Although this is a site about American politics, we have had a number of discussion threads on the election here in the Great White North, and hopefully some dual-citizen, transplanted Americans, Canadians who are as interested in US politics as our own (like me), and just interested American Kossaks will be interested in chatting talking and learning about our upcoming elections, which are tomorrow, the 14th of October. Follow me below the fold, where a somewhat long journey awaits.
Before I begin, a caveat that while I am a big political observer, I am more of a poll-analyzer and horse-race tracker than a real issues wonk or history buff, so I definitely may make errors or mis-characterizations, so please comment if you notice anything. Also, I will try to answer questions that anyone might have. In this diary, I will focus mostly on introducing the parties and their basic platforms. If people are interested, I can have another one tomorrow on this race in particular with some of my own observations and predictions. I will admit that I am a Liberal supporter, and while I have tried to be neutral, this may come through in some places, so forgive me if it does. If something is not clear, or I haven't explain something well enough, please ask in the comments, as I'll try to hang around for a while.
If you're someone who already knows the parties and leaders pretty well, I'm afraid you won't find too much unique or really in-depth in this diary, but scroll down and hang around to chat anyways!
A brief primer on the system
For those unfamiliar with Canadian politics and elections, we a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, meaning that, like Britain, Australia and Spain, there is no direct election of a Prime Minister, but rather the Prime Minister is typically the leader of the party that obtains the most seats in Parliament. This means that only a handful of Canadians will actually vote for the future PM himself, with most voting for local representatives, just as only a few Americans will be able to vote for Speaker of the House Pelosi.
Canada has 308 electoral districts, typically known as ‘ridings’, spread throughout the country. These are roughly assigned based on population, but there are several other rules as well, ensuring that no province has less members of the House than Senators (Senators are unelected, and appointed based on region), and that no province has a larger drop than 15% during any given redistricting.
These districts are much cleaner than American House districts, as a system using an independent provincial commission, combined with citizen input, prevent ‘gerrymandering’, though there are obviously still areas that strongly support only a single party. Ridings are not numbered as American ones are, but are named, generally for geography (ex. Calgary Centre, Madawaska-Restigouche, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière), though some in Quebec are named for historical figures.
In each district, the First-past-the-post (FPTP) system is used, meaning that a simple plurality is sufficient to earn election. This means it is not uncommon in close ridings for a candidate to win with less than 40% of the vote. Both voting and vote-counting are done by hand, no voting machines here, and unlike in America, there is no need to pre-register. Most voters are registered through the National Register, which shares information with Canada Post, Citizenship and Immigration and Revenue Canada (the Canadian IRS). If you’re not registered, just bring proof of address to your polling station and you can be on-the-spot. By-hand voting is possible because there is only one race at each poll unlike the quite complex, relatively, American system.
The Parties 19 political parties are registered with Elections Canada, but only five have any serious presence on the national stage, and two of these come with strong caveats. Conservative Party Leader: Stephen Harper, Calgary Southwest 2006 election: 124 seats, 36.27% At dissolution of Parliament: 127 seats
The current ruling party is only fully making its return to the national stage in the past five years, after spending a decade lost in the wilderness. After aborted constitutional reform in the late 80s, the Conservatives, who had earned Canada’s largest ever majority in 1984 as the Progressive Conservatives, were shattered into three parties, the Western based Reform party, the Quebec separatist Bloc Québécois, and the traditional PC party, which was reduced to just 2 seats in 1993. Both the Reform and the Bloc were at one point the main Opposition in mid-90s Liberal majorities.
The Reform party attempted to reform itself into a national party in the later 90s, rebranding itself as the Canadian Alliance and achieving Official Opposition status again, then returning as the Conservative party by merging with the still-extant Progressive Conservative party, despite the assurances of the PC party leader that no merger would happen under his watch.
Harper has governed from a reasonable right-centre position on a number of issues, but I personally do not like the Rovian-style strategy and the Bush style-hierarchy he has built around himself. in addition, his party still remains to me and many on the left as built around the Reform base, which is significantly more right-of-centre than the current incarnation purports to be.
Liberal Party Leader: Stéphane Dion, Saint-Laurent – Cartierville 2006 election: 103 seats, 30.23% At dissolution of Parliament: 95 seats
The main centrist party of Canada, the Liberals are generally considering the ‘natural ruling party’ of the country. Since 1896, every non-interim Liberal leader in the party’s history, excepting the current leader, Mr. Dion, has become Prime Minister at some point. The Liberals are responsible for a number of what are now considered Canadian hallmarks, including Universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, multiculturalism and bilingualism.
