Canadian progressives want to change the election rules in
Canada so they can beat Stephen Harper without having to merge their ambitions within
one center-left party. They claim Europe