The Liberal Party of Canada chose a new leader on Saturday. What does Stephane Dion's election mean to the U.S.?
The Liberal Party of Canada chose a new Leader on Saturday. His name is Stephane Dion, a former cabinet minister in the Chretien and Martin governments. A leadership contest was made necessary earlier this year when Paul Martin Jr. resigned as Liberal Leader after losing the last election to the Conservatives and current Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Dion becomes Leader of the Opposition and will try to lead the liberals back into power when the next election is called.
Before I can explain what this might mean for Canadain politics and Canada/U.S. relations, I need to compare and contrast the main political parties in the two countriies.
In the Canadian federal parliament, there are currently four parties with elected members. Here they are with their U.S. counterparts (if any):
- The governing Conservatives = the Republican Party
- The Official Opposition Liberals = The Democratic Party
- The Bloc Quebecois = No equivalent party
- The New Democratic Party = The Green Party and part of the Democratric Party
There is also a Canadian Green Party, but they have failed to elect any members to date. The Canadian Green Party is not quite aligned with the U.S. franchise, and until recently has been measurably to the right of on some issues.
The Conservatives are conservative (like the GOP), and the Liberals are centrist (like the main body of the Dems). The New Democrats are a centre left, social democratic party, nominally aligned with the labour movement and strong on environmental and social equality issues. New Democrats would be comfortable in the U.S. Green Party or would be with Dennis Kucinich among the Dems. Note that Bernie Sanders, the new socialist Senator who will caucus with the Democrats, is from Vermont and can probably smell Montreal poutine from his back porch.
There is of course no U.S. equivalent of the Bloc Quebecois (BQ), a centre left party whose reason for being is to facilitate the separation of Quebec from the Canadian confederation.
So the centrist Liberals chose Stephane Dion as leader. As a Liberal, he is by definition a Quebec federalist, meaning he wants to keep Quebec within Canada. In that sense he is a centrist. He has served as Environment Minister and is thought to have more liberal credentials on those issues. No doubt the Greens, NDP and BQ will attack his performance in that portfolio. Otherwise Dion should be expected to be a traditional pragmatic Liberal leader and will run from the left and govern from the right.
The current Conservative Prime Minster is a political ally of Gerge W. Bush and the Republicans. The Canadian electorate is overwhelmingly opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq, but Harper will never say anything negative about anything done by W.
Were Dion to become Prime Minister, we could expect some level of friction between the White House and 24 Sussex Drive (the Ottawa residence of Canadian PMs). Dion would probably be able to get along better with Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Edwards. But not necessarily. Lester Pearson was one Liberal Prime Minister who did not always get along with the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. That was about Vietnam.
Canada and the U.S. are tied together economically. These days, that is mixed news for Canada, with the falling U.S. dollar and a massive federal deficit. Neither country has to date figured out how to deal with globalization and are therefore losing manufacturing jobs (moreso by far in the U.S. btw).
Naturally, Dion is of much less interest to the U.S. govenment and media and other interests if he does not become Prime Minister. How likely is that? It is really hard to say right now. He has a lot problems to overcome if he wants to win the next election, probably next year sometime.
For one thing, the Liberal party is in a mess, divided between a number of factions and up to its red eyeball in debt. Dion is unpopular in his own province of Quebec because he is seen as limiting Quebec's aspirations. It remains to be seen if he can communicate effectively with English speaking Canadians.
Meanwhile, he and the Liberals are vulnerable to attacks on policy from the other four parties. If I had to bet right now, I would say that the Liberals will tread water in the next election, winning about the same number of seats. The Conservatives might gain a little at Liberal expense outside Quebec, but will probably only win enough to form another minority goverenment. The BQ will gain a little, though the Libs will gain a little at Tory expense in Quebec.
The New Democrats will gain seats outside Quebec, especially in the Western provinces of B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
So the next parliament will look a lot like the current one, with maybe one Green Party Member added to the mix. As far as Dion is concerned, the question is whether he will be around as Liberal leader long enough to rebuild the party, assuming it is in fact possible to do so.
Full disclosure: I was a New Democratic party candidate in the 1990 Ontario provincial election and worked for the NDP caucus in the House of Commons from 1987 to 1993.