Splintered politics in Canada this morning
So we had a very interesting election yesterday in Canada and a couple of progressive American friends of mine were hoping from afar that we would reject the kind of right wing racist populism that has infected much of the western world at the moment. This is the response I sent them. For those of you not in Canada, perhaps it will help you understand what happened in our country, written from an unabashedly progressive standpoint. It’s just my take, but here it is for posterity.
We pretty strongly rejected the People’s Party of Canada, the one actual right wing populist party that was running, although the Bloc Quebecois (Quebec’s sovereignties party) gained a lot of support, making some headway on the basis of Bill 21 in Quebec. That provincial bill outlaws public employees from wearing religious symbols in public and is lauded by some Quebeckers as a commitment to secularism and the civil law code principle of “laïcité” which is poorly understood outside of Quebec, but which comes across as racist and discriminatory in practice when seen through the common law lens of our Constitution. (In Canada both civil law and common law have standing, a historical anomaly stemming from the colonial compromise between English and French legal codes) In Quebec the province had to invoke the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution to pass the bill, meaning that it wasn’t subject to the Constitutional provisions to protect minority rights. Many are calling the bill racist and are begging the federal government to take it to Court. While that seems like a practical thing to do, in this political structure, it’s going to be hard.
The BQ and the Conservatives together with a few Liberal abstentions from Quebec can seriously hamper the government on bills that negatively impact Quebec, and as a result this issue might actually be allowed to stand without a Supreme Court challenge in the short term. Likewise, the BQ might join the government in messing up the investigation of corruption and obstruction of justice that needs to go on around the SNC-Lavalin affair that saw Trudeau pressure his Attorney General to allow the company to have a deferred prosecution agreement around some massive corruption they were involved in internationally. That AG, Jody Wilson-Raybould, is an indigenous woman, and she resigned her position, called out the Prime Minister and ran last night as an independent and got re-elected. So she will be back in the House, with a mandate to use her voice.
The Conservatives’ problem was that they pandered to a ton of anti-Trudeau rhetoric in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This has meant that they have won provincial elections there in recent years, but the rest of Canada thinks they are now a narrow-minded, regional-focused, climate change denying, dinosaur party and so the prairies are triumphantly blue and, outside of rural southern Ontario, all alone. They failed to see that Trudeau was actually the only leader willing to both build the pipeline they want (the government bought it last year) and also appeal broadly to the rest of Canada with social programs and policies that could unite interests. Had they voted Liberal, they would have had tremendous influence in Ottawa. Had the Conservatives broadened their appeal nationally, they would have won. As it is, we’re fractured along regional lines again, much as we were in 1993 and Trudeau returns to Ottawa with a minority government and actually coming in second in the popular vote. Folks are saying it’s the weakest mandate ever given to a government in Canadian history.
As a result, the NDP holds the balance of power, which will help get a few big things over the line such as a national pharmacare program, and perhaps a national low income dental care program and possibly some housing and urban infrastructure programs. It will preserve the climate strategy the Liberals have put forward, but that is still too weak to meet our Paris targets. For social programs, it’s the best possible outcome I think, but even with NDP support, the government is in a very weak position and the partisan and regional attacks will keep coming from Quebec and AlSask. That may mean a weak government and another election in a couple of years, and if that happens my guess is that the Liberals will have a better chance to capture conservative voters in Ontario who just hate Alberta moaning all the time even if they are supportive of oil and big business in general.
Interesting times. The Liberal party has not been good on progressive issues, especially indigenous issues, despite their rhetoric towards reconciliation. When the centre-right parties are weak, they tend to move right to canibalize the Conservatives’ soft support. Having the NDP holding the balance will help check them, but it’s not a massive progressive repudiation of populism.
Maybe it’s fair to say that it’s a defensive play against hate and it seems like our election was relatively protected from outside influence, hacks and Russian bots. They were definitely trying, but we are blessed not to have a two party system. It means that when things fracture, they do so in a way that creates more diversity rather that staunch and stark divisions. Makes it harder to govern, but then I think that should be a feature of Canadian politics and not a bug.