In the 90s, the split right allowed Jean Chrétien to lead the party to three consecutive majorities, primarily due to the fact that the development of regional parties meant that there was no serious challenge to the Liberals in Ontario. Despite having a seemingly poor command of spoken English, Chrétien was able to win, on average, 100 seats from Ontario, more than the party holds today in the entire country.
Still, as with any party which is so often in Government, it has more than its fair share of scandals and broken promises, and the unification of the right in the new Conservative party, combined with a bitter rift in the party over the transition of leadership between Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, held Martin to a minority in 2004, and a scandal involving improper payments to ad firms that employed or supported Liberal party members, allowed Harper to sweep into power in 2006.
The battles within the party continued to rage as Martin stepped down to be replaced by a new leader. After a bitterly divided convention, Stéphane Dion, who came into the convention in fourth place, emerged as the leader, helped by the support of former Ontario education minister Gerard Kennedy. Dion was considered a compromise choice, and was not considered a strong election contender given his poor command of spoken English and the fact that his popularity was quite low in Quebec. This was due to the Clarity Act, which established that a province wishing to secede from the country would require a clear majority on a clear question, widely viewed in Quebec as an attempt to limit their ability to choose on their own. New Democratic Party Leader: Jack Layton, Toronto – Danforth 2006 election: 29 seats, 17.48% At dissolution of Parliament: 30 seats
The New Democrats are a social democratic party, and is generally considered on the left to centre-left. It was born in the 50s out of two separate parties, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), a labour body with around 3 million members, and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) a socialist and farmers party primarily based in farming areas. While the Liberals are technically credited with passing universal health care, it was first done provincially in Saskatchewan by the CCF, under North America’s first socialist government, led by Tommy Douglas.
As the Liberals are also generally considered a centre-left party, vote-splitting, in which most voters in a riding select one of the two parties, but a Conservative candidate wins with a plurality, is a constant concern for members of both parties. In the late 80s, as the Liberals began to fall and the Mulroney Conservatives rose, the NDP was surging as well, with polling suggesting that they could push the Liberals into obscurity. Obviously this did not occur, and they were in fact decimated, just as the PC party was, in the 1993 election, losing more than 30 seats and 14% of the vote.
Since then they have struggled to regain a foothold, but under Jack Layton, things have turned very positively. Layton is fairly popular, and polls have suggested that he could easily reach or top the party’s high water marks. Still, vote-splitting and strategic voting remains as serious concerns for the NDP. In 2004, they lost around 2% of their vote to the Liberals in the closing days, turning a nail-biter into a fairly safe Liberal minority. Bloc Québécois Leader: Gilles Duceppe, Laurie – Sainte-Marie 2006 election: 51 seats, 10.48% (42.1% in Quebec) At dissolution of Parliament: 48 seats
After the aforementioned failure of a PC party constitutional amendment that would give Quebec distinct status and powers, the movement for Quebec separation grew quite strong in the province, and was reflected by a number of Liberal and PC members from Quebec who favoured separation gathering together as the Bloc. In 1993, the destruction of the right meant that the Bloc, in their first national election, became Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, a rather absurd idea for a party devoted to breaking the country apart.
After the failure of the 1995 Quebec referendum on a new economic agreement between Quebec and Canada, the Bloc began to fall off in the province, dropping below 40 seats and 40%, and losing the province to the Liberals in 2000. However, the Liberal sponsorship scandal, which was focused in Quebec, allowed them to regain momentum, and in both 2004 and 2006 they finished with more than 50 seats in the province. However, in 2006 a new federalist opponent emerged, as the Conservatives won seats in Quebec for the first time since the 1993 collapse. The Harper government set out to actively woo Quebec voters in hopes of setting themselves up for a majority, and with sovereignty moved to the back burner in the province, in the run-up to the 2008 election, the Bloc faced questions about whether they deserved to exist. Green Party Leader: Elizabeth May, no seat – running in Central Nova 2006 election: 0 seats, 4.48% At dissolution of Parliament: 1 seats
As in many countries, a separate Green movement devoted primarily to reforming environmental regulations in Canada has gained significant steam in recent years. In 2000, the party gained less than 1% of the vote, but under Jim Harris they topped 4 % in back-to-back years. While they do have a sitting MP, he is a party-switcher who left the Liberal party after being accused of campaign finance cheating, though he was later cleared. No Green candidate has been elected to Parliament, either in a general or a by-election (special election in the US).
