Stephen Harper, leader of the Canadian Conservative (Tory) Party, eked out a narrow minority win in Canada’s federal election last night. Harper’s Hicks won around 36% of the total vote, and 123 seats of the 308 up for grabs, with the former governing Liberals gaining 103, the left wing NDP 29, and the separatist Bloc 51 in the province of Quebec.
What now? A good summary by a veteran Canadian journalist, Anthony Westell:
“That’s not likely, but he [Harper] is the least qualified person to become prime minister in at least half a century: educated to MA level in one university; never served in a government or held an executive position in business, seldom travelled outside North America. He has promised to govern from the centre and should have no trouble surviving for a year or two, if only because the opposition would not dare outrage the public by forcing yet another election before he has had a fair chance. In fact, his most serious opposition may come from true believers of his own – backbenchers, social conservatives, neo-conservative economists and libertarians who believe the best government is the smallest government. They have toiled for years to gain power to steer Canada away from the centre and toward the right. How much slack will they cut Harper? ….. But we know at least that he’s a good politician, with killer instincts behind the choirboy’s shy smile. Just look what he did to Paul Martin. The Gomery report specifically cleared Martin of any responsibility for the sponsorship scandal a decade ago. But that did not deter Harper for a minute. He declared Martin, his government and the Liberal party to be corrupt and without the moral authority to govern. It was invention and a skeptical media would not have let him get away with it. Instead, the media cheered him on and actually helped him convince the country that Martin was not to be trusted. “
What happened?
Harper ran a well organized, tightly controlled and deceptive campaign, framing the race from the start as a time for change, painting the Liberals as corrupt. He seldom deviated from that core message, and kept tight control over the more radical neocons in his party, forbidding those candidates with extreme views from speaking to the press, with one of them even hiding in a kitchen to avoid the press who were asking too many questions.
Did it succeed?
Only partly. With a disorganized Liberal party running a sloppy campaign, and with the voters wishing to castigate the governing party for the corruption shown in several scandals, Harper was still unable to break through in any of the big 3 cities of Canada – he gained not one seat in Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto. His party has gained power with rural support; the street wise city dwellers did not buy his sanitized campaign. Instead, the bulk of Canadian voters – who are center-left in social terms and middle of the road in economic terms – 64% of them voted for the Liberals, NDP and Bloc.
Now what?
Now Harper has to deliver on his promises to Quebec. Expect fireworks, and another election within 12 months. In the meantime, Paul Martin has stepped down as a Liberal leader, and a new leader – untainted by scandal – will face Harper next time. Then it will be a true battle of neocons versus liberals, for the soul of Canada.
The result is foregone: Canadian history favors victory for toleration, liberal philosophy, and care for the underdogs in its society.
Interesting article on the rural-urban split in Canadian election:
“Tara Brautigam, Canadian Press
Published: Tuesday, January 24, 2006
TORONTO — The shutout of the Tories in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal is reflective of a growing divide in Canada between big city voters and their rural counterparts, experts said Tuesday.
“We’ve got a very major rural-urban riff opening up in the country,” said Paul Nesbitt-Larking, chairman of political science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.
“It’s not just Toronto, but it’s also other urban centres, with the singular exception of Calgary.”
The Conservatives did not garner one federal seat in the country’s three largest cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Within Ontario, the few gains prime minister-designate Stephen Harper earned were mainly in the suburbs — Barrie, Burlington, Chatham and Kitchener, for instance.
“It’s very clear the people in cities, in the major cities, voted for parties that in the last Parliament, had delivered programs for the people that live in cities,” Toronto Mayor David Miller said.
“By Torontonians and people in Vancouver and Montreal voting for their cities, it sends a strong message that cities needs need to be addressed if you’re going to succeed electorally in the city.”
Crime and punishment was a central theme of Harper’s campaign, and while gun violence was an issue primarily plaguing pockets of Toronto, the Conservative leader’s hardline stance did not resonate with the majority of the city’s voters.
“In the urban areas, much more emphasis is on what needs to be done to prevent and forestall the causes of crime and criminal behaviour,” Nesbitt-Larking said.
“In the rural areas, guns are not considered to be the issue … (there is) much more emphasis therefore on punishing the offenders and not worrying about the guns.”
Another key factor was concern over the provision of the social safety net — services including child care and health care, platforms the Conservatives have not been traditionally known for, Nesbitt-Larking said.
The Conservatives pledged to kill a planned national child-care program, and that likely scared off Toronto voters who were undecided until Monday, he added.
The city’s highly visible immigrant population also helped buoy the Liberals and allow the NDP to secure two gains in Toronto, said David Hulchanski, director of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto.
“The Liberals manage to speak to them and the NDP manages, and an American-style Republican just doesn’t connect,” Hulchanski said, emphasizing the differences between today’s Conservatives and the Progressive Conservative party of years past.
“The Stephen Harper Conservative party is a U.S.-style Republican party and I think there’s about 25 to 30 per cent core support in Canada for that … and it is a rural, small-town, small city kind of constituency.”
“They’re not the Brian Mulroney PCs, they’re not Joe Clark PCs … and voters know that.”
When asked what Harper would need to do to win more votes in Toronto, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said he would need to “indicate that he has a good grasp of the urban agenda.”
“If cities are working well, we’ve got a great province and a great country,” McGuinty said, adding that without assuring cities are well-equipped to finance housing, infrastructure and other needs, they would “drag on economic growth” in Canada.