien was no stranger to the words 'scandal' and 'money' as well...all of which leads to a sort of mixed message to voters.

New Democratic Party (NDP): The traditional democratic socialist party, the guys who brought universal health care to Canada. Back from almost 15 years in the wilderness of lukewarm ineffective leaders and rhetoric that had lost touch with the populace thanks to a populist leader named Jack Layton (who unfortunately has a 70s porn-star moustache). The NDP stood the most to gain from this election.

Bloc Quebecois: A regional party only in the province of Quebec. One of its platforms is separation from Canada. It's popularity in
Quebec, though, may also be because their social (left-of-centre) and economic (right-of-centre) policies are actually well-liked.

Okay. Got a hold of the players? Good. Here's what went down...

Bear in mind, that Canadian Parliamentary democracy is like British Parliamentary democracy-- it's a first past the post electoral system of voting for people in ridings, and the party with the most seats gets to rule.

Here's how it broke down last night:

Liberal Party 135 seats (4,955,050 votes /36.7% of popular vote - not that either of these stats matter for anything other than debate)
Conservative Party 99 seats (3,996,835 votes / 29.6%)
Bloc Québécois 54 seats (1,673,303 / 12.4%)
New Democratic Party 19 seats (2,117,889 15.7%)
No affiliation 1 seat (17,466 0.1%)
Green Party 0 seats (581,020 4.3%)

The result is a minority government for the Liberals. And a situation in which it is going to be very interesting to see the manuevring over the next while.

In order for any legislation to get through, the Liberals are going to have to ally with the NDP and even then they don't have a total majority, so governing over the next while is going to happen on a piece-by-piece basis, getting agreement from the other parties. We could be going back to the polls pretty much anytime in the next few months (my friends put it to 15 months at the most, 6 months at the least).

In terms of who gained and who lost: The Liberals went from a three-term majority to a minority, so they lost big. But the Conservatives possibly lost even more. Even as a merged party they completely failed to get confidence from voters east of Manitoba. They're still viewed as the Canadian Alliance Party and an extreme bunch of neo-cons. They may well govern yet, but hopefully with a more moderate leader, since the Alliance types tended to eat their fallen leaders alive and I suspect this will be the case with Stephen Harper.

The NDP made huge in-roads this election, doubling its size, and becoming very important in the new order. But they didn't quite make as big an inroad as they probably should have.

The Bloc remains resolutely in power in Quebec, which may speak more of the Liberals disastrous performance than future regarding Quebec sovereignty.

And the Greens didn't win but managed to get 500,000 votes, which is huge.

All in all an interesting night, and interesting times we'll be facing. I'm really thrilled that the NDP has suddenly come alive after years of dormancy. Otherwise, it's more of the same.

Posted by: Graeme Burk at June 29, 2004 01:02 PM

Thanks very much for this. (But can you play the cello for us...?) That does explain it all a lot better.

Is this likely to affect Canada's role in the war, then?

Posted by: Martha Bridegam at June 29, 2004 02:36 PM

Given that the Liberal's anti-Conservative ads contained the line: "If Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, he'd have sent troops to Iraq", I doubt it highly. Most Canadians are against the war, and high percentage of people polled last winter by our national newsmagazine (something like 70%) disliked the Bush administration.

Posted by: Graeme Burk at June 30, 2004 05:48 PM