Canadians, and fans of Canadian politics, are buzzing over a recent turn of events. The Conservative party, who won the last election but only a slightly more robust minority government, is being faced down on a non-confidence vote over the pathetic offering that is their plan for helping Canada weather the coming economic storm combined with a dagger in the back for the opposition parties: the complete removal of taxpayer-subsidized political party funding.
The pros and cons of the plan and the intrigue surrounding the proposal to remove funding are not the focus of this diary. The response of the Canadian political left is.
More after the fold.
To quickly bring the interested but uninitiated up to speed in recent Canadian political history; Canada has, presently, 5 parties of any serious political clout: the Conservatives (right), the Liberals (center, rightish somewhat on fiscal policy, leftish on social policy), the New Democratic Party (left), the Green Party (lefty in most things, but not around long enough to really get a bead on 'em - got a lot of votes but won no seats) and the Bloc du Quebecois (hard left, but advocate secession from Canada).
In a rare and surprising show of testicular fortitude, the Liberal and New Democratic Parties have been making what appears to be a serious effort to set aside fundamental policy differences and form a coalition government. In my mind this effort seems doomed to fail, in no small part due to the fact that the Liberals and NDP lack the necessary seats to form a stronger minority or majority government, and thus would have to rely on the separatist Bloc du Quebecois for authority. The Green party, lacking any seats won in this election, wouldn't factor in directly.
"Lacking the seats, however, does not mean they'd lack the votes" I thought to myself. "A serious attempt to unite the left now could yield benefits at the next election. I wonder what would have happened in this election, had the left not been splintered into three parties?"
Elections Canada is very helpful in this sort of question, but it won't do all the work for you... so I downloaded the tab-delimited schedule of results, imported it to my local database, and started to play with the numbers. I was dismayed to see the results.
By toying with the numbers, one theme became very, very clear: The Conservative party won, not because it was "their time", but because vote-splitting on the left let them come up the middle to win in many ridings. This must be an overriding message at the next election... I'm talking charts and graphs and Very Serious People Talking Very Seriously(tm) about it. Yes, I'm aware that some Canadian media, particularly the CBC, is biased in favor of the Liberal party. I propose that bias be used to maximum effect.
Below are the results of my various alternate reality runs:
Actual 2008 Election Results | | Liberal + NDP votes combined | | Liberal, NDP and Green combined |
---|
Party | Seats |
---|
Conservative | 143 | Liberal | 77 | Bloc Quebecois | 49 | NDP | 37 | Independent | 2 |
| | Party | Seats |
---|
Liberal + NDP | 153 | Conservative | 112 | Bloc Quebecois | 41 | Independent | 2 |
| | Party | Seats |
---|
Liberal, NDP, Green | 176 | Conservative | 89 | Bloc Quebecois | 41 | Independent | 2 |
|
Both combinations result in wins, one by a clear majority and one so close to a majority as to essentially be one. You'd probably see alot of horse-trading going on to get someone to cross the floor.
It occured to me though that some of the more militant fiscal Joe Clark conservatives would sooner caucus with the social regressives than give power to the left end of the spectrum. There's absolutely no way of knowing how many of those "Blue Liberals" might be lurking, but for experimental sake I did some runs with 20% (a generous number!) of the liberal voters abandoning the party for the Conservatives.
Actual 2008 Election Results | | Liberal + NDP votes combined (20% Lib vote to Con) | | Liberal, NDP and Green (20% Lib vote to Con) |
---|
Party | Seats |
---|
Conservative | 143 | Liberal | 77 | Bloc Quebecois | 49 | NDP | 37 | Independent | 2 |
| | Party | Seats |
---|
Conservative | 142 | Liberal + NDP | 119 | Bloc Quebecois | 45 | Independent | 2 |
| | Party | Seats |
---|
Liberal + NDP + Green | 144 | Conservative | 119 | Bloc Quebecois | 43 | Independent | 2 |
|
With a large number of Liberal defectors, the NDP/Lib coalition can't do it alone... but the NDP/Lib/Green one can.
You'll notice that the Bloc isn't included in these calculations. I personally believe that the Governor General would not allow a coalition to be formed including a party with the expressed purpose of separation from the country, although it's not at all clear if that would really be the case. Either way, the numbers prove that not only victories but healthy majorities are within reach if we can unite the left even without depending on Duceppe's largesse.
Ah, but how?
That's the question to be answered in the weeks / months ahead, but it is painfully clear that the union of the right will cause BIG problems for the rest of Canada, and unless the egos can be held in check there's going to be 37% of voters dictating the way the country is going to be run for the other 63%. Barring some miraculous introduction of proportional representation to Canadian elections, a union of the left leaning parties seems the only plausable way to win back the country.