If you’re Canadian, why not weigh in here and offer perspective for folks reading this outside of Canada. What’s your take?
I think you got it about right, Chris. You may be underestimating the conservatism of rural and suburban Ontarians, though; they’re every bit as entrenched in their fear of the pace of change as their Prairie counterparts (speaking as someone who lived much of my life in both parts of the country), and easily manipulated by fear-mongering. I think in fact perhaps most Canadians voted out of fear yesterday, which is why no one I saw in the polling booths was smiling; democracy has become a grim exercise. I think we have (as in most anglophone countries it seems) given up hope that any government will improve the declining state of our world, and instead now just try to keep power from those who seem determined to accelerate that decline.
I know the southern Ontario conservatism well. It’s very different from Alberta’s in key ways. And those seats are pretty safe seats. When the Tories are at their weakest though this is pretty much what they look like. They will always win in Alberta. I was amazed that that DIDN’T take that for granted and build a more national vision.
I think it’s a real shame electoral reform seems completely off the table moving forward. The Con backlash seen in Alberta, Saskatchewan, eastern BC, and rural Ontario is a symptom of people feeling under-represented at the national table. We’re at risk of further fracturing if some type of solution, perhaps Proportional Representation, is implemented to make the voice in Ottawa more even between East and West.
Living in Saskatchewan, an unfortunate result of Trumpism south of the border is the underlying racism of this part of the country now feels safe to come out in a more public way. Xenophobia is VERY real here and Alberta. It’s an under-educated position that is re-enforced by the white Christian right-wing that dominates this part of the country. Small towns are suddenly seeing different people living among them, which is eroding a long-held feeling of homogeneity and identity. We’re in the midst of a Whitelash, as was coined south of the border.
Great comment Jeff. It I too easy to dismiss alienated prairie folks (and their loudest mouthpieces like Kenny and Wall and Notley don’t do themselves any favours). But there are deep issues in those places that need addressing, including change brought on by international markets for oil and food products, the shift in the Canadian economy away from those traditional industries and the long standing and urgent need to properly address reconciliation and racial injustice affecting indigenous people. When Canadian voters become myopic and self-centred, it’s impossible to address these bigger issues because outsiders get blamed for all the pain. And so there can be no national response to the AlSask complaints because no one is good enough. Hence the naive desire to separate from Canada. We are a country of regions and no one works hard enough to understand the concerns of the other regions. I’m lucky in that I get to travel a lot and so I get it. But Albertans who demand that everyone care about them while they haven’t a clue about the realities of BC, Quebec or southern Ontario are profoundly unhelpful, first of all to themselves. And that goes for anyone who can’t lift their nose above their own little local bubble of worry.
The Tories in Alberta and Saskatchewan are alone. Except for most of rural British Columbia; the Fraser Valley and Richmond; most of Manitoba; most of southern Ontario; a large chunk of central Quebec; and the southern half of New Brunswick. But yeah, mostly alone. Don’t let the graphic you provided interfere with a pre-conceived narrative. And don’t forget to label all those people racist!
First, I’m not labelling those people as racist.
Second, the popular vote in those places stacks up like this: Alta: 1.4mill Ont. 2.2 mill, BC 799k, Que 600k, Sask 366k, Man 264k and NB, 143k. So yes in fact the biggest single chunk of support for the Conservatives is in southern Ontario, but regionally, the West is the breadbasket of Conservative power and out performs every other region in popular votes and seats. But what is interesting is that its almost like two different parties. If you were to tell Tories on the prairies that the only reason they aren’t a tiny insignificant force in the world is due to the 2.2 million people of mostly southern Ontario they’d laugh at you. It’s why I say that the Conservatives only have themselves to blame for making so much of the focus of their party on AlSask issues and oil in particular. Playing the regional game in Canada as a national party tends to keep you out of power. There are many precedents: Reform, NDP, and Conservatives have all suffered this fate in the past. National parties struggle to form government without Ontario and Quebec. The BQ and Reform destroyed the Tories in 1993 and the Bloc Albertois stopped their progress in 2019. The Conservatives have to figure this out. Regional splintering has never helped them. Either they become a national party again, or Alberta will create a new party and siphon away the votes as they did in 1993. And again I’m not a Conservative, so I don’t shed tears for them, but I’m even more opposed to right wing populism and ethno-nationalism gaining a foothold in Canadian politics and so it strikes me that a large national moderate Conservative party is good for progressives.
