With about 39.6 per cent of voters deciding, we have a majority Conservative government, something we haven’t seen since before they were virtually wiped out in 1993.
It should be interesting to see how the next four years goes in Canada. Let’s hope that the predictions about Stephen Harper’s hidden agenda don’t come to pass. Something every government should keep in mind, if it is to survive, is that it must govern according to a real majority of the population and not just its voters. My hope is that any changes the Conservative party does make to Canada are in accordance with the values of Canadians and not what desire them to be.
No, you’re not in a parallel universe: NDP as Official Opposition
In Quebec the Liberals and Conservatives took six seats each, with the Bloc at 4 and the NDP picking up 59 of 75. I expected the NDP to do well tonight, but I did not expect the absolute landslide of support for the NDP or for them to become the Official Opposition. It seems to really have come at the expense of the Bloc Quebecois, and in a major way!
The Bloc was nearly wiped off the electoral map (not a bad thing) only being elected in four seats, compared to their 49 just before the election. Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe failed to be re-elected. Lets hope that is the last we hear of separatists in Quebec. There are provincial elections coming, so who knows?
Liberals: time for a new leader (again)
The Liberals have been plagued by weak leaders so I’m curious who’ll come up next after the drubbing the Liberals took. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff failed in his re-election bid. I wouldn’t have predicted that. I thought the Liberals would slide in support but not the huge fall from 77 to 34 seats.
I noticed Justin Trudeau won his seat. Perhaps a new round of Trudeaumania will be coming for Canada?
Was Ignatieff really the right choice for the Liberals? He never seemed to be a very strong opposition leader and missed many opportunities to attack the Conservative party on some very serious issues. That is the role of the Official Opposition after all, and I think that Ignatieff did fail there.
He was certainly lacking in the likeability department. He’s probably a great guy, but he never really came across as a strong leader and it seems that the Liberal campaign really went downhill after the debate, with the NDP picking up all that support.
Green Party’s first seat
One bright spot in this election was that Green Party leader Elizabeth May got her party’s first seat! That is good news. Perhaps we’ll see that change with more seats in the next election. I’m sure everyone will be keeping an eye on her and the Green Party.
Diversity? What diversity?
If you look at the prairie provinces, once again there’s a distinct lack of political diversity, federally. Alberta has one NDP seat, Saskatchewan one Liberal and Manitoba jumps up to three seats: two NDP and one Liberal. Not much opposition representation for three provinces.
Ending party politics
I am tired of party politics and have said a few times before that I’d like to see political parties abolished. I would prefer a system much like Nunavut’s non-partisan legislature. No political parties and elected officials can vote on issues however they like. No control freaks need apply. Elected officials can also do a better job representing their constituents.
I’m not naive enough to think Canada will ever move to this sort of system, but I can hope. We expect accountability from our politicians, but there is none in political parties at all. Parties all preach openness, but that openness seems to be inversely proportional to their distance from power.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some form of proportional representation so that our Parliament more closely reflects the breakdown of the vote. I’m not going to hold my breath that it’ll happen in the next four years either. It’s much more easily achieved though, and a few years back B.C. nearly got a proportional representation system in the single transferrable vote.
Predictions I hope won’t come true
Here are some of the predictions I had made about what we might see from a Conservative majority. How many will happen?
I predict a Harper majority will:
- bring back the death penalty
- expand the prison system, populate it, privatize it
- ban abortion
- further increase military spending – $30 billion on jets with no engines will be nothing
- bring in more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy
- run up the debt & increase the deficit
- privatize healthcare
- squeeze the middle class even further
- kill the CBC
- further turn Canada into a police state (G20 was a warmup)
Other things I would add to the list:
- InSite safe injection site in Vancouver will be shut down
- expanded war on drugs (have to fill those prisons)
- expanded foreign worker programs
- abolish gay marriage, move to limit gay rights
- failure to protect Canadians from Internet company gouging
What will happen? Time will tell. I hope I’m wrong on this list more than I’m right. What do you think?
Interesting foreign view of Canada’s election.
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3 comments
Adam Snider says:
May 3, 2011
Here are my thoughts on your predictions:
I predict a Harper majority will:
- bring back the death penalty — Doubtful, in my opinion, but not impossible.
- expand the prison system, populate it, privatize it — Yes to the first two, no to privatization (though he may attempt that if they receive a second majority in the next election)
- ban abortion — Technically, he won’t, but he will likely cut funding to programming such that is essentially unattainable for all but the super rich (who generally don’t need or get abortions, with some exceptions)
- further increase military spending – $30 billion on jets with no engines will be nothing — Yep; not sure exactly what form that increased spending will take, though, aside from the jets.
- bring in more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy — He’s openly said as much, so definitely.
- run up the debt & increase the deficit — Yep.
- privatize healthcare — This won’t happen. Harper cares more about power than about any political ideals/values he may hold, and privatizing healthcare is a sure fire way to make sure that the Conservative party gets destroyed in the next election. That said, I suspect we’ll see huge reductions in transfer payments to the provinces, which will force the provinces to de-list more and more services until we’ve got a very broken mix of public and private healthcare.