The party’s leader, Elizabeth May, does not hold a seat in Parliament, but had the highest finish in Green party history when she earned 26% of the vote and finished second in a 2006 by-election. The greens made further splashes by finishing third, ahead of at least one major party member in 2008 by-elections, though it must be noted that by-elections are known for very low turnout and often used as a ‘protest vote’. The Green’s have reached higher levels of support in 2008 polls than they have ever had, sitting above 10% in some polls, and universally at or above 6%. This was buoyed by the inclusion of Elizabeth May in both debates, allowing a higher-profile for both her and her party.
Platforms and Issues I will attempt to give a brief summary of the parties positions on a handful of interesting issues, with most of the details culled from CBC and the Globe and Mail’s platform summaries.
Environment: Conservative – The Cons withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, and propose cutting emissions in an intensity-based calculation based on 2006 levels. Liberal – Dion has hung his hat on what is termed the Green Shift, a change in tax policy that cuts income and business taxes, and replaces them with an increased tax on carbon-producing activities. They tout it as ‘revenue-neutral’, but whether this can be achieved is a serious question. NDP – The NDP propose to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% over the next 40 years, using the 1990 numbers as the baseline. They support a cap-and-trade system, allowing companies to sell unused carbon credits to companies that maintain lower emissions Bloc – The BQ supports remaining in Kyoto, with a market system based in each province, and benefits for provinces that outperform the national average (such as Quebec) Green – The Green Party propose a similar tax shift to the Liberals, but combined with a cap-and trade system, and with a higher ultimate level of tax burden on carbon.
Economy: Obviously the economy has been a central issue, but no party has released any serious plan to deal with the recent credit crisis, as much of the campaigning has been on ‘confidence’ and ‘empathy’ than serious discussion of the issues. Conservative – The CPC support a tax credit for first-time homebuyers and maintaining proposed cuts in the level of business tax. Liberal – The Grits offer incentives for energy efficiency, and support speeding up both income and corporate tax cuts as part of the ‘Green Shift’. They would cut the Conservatives tax on income trusts by 20%. NDP – The NDP would crack down on bank fees passed on to customers and cancel the Conservative’s business tax cuts. They would maintain the income trust tax. Bloc – The Bloc are focused on significant investment in the manufacturing industry, especially the lagging forestry industry in Quebec. Green – The Greens would increase the national sales tax to 6%, and focus on investing in ‘green’ industries.
The Afghanistan mission: Conservative – The Conservatives originally opposed any timeline for the end of the mission, but has since agreed to a 2011 end-date. Liberal – The Liberals originally supported a 2009 withdrawal, but co-operated with the Conservatives to pass the 2011 bill. Bloc, NDP, Green – While there are some differences between the approaches, all three parties support Canada stopping its participation in the combat side of the mission by February 2009.
Health Care: This is an odd issue, as Health Care is provincially regulated, but there are some overarching federal guide-lines. This has not been a major issue in the campaign, despite the fact that Canadians rank it as the second most important issue in polls. The Conservatives are generally considered to favour an eventual shift towards more private health care, though they have not proposed anything along those lines in this election. The main issue in this area is the support of the NDP for universal prescription drug coverage and the Liberal support for a catastrophic drug plan for people with chronic illnesses.
Crime: Conservative – The CPC support replacing the Youth Criminal Justice Act, allowing the publishing of the names of young violent offenders, along with toughening sentences. Liberal – The Liberals are focusing on banning military assault weapons, and support community programs for ‘at-risk youth’ NDP – The NDP intend to strength penalties for illegal firearms possession, and support community investment, such as strengthening programs for youth and drug addiction clinics. Bloc – The Bloc supports the current Youth Criminal laws, and support current gun registration laws. Green – The Greens intend to focus on increasing punishment for domestic violence, but also increase restorative programs for first-time non-violent offenders.
Some links: Elections Canada official websiteGlobe and Mail Issues summaryCBC Issues summaryNodice website, with polls, ridings, history and backgroundGlobe and Mail Election CentreToronto Star Election CentreCanada Votes 2008 - CBC