Canada needs democratic renewal. Recent events in Ottawa highlight what has existed since Confederation. That Parliament’s virtual stalemate passed for progressive, democratic change demonstrates the need for serious reform.
Canada today is a vast, multicultural, multilingual society. Like many developed countries, it is increasingly urban but maintains a strong rural, agricultural base. Its culture is the result of a unique and highly successful fusion of First Nations and British and French colonialist traditions, making it one of the most diverse societies in the world.
And yet Canadian politics are as fractured as ever, perhaps for these reasons. The 40th Parliament is a collection of regional parties, elected by the lowest voter turnout in national history (59 per cent); its governing party, the Harper Conservatives, received only 37 per cent of the popular vote. The Conservative Party’s share of the popular vote was just over one per cent higher than the previous election, but it managed to gain 19 seats and weaken the Liberal opposition considerably. The popular vote shows that the Harper government’s expanded mandate had little to do with the upswing in support. Rather, it was the result of a relatively minor shift among certain regions of the electorate disappointed by one of the weakest Liberal campaigns in recent history, compounded by an atrocious voter turnout.
The Conservatives dominated the Western provinces and rural parts of Ontario and the Maritimes; the Liberals and New Democrats maintained their traditional holds in Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, and other urban areas (the NDP also made gains in the north). Though there were minor anomalies in regional trends, like the surprise NDP victory in Outremont, nothing much changed between this and previous elections. A virtual two-party system exists in Canada: Liberal and Conservative governments exchange power roughly every decade, while minority and majority governments are elected largely due to regional strongholds.
We can’t ignore the implications of this political stalemate. The Conservative budget, unveiled last week, was a hodgepodge document, so counterintuitive to Tory ideology that it risked alienating its own support base (one commentator nicknamed the Prime Minister “Harpo-Marx”). In all likelihood, the Harper government will last only a short time, offset by a Liberal Party reinvigorated by a popular new leader. The next election will likely produce a Liberal government, but what then?
The new government will likely be elected regionally: Quebec, for instance, has seen an upsurge of Liberal support due to the Prime Minister’s criticism of the Bloc in the wake of the Liberal-NDP Coalition agreement. Once again, this multifaceted society will be governed by a Parliament comprising a mishmash of regional interests, a diverse patchwork of MPs squabbling over equalization payments and status details. None of the parties will govern with a national mandate. Splintered provincial issues will continue to dominate Canadian politics.
If there is hope, it lies in electoral reform. Strategic voting and voter apathy are widespread under the current system. Many citizens cast their votes based on the “lesser-of-two-evils” principle, especially those who support third parties: simply put, it’s pointless to vote NDP in Calgary-Southwest, just as it’s pointless to vote for the Conservatives in Hamilton Centre. The only way to justify principled voting is the funding each party receives for its share of the popular vote—and to most of the electorate, this is a negligible sum. A better electoral system would balance Canada’s regional differences, ensuring a more proportional distribution of seats in Parliament. The Mixed-Member Proportional system voted on in the last Ontario Provincial election would give each member of the electorate two votes: one for their preferred local candidate, and one for their preferred governing party. Though referendums on such reforms have been struck down in Ontario, British Columbia, and other provinces, there has yet to be a serious public discussion of their implementation at the Federal level.
Hopefully Canada’s next governing party, whether Conservative, Liberal, or New Democrat, will attempt to address problems of regionalism in this country and the grave threat they pose to Canadian unity and the integrity of national democracy.