- squeeze the middle class even further — Yeah, probably. But, this is kind of a vague prediction; this could mean just about anything and, depending on your point of view, could probably be said about all of the parties.
- kill the CBC — I dunno; I think he’d love to kill it, but I believe that the CBC actually saw a slight increase in funding this year, so it’s tough to say. He may privatize the network (which would likely amount to killing it), but I don’t think he’ll just go in a shut it down.
- further turn Canada into a police state (G20 was a warmup) — This won’t happen. At least not in the literal sense of having police on the streets. There will be subtle changes granting the police more power and weakening civil liberties, but most people won’t notice because they’ll be the sort of things that don’t normally affect the average person (which doesn’t mean that it is OK or worth ignoring, that’s just how I see it happening).
- InSite safe injection site in Vancouver will be shut down — Almost certainly
- expanded war on drugs (have to fill those prisons) — Yep
- expanded foreign worker programs — Probably, but is that a bad thing? Many industries in Canada depend on temporary foreign workers because of labour shortages.
- abolish gay marriage, move to limit gay rights — I actually don’t think that this will happen. Much of the Conservative base would probably love to see it happen, but as faithful as the base is to Harper, they are too small to give him a majority on their own; abolishing gay marriage would likely damage the Conservative’s reputation too much for them to hold onto power for a second term as a majority, so I don’t think they’d risk re-opening the gay marriage debate. They may limit gay rights in less obvious ways, however.
- failure to protect Canadians from Internet company gouging — I’m actually not sure how this one will play out; Tony Clement wants to appear to be defending the rights on consumers, and they have overturned CRTC decisions in the past.
Adam Snider says:
May 3, 2011
Also: the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage already, I’m not sure how any new legislation banning it would be able to hold up in court. So, while it’s possible that they actually will ban gay marriage (though, as I said, I don’t think so), the legislation will get ripped apart in the Supreme Court when it is inevitably challenged.
Alain Saffel says:
May 3, 2011
Thanks for commenting Adam.
Rarely does Harper act directly, so you won’t see an announcement about privatizing healthcare, banning abortion or anything too controversial. As you’ve pointed out, he’s more likely to hollow out the program and cut funding, effectively doing the same thing while speaking out both sides of his mouth saying he’s supporting it.
This is the way the Conservatives have eroded our democracy to this point and now he can’t be stopped. What took generations to create will be undone in four years. Canadians won’t even realize what they’ve lost.
I’d have far more respect for the Conservatives if they worked above-board and consulted instead of skulking in the shadows. Who knows? Perhaps, emboldened by a majority, they’ll do as other governments have done, ram through major changes in the first two years, and back off for the last two, trying to moderate themselves slightly to appease voters.
I’m beyond party politics now and have been for a few years. I’ve been focusing more on individual policy issues which, coincidentally, doesn’t line me up with many of the Conservative policy ideas. About the only one I do agree with is eliminating the long gun registry.
The thing is that with Supreme Court decisions, they don’t preclude the government from bringing in new legislation to replace old legislation or to deal with laws which may have been struck down. This means that the new laws may be at odds with the Supreme Court decision, but it will take years to run them through the courts to challenge them.
I read somewhere recently that the Conservatives have removed funding for court challenges, but I can’t remember where I’d read that, so I can’t verify it.
I also understand that there are several openings coming up on the Supreme Court, so he’s likely to load up the Supreme Court with sympathetic judges, much as he’s done with the Senate.
So we’re likely to continue to see doublespeak in the Conservatives saying they support something while finding other ways to undermine it. Another tactic we’re likely to see is the government not introducing legislation, but backbenchers doing so and a free vote. It allows the government to maintain a level of plausible deniability which we all know is a sham.
Like I said. I hope I’m wrong about my predictions, but we’ll see in four years.
Almost forgot about foreign workers. There may be some shortages in some areas, but what I would rather see is redirecting that $55 billion EI surplus (long disappeared now) into training un- or under-employed Canadians. We do have the population to fill those positions and should work towards educating our own population to fill them, rather than farming them out to foreigners.
It is an attempt to drive down wages (the hollowing out of the middle class I referred to) by bringing in foreign workers willing to work for lower wages than Canadians are used to in various positions. The line we hear then is that “oh, Canadians don’t want to do those jobs” with the real reason being is that Canadians couldn’t afford to work those jobs at those wages and still be able to pay on a mortgage (and we know how expensive they are these days).
This is the same thing that has happened in the US. Funny how these sorts of tactics are imported here. There are some imports which should be banned.
Canada really does have a problem with the middle class. Real wages have not grown in 25 years. People are barely surviving even in good times. One has to wonder just who will be buying those new houses, new cars and all the toys that drive the economy. This is a real problem but because of the policies we have seen and are likely to continue to see, it’s only going to get worse. I should point out that the Conservatives aren’t the only ones to blame here. The Liberal party has done a lot of damage in its days in power too.