Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Mulroney's Children

Disillusioned by politics, politicians and the continuous talk of scandal, Canadians could end up voting in record low numbers on January 23. Despite the low expectations, this is looking to be an historic federal election----the election in which “Mulroney’s children” take charge of the Canadian state.

The victory of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives in the 1988 federal election was the last hurrah of the old system of three national parties in Canada---the PCs, Liberals and New Democrats. In the election which followed in 1993, two new parties spawned from the old Mulroney coalition---the Bloc Quebecois, winning 54 seats and the Reform Party, with 52 seats, charged into parliament, changing the shape of Canadian politics forever. Reform and its successors, the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party of Canada (formed through a merger with what was left of the PCs in 2003) grew out of the political culture of Alberta, quickly establishing a strong base throughout western Canada. The Bloc Quebecois brought the Quebec sovereignists to Ottawa as a major force under the leadership of Lucien Bouchard, former deputy Prime Minister in the government of Brian Mulroney.

Reform, disillusioned with Brian Mulroney and his obsession with Quebec, and the BQ, furious at the failure of the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord in 1990, were Mulroney’s children----born on the wrong side of the blanket, to be sure.

Because of the size of the Liberal majority in 1993----they won 177 seats---it seemed on the surface that Canada would go on as before. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Only Ontario’s massive attachment to the federal Liberals in the elections of 1993, 1997, 2000, and to a lesser extent in 2004, kept that illusion alive. The federal Liberals clamped the lid on Mulroney’s children, but Quebec nationalism and Alberta regionalism, the two most decentralist political forces in the country, were not to be denied indefinitely.

While the regional fires burned, the Liberals and the NDP, the remaining champions of what can be called the traditional “Canadian system”, carried on as before, promoting a federalism in which Ottawa would play a key role in shaping the nation’s socio-economic agenda. It was the political fallout from the sponsorship scandal, of course, that disabled the Liberal Party, the great bulwark of the Canadian system.

The forces of decentralization seem poised to take complete charge of the Canadian state on January 23, with the Conservatives set to sweep English Canada and the BQ about to increase its dominance in Quebec. While the Conservatives and the Bloc have very different political cultures and values, what unites them is their desire to dramatically lessen the role of Ottawa. When Stephen Harper puts correcting the “fiscal imbalance” on his list of top priorities, he is doing much more than holding out an olive branch to soft nationalists in Quebec. He is being true to the essential culture of his own political movement.

People who assume that a parliament dominated by the Conservatives and the Bloc, with Stephen Harper as prime minister, cannot not last long, imagine wrongly. While a showdown between Harper and Gilles Duceppe will come sooner or later, shifting tax points to the provinces and reducing the role of Ottawa in setting national standards for social policies, creates a common agenda that can take them far as de facto allies.

Meanwhile, the Liberals and New Democrats---with important differences between them to be sure---contend against each other in a struggle that is dooming both. The Liberals do this by treating social democratic voters as a spigot to be turned on at election time, and turned off when the Grits are safely in power.

The NDP, which played a crucial role in picking the timing of the election and shaping the central issue as the scandals of the Liberals----even asking the RCMP to investigate Ralph Goodale and the Finance Department---helped Stephen Harper on his way. Fearful of being crowded out of the campaign, the NDP strategy was to continually attack the Liberals, while scarcely mentioning Harper at all. That way, it was hoped, the Liberals would be blocked from winning over soft NDP voters in the last days of the campaign.

What both Paul Martin and Jack Layton did not anticipate was how thoroughly Stephen Harper had learned the lessons of 2004. Moderating his image, he is on the verge of an historic breakthrough in Ontario. And the NDP has helped de-fang him.

The strategies of the Liberals and the NDP lie in tatters as Mulroney’s children stand ready to inherit the kingdom. For those who those who have believed passionately in the Canada in which Ottawa plays a strong role in shaping the social policies of the nation, these are dispiriting days indeed.

While not taking anything away from efforts to save what can be saved between now and election day, it is clear that the parties that favour the Canadian system will have to be rebuilt from the ground up after January 23.

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