Monday September 20th is election day in Canada and the entirety of Bob and Doug Mackenzie’s Great White North head to the polls to register their mandate. Well, hopefully the ‘entirety’; last time around only 2/3 of the eligible electorate managed to get off their collective asses and bothered to mark their ballots. This particular federal election call is being described as ‘opportunistic’ by the opposition’s Conservatives, who see it as a ‘grab for a majority government’ by the incumbent Liberals.
Indeed, for the last two years in order to pass legislation the Liberal members of the Canadian parliament have had to make nice with enough New Democratic Partiers to get the job done. Theoretically they could ask Cons/Bloc Parti for support I suppose, but, as it is said in the east,
“Bonne Chance avec c’est!”
Federal Elections in Canada
As many of you likely already know, Canadian national politics are not exclusively bipartisan, more like tripartisan with a litany of progressive and regressive parties to keep Canuks on their toes. I like to think of it as a sort of Political Neapolitan, with sprinkles of Bertie Botts Every Flavoured JellyBeans; which, as I am equally certain many of you know, can deliver a delicious surprise at times, and a real nasty one others. Eg. I can imagine the Parti Rhinocérous Party flavoured Jbeans would taste...funny. I’ll let the reader assign the rest of the flavours to the other parties as they see fit.
Currently in Canada there are 338 seats in the House of Commons, so a federal party needs 170 of them to form a majority government, but the multitude of parties participating often results in notable vote-splitting, and subsequently, minority governments. I am a big fan of this occurring because it forces all the members of parliament to work together regardless of political stripe, and generally squashes flat the more loony legislation that can result from outright majorities. Eg. the pandemic has proven to be a pretty decent example of how well a minority gov’t can function, even in a national crisis.
The Parties
Since there are twenty two registered parties, let’s begin with the three parties that are running candidates nationwide and make up the main flavours of our political Neapolitan, in the order of the number of seats they currently hold in the house:
Liberal Party
Currently they are leading the minority government, though they have allegedly lost their edge in the polls. Since in Canada the leader of the governing party becomes Prime Minister, that’s Justin Trudeau.
This Liberal Party is generally considered centrist, though like the Conservative Party of Canada they have been surreptitiously and ruthlessly sliding to the right for the last four or so decades, so by now are more alike the Cons than they are different. Prior to this prolonged shift in the wrong direction a former administration of this party, led by Lester Pearson, introduced the much beloved Canada Health Act. That they were prompted to do so by the undeniable and overwhelming successes of Saskatchewan’s pioneering in state-funded and operated healthcare a la Tommy Douglas and his Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) is something even most Liberal voters will have to admit. Justin freed the weed.
The Liberals currently form the government of Canada, with 155 seats and their official election platform can be found here.
Conservative Party of Canada
For the longest time this lot used to call themselves the Progressive Conservative Party (their provincial counterparts in Ontario still do), and nobody I have met was ever absolutely certain as to why, since the two terms combined create a ridiculous oxymoron. And that’s not to mention that these cats have certainly never been politically progressive in any way, shape, or form. Perhaps they meant it as ‘industrially progressive’, and thought putting the double meaning in their moniker was ‘Running on the Spot’ clever, or something. I always thought it ought to have been Progressively Conservative; eventually the doublethought became too obvious of a ‘tell’, I suppose, so they dropped the opening.
To the nation’s detriment they have been elected to national office several times with that quackspoken party name, regardless.
I think I can safely state that we can consider them Canada’s GOP. Just like Republicans, the Conservative Party of Canada haven’t seen a successfully delivered publicly funded service in the country, national, provincial, or municipal, that they haven’t wanted and/or actually attempted to undermine and then privatize for their wealthy friends strip mining the planet.
The leader of this particularly odious collection of grifters is Erin O’Toole, who in my opinion has the most appropriate surname without a hint of oxymoron to it, because that is what he is: another machine boss.
This is the party of deceptive robocalls and other dirty election tricks
Inexplicably the Conservatives are somehow the official opposition with 119 seats in the House of Commons, and here’s their austere platform
New Democratic Party
This party has never had a leader make it to Prime Minister, so it has never been Canada’s federal government. It had a true hero in Jack Layton, and as a result made it to the official opposition in 2011, which is as far as the federal NDP have ever gone. Many other heroes and heroines it has had and does have too. The party draw their roots from another Canadian hero Thomas Douglas and his CCF, who introduced single payer healthcare while overseeing 17 (count ‘em seventeen) surplus budgets, a North American record, to my knowledge.
I can guarantee you that every last candidate of the Canadian NDP loves the orange of Daily KOS… Ok ok, I don’t actually know that for a fact, but I have money on my flank that says it's so, and I’ll give odds too. If I have a bias towards any party, I’ll give you one guess where it lies.
As usual, the NDP are offering an entire slate of qualified candidates across the board, and their leader Jagmeet Singh would make an excellent Prime Minister for Canada. Most ‘Dippers’ have long since given up hope of reason prevailing over the rest of the duped or domeless populace though, and simply strive for minority gov’t’s in which they hold the balance of power.
With 24 seats right now, this time around the NDP have been sharing that balance with the Bloc Quebecois, a formerly(?) separatist party that have constitutionally been allowed to have access to many, many seats at the table despite basically wanting to rip the country apart; ostensibly to keep the French language and culture alive in the country. Despite their 32 seats in the house of commons I didn't include the Bloc in the three flavours of our Neapolitan since they don’t run candidates nation-wide (because they don’t need to). Find the Dippers’ platform here.
Now, the rest with seats in the house:
The Bloc Quebecois
As mentioned this party is originally a separatist party that has managed to survive even after finally getting, and losing (just), its referendum on sovereignty. Personally, I think the separatists would have received exactly what they had wanted if they had let the rest of Canada vote on the matter too, rather than just their own province. Well, maybe not exactly what they wanted as I doubt the rest of the nation would have let them go without charging them for their fair share of the national debt. Their leader is Yves-François Blanchet.
As already noted, they hold 32 seats, and their website has a lovely rendering of their leader, the rest is in French, which I can only read while imagining an outrageous accent.
The Green Party
Elizabeth May may have left this party, yet the party remains. Some of you may argue that if I like the NDP I should love the Green Party, and you’re right I do, but they need to attract better candidates. Their new leader is Annamie Paul.
The Green Party currently have 2 seats in the House of Commons, and their platform can be found here.
Independents
There are 5 seats held independently in varying degrees of political extremity, four in the province of Ontario, and one in British Columbia, but the fact that they are allowed to run for office is a testament to the ~robustness of the Canadian political system.
As for the rest of the rest, you can find a complete list here at Elections Canada
And then make up your own mind(s) about who would be best where yer to b’y, and see it through by voting either on or by
Monday, September 20, 2021