The federal election campaign may appear to be nothing more than a routine contest between political parties for seats in the House of Commons. But as a consequence of basic and unresolved questions about the nature of the country, when voters go to the polls on November 27, they will be passing judgment on different visions of Canada. And they will be doing it in what amounts to two discrete electoral battles.
Canada’s five major political parties subscribe to three distinct visions of Canada. The Liberals, PCs and New Democrats are solidly entrenched in what can be called the "nation building" tradition. They conceive of the federal government as a "national" government whose job is to take a leading role in legislating for the whole of the country. In their Canada, Ottawa is supposed to manage the national economy and oversee the social union.
To be sure, over the past fifteen years, as a consequence of globalization and NAFTA, Ottawa’s position as an economic manager has been sharply eroded. And the social union has been similarly diminished by Liberal cuts to social spending. Despite these changing realities, the nation building tradition remains powerfully entrenched in Ontario, the Atlantic provinces and Manitoba and Saskatchewan. That was the Canada that grieved so deeply for Pierre Trudeau and his fading vision of a nation united around the goal of a "just society".
The Canadian Alliance espouses the second vision of Canada---call it the vision of "autonomous regions"----a product of Alberta's long experience as an adversary of the insistence of central Canadians that the policies that have suited their region are "national policies". When Alberta was launched as a province in 1905, it was not given ownership of its natural resources, a blight visited upon all three prairie provinces until the British North America Act was amended to put them on an equal footing with the other provinces in 1930.
It was Alberta’s resources, its vast petroleum reserves, that gave a former hinterland the capacity to set itself up as a new metropolis capable of challenging central Canada. The Alliance’s predecessor, the Reform Party, began its career precisely as a party of western protest against Brian Mulroney’s PCs and their determination to accommodate Quebec. Remade as a vehicle of the political right that could aspire to win the support of Bay Street, the Alliance has retained the strongly decentralist tone of Preston Manning’s original vehicle.
The Alliance would eliminate regional development programs and terminate Ottawa’s role in setting national standards for the social union. In its program, under the rubric "let’s get government out of the business of business", the Alliance would end the federal government’s support for Canadian culture, through such steps as the privatization of CBC television. Ottawa would be responsible for defence, trade, foreign policy, criminal law and little else. Stockwell Day hopes that the quest for small government will attract Harrisites in Ontario while convincing Albertans and British Columbians that the Alliance remains committed to shucking off the yoke of federal power.
The third vision of Canada comes in the pursuit of Quebec sovereignty---call it the vision of "autonomous nations"----by the Bloc and its allies in the government of Lucien Bouchard. True to the legacy of PQ founder Rene Levesque, the Bloc’s version of sovereignty for Quebec involves a very close economic union, and a degree of political union, with the rest of Canada. In its election ads, the Bloc presents itself to Quebecers as a social democratic party that is outraged at Liberal social spending cuts. But its deepest goal, its raison d’etre, is to strike down the power of the federal government in Quebec. In its platform, the Bloc declares that "for a long time Quebecers have regarded the government of Quebec as their national government." No one should doubt that the Bloc’s nationalism will trump its social democracy when the crunch comes.
And the crunch could come in this election, or to put it more accurately, in the two elections that are underway. In English speaking Canada, especially west of the Ottawa River, the Liberals are fighting an election against the Alliance. In Quebec, the Liberals are at war with the Bloc. To understand how the election is going, you have to add the proportion of voters telling pollsters they plan to vote for the Alliance to the proportion supporting the Bloc. Then compare the total of these two parties with the proportion of voters committed to the Liberals.
The underlying fact of this election is that the Alliance and the Bloc are implicit allies against the Liberals (and the other nation building parties) and their vision of Canada. Their goal is to smote the Liberal dragon that is the guardian of Ottawa’s power.
Although the cultures of the two parties could not be more unalike, the Alliance and the Bloc are radical decentralists. Even the Bloc would stop short of the complete destruction of the union between Quebec and the rest of Canada. And that is what makes these two unlikely bedfellows potential partners should they end up with a combined majority of seats on November 27.
Here’s a possible scenario for the future. If the Liberals end up with the largest number of seats on election day, but fall short of a majority even in conjunction with the PCs and the NDP, they could call the House into session and attempt to run a minority government. Then the Alliance and the Bloc could combine in a vote of no confidence to defeat the government, and the Bloc could announce that it would be prepared to countenance a new government under the leadership of Stockwell Day, dealing with its legislative proposals on a case by case basis. Precedent would require Governor General Adrienne Clarkson to ask Stockwell Day to form a government.
A negative agenda, focused on dismantling Ottawa’s power, could serve as the basis for an uneasy entente between the Alliance vision of Canada and that of the Bloc. At least until Lucien Bouchard decided that he had now achieved "winning conditions" for a third referendum on Quebec sovereignty.
It bears thinking about.
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