They may not have received as much attention as Osama bin Laden’s death, but the Canadian federal elections have spawned no shortage of commentary. As expected, the Conservatives emerged victorious. However, contrary to some predictions, Stephen Harper won with a majority government this time. Another surprise: the NDP, under Jack Layton, is now the official Opposition. Although the NDP has been elected at the provincial level before – Ontario, for example, had an NDP government from 1990 to 1995 – on the federal scene it has been basically relegated to the sidelines. Other shocker: the once-mighty Liberals have now fallen to third place. Not so unusual, on the other hand, is the mere one seat obtained by the Green Party (by their leader Elizabeth May) and the absence of any seats whatsoever by the various independent candidates and fringe parties, such as the Christian Heritage Party.
Perhaps more important than the “what” is the “why” these elections turned out the way they did. First, the Conservative victory. It may be that despite the Bruce Carson and Bev Oda/KAIROS scandals, Canadians felt that the Tories were the best choice available or, from a more negative angle, the least of three or possibly more evils. Under the leadership of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, for instance, Canada managed to weather the economic recession relatively smoothly, at least compared to other nations like Portugal, Ireland or Greece. While the above-mentioned scandals may have dissuaded some Canadians from casting their ballots for Harper, many of these people may have simply abstained from voting altogether, thereby failing to give any advantage to the various non-Conservative parties.
I also attribute Stephen Harper’s win partly to the fact that Canadians refused to fall for the scare tactics engineered by the Conservatives’ opponents. One such tactic was the attempt to portray the Tories as reactionary Bible thumpers bent on banning abortion and keeping women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. This effort began well before the recent elections. A few years ago, one left-leaning website featured a picture of Gerri Santoro, an American woman who died from an illegal abortion in 1964, lying dead in a motel room, as if to portray what Canadian women would face if Harper remained at the helm. Leaving aside the fact that the most egregious violations of women’s reproductive rights in recent years took place not in a right-wing God-bothering theocracy but in a left-wing officially atheistic state, Communist Romania, where not only abortion but contraception was banned, Harper himself has stated that he has no plans to re-open the abortion issue. Critics have countered that he did raise the matter by failing to include abortion in a federal package for maternal health care in the Third World. But declining to finance a procedure can’t be equated to legally prohibiting it. As an analogy, no government in Canada would stop me from getting breast implants, but no government would pay for them either other than in the case of a mastectomy. Finally, Harper’s supposed pro-life sympathies are belied by anti-choice groups’ characterization of the Prime Minister as “pro-abortion.”
The huge sea change in this election was the Liberals’ descent to third place, behind the Conservatives and NDP. Some would sum up the reason for the Liberals’ seeming downfall in two words: Michael Ignatieff. However great an intellectual/author/broadcaster Ignatieff might be, he simply lacked the charisma to win the Canadian public’s favour as a future Prime Minister. The other side of the Liberals’ defeat was of course the rise of the NDP. Part of the NDP’s newfound success stemmed from the support it received in Quebec, where it managed to supplant the Bloc Quebecois in all but a few ridings. Quebec’s turn to the party of Layton was not especially surprising to me, as Quebecers have long held left-wing views on social and economic matters. I also wonder whether some people who might have otherwise voted for the Liberals chose the NDP out of a belief that the latter party has at least had the courage to stand by their principles (many of which, by the way, I do not personally share) while the Liberals in contrast seem to define themselves solely by their status as non-Conservatives.
I have to admit that I did not vote in this election. There was no party with which I felt 100% comfortable casting my ballot for, so I simply abstained. Nonetheless, I’m not necessarily displeased by the results of this election. I suppose that if I were forced to vote for one particular party, it would be the Conservatives. Yet the idea of the NDP as a counterbalance to the Conservatives doesn’t strike me as a bad scenario either. At the very least, the outcome of this election could have been worse.
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