Interesting to put yourself in the position of someone whose life’s work is (gradually or suddenly) unappreciated or disdained by large numbers of people. The extractive industries (oil & gas, mining, forestry) are obvious examples, but there are lots of others: factory farming, hunting/trawler fishing, banking, drudge manufacturing work, and government work of all kinds. Many people identify at a visceral, intensely personal level with the work they do, the work they have spent their whole lives trying to do better. What happens when that work becomes anathema or uneconomic, and when everyone in your community, including your family, depends on it? You get intensely defensive and reactionary. You vote against anyone trying to force you to change. You deny the facts and the economic and social realities. You hunker down in that “little local bubble of worry” and reinforce the same mentality in your community. The more types of work that fall into this category (and the poorer your education system and your national capacity to retrain workers), the stronger the “you shouldn’t have to change” conservatives grow, especially when blame is conveniently laid on “outsiders”. IMO it’s a psychosis, a symptom of a crumbling industrial economic system that no longer serves any of us well.
A transition strategy that considers those people disposable is not a transition strategy. And it sows the seeds for much worse governance challenges than trying to “simply” address climate change with everyone on board.
Briarpatch magazine recently ran a whole issue on the just transition movement, with many thoughtful articles on what it looks like to make change that involves everyone: https://briarpatchmagazine.com/issues/view/may-june-2019
One article in it, Unbordering, by Syed Hussan, was especially moving to me: https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/unbordering
One part that has stayed with me is about transformational imagining: “I begin with the belief that it is not possible for people like you and me – implicated deeply in a colonial, carceral, atomized capitalist system – to develop a collective structure of a transformed world. Not yet. If any one of us does so alone, away from struggles or relationships, we are sure to become authoritarian. I believe, and I could be wrong, that our task in organizations (as collectives not solitudes), is to transform ourselves into beings capable of imagining and creating a just world.”
Deeply practical optimism.
Fossil fuels are not going to get any cleaner or less expensive. Solar, Wind and friends (eg. battery storage) are only going to become cheaper and more ubiquitous. This is going to disrupt the Alberta economy in fundamental ways that will only become more painful the longer they resist changing. Alberta could have an economy based on /energy/ not just oil, gas and tar. Making this transition will take political will power, investment and a good deal of salesmanship. Sadly, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
I grew up in BC. Spent a lot of time in Alberta (years, not months). Lived in Quebec and Ontario and now call New Brunswick home. Yes, we are a country of regions. Our current fractures are linguistic, geographic, and demographic (age & education).
It’s easy to discount people you have never met. Perhaps programs like an expanded Katimavik can help bridge the gaps across this country. Maybe we need a system of national service, military or otherwise. Education is not the answer alone, though it could help. We need to get people sitting down together and talking, not debating. That’s a role that organizations like CBC/SRC could address. There seems to be a general lack of empathy in Canada today, but the way that some communities have embraced refugees & immigrants, as our little town has, gives me some hope.
So much good and interesting in this comment, Kai! Thanks.
In general, I think Canadians outside of Quebec really don’t understand Quebec, and I also think that’s true vice versa. The issue with Bill 21 is that it may seem like a logical protection of minority rights from a Napoleonic Code point of view, but it requires the invoking of the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Constitution, which means that everyone knows it is tangible discrimination and a violation of the Charter in common law terms. This is one of the ways in which Quebec’s status as a distinct society is cemented into the structure of Canada. It is not merely that Quebecois are different linguistically and culturally. When people say “Alberta is a distinct society too” I would yes, but, not like Quebec.
You make many many other interesting points in your comment too, and it’s interesting to see what the European vote says about the domestic voter. I would say that the opposite is true in Canada in that the provincial vote tells you much more about the sentiments of folks in the regions than the federal vote. But there is also more correlation between the provincial and federal intentions than there is perhaps between national and European elections.
Thanks for taking the time!