In a comment on my preceding diary entry,
DemFromCT wrote:
No one from here understands Canadian politics because the labels are confusing. My wife, who studied Medieval History at the Pontifical Institute in Toronto, has to explain things to me real slowly whenever there's a news story I can't follow. Something about Liberals aren't really liberal...
Well, I don't need much encouragement to start pontificating.
One reason the labels we use in Canada are so confusing to Americans is that for the last 30 years you have allowed your radical right complete license to redefine the language of the political spectrum. For an audience of DailyKos readers I don't need to go into how it was done. Working the refs, for instance, and being willing to get nastier and dirtier than the left. Claiming God. Wrapping themselves in the flag. That sort of thing.
The problem is that, by now, even Democrats have given in to a corrupted language that is designed to give an inherent advantage to the opposition. To be able to use the language the way Canadians use it, you would first need to yank your whole political spectrum a long distance to the left -- where, I would suggest, by any sane interpretation, it actually belongs. In Canadian terms, the US does not have a discernible left wing. Your "Greens" are not socialists. They are mostly advocating positions that anywhere else would be considered to be dull, stolid, middle of the road, and thoroughly moderate. Environmental protection, equal rights for women and minorities, regulations with teeth to stop corporations from stomping all over the common good in their pursuit of profits... this is leftist...? Plain common sense, more like.
I know, I know, you can't change the (in my opinion damaged) US political spectrum, at least not overnight. But in your imagination, at least, you can try shifting everything three steps to the left. Not only will Canadian politics make more sense, but you'll be re-invigorated to reclaim words like 'liberal' to something more like their original meaning.
It's not easy to reduce Canadian politics to a thumbnail sketch, but...
1. The
French fact is essential. You have to understand that this is so, or nothing else will make any sense. I can't fairly represent Quebec's perspective, and I won't try because I'd surely get it wrong; what I can do is emphasize that French- and English-speaking Canadians have vastly differing perceptions of everything from history, to language education, to the very meaning of the word 'nation'. Our continued survival as a country depends on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium between these two solitudes. Note: this has
nothing whatsoever to do with left and right.
2. Also essential is geography. In political terms, Canada isn't that huge territory you see on the map. It is a narrow ribbon of a country, about 4,000 miles long and rarely more than 100 miles wide, right next to the US border. That's where nearly all the population lives. The rest is sparsely populated farmland or even more sparsely populated wilderness. It isn't surprising, then, that there are regional differences -- and antagonisms -- that again have nothing to do with left and right.
3. Canada is... Not The USA. Our population, and our economy, are one-tenth the size of yours, and we are right next door, so what you do has always affected us profoundly -- even if you didn't mean it to, and indeed, even if you never gave us a thought when deciding (which was usually the case). You had a revolution, and the United Empire Loyalists came and settled in what is now Ontario. You had an inconclusive war with Britain in 1812, but we successfully fought off an American invasion. You had slavery, and the Underground Railroad ended in Canada. You had a bloody civil war between your states, and in 1867 we designed the ground rules of our Confederation in the explicit hope of not letting that happen in our new country. In both world wars, Canadians fought for years before you did, but we were glad to see you when you did join in. You had a cold-war standoff with the USSR, and we lent you our territory for the DEW line knowing that put us right in the line of fire if Armageddon ever started. You had McCarthyism, and we partly believed you, but we went right on electing a Communist alderman in Winnipeg -- though just one, because we didn't want to be excessive. You had Vietnam and the draft, and a lot of idealistic young men who didn't want to die for nothing came to live with us, and some Canadian young men joined your armed forces because they wanted to fight Communism. Just a few points in a long relationship.
4. Getting back to left and right... At a federal level, it used to be that there were the Liberals (moderate center-left -- but remember that's the Canadian center we're talking about here) and the Conservatives (moderate center-right), who were the only parties with any chance of forming the government, and then there were minor parties on the left (CCF => NDP) and right (Social Credit) who regularly elected a few members but could hold no real power unless there was a minority government that needed their votes to get legislation passed. [Provincial politics are another story that I won't go into except to say that a voter's provincial preferences are not that good a predictor of how they'll vote federally.]
5. Then, stuff happened. Lots of stuff, rousing old antagonisms, see points 1 and 2 above, plus many other things I haven't had the chance to go into. End result: a vastly reduced Conservative party, and two significant new parties.
6. The Bloc Quebecois started as a single-issue federal party explicitly advocating the separation of Quebec from Canada. At one point they had the second largest number of members in Parliament, which led to some bitter jokes about "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition". Right and left are irrelevant to understanding the PQ. At the moment, they appear to be evolving into a 'Represent Quebec At The Federal Level' party, which is good for stability -- I very much approve of Quebec having that kind of representation -- but we can't count on things staying that way.
7. Then there's what started out as Reform, and is now the Alliance.... OK. They're definitely right-wing, but seem to be having trouble deciding whether they want to be the heirs of the slightly looney Social Credit (which faded into the wallpaper some years ago, unnoticed and mostly unmourned), or Ross Perot-style populists against political corruption, or the "Let's All Be Just Like Americans And Do Whatever They Want Us To And Then They'll Do Good Stuff For Us" party, or the "Texas Of The North" party, or the "Guardians of Public Morality Against Threats Like Gay Marriage" party... or a reincarnation of the old moderate center-right Conservative party, which isn't actually dead yet and is still resisting being gobbled up.
8. Meanwhile, the Liberals happily moved into the vacant sweet spot in the political center, assumed the Conservatives' old (undeserved) reputation for being good at handling money, and look very much like they're not going to be dislodged any time soon.
9. The NDP? You know, the medium-leftists? Well, they're still there. They're never going to form a government, but that's not their purpose. They may think they have a chance, but in the eyes of the Canadian electorate, their job is to nag the government about keeping social policies humane and just. Canadians surely don't want the NDP to be in charge, but they don't want that side of things forgotten, either.
Caveat: I have been out of the country for five years, and following developments only via the Internet. That's not an adequate substitute for seeing CBC News every night. I may be somewhat off base on Canadian responses to the more recent events.
Update: Now that diaries are editable, I fixed the 'center-left Conservatives' goof I noticed right after posting this. Not that anyone cares, except me, but it let me try out the editing process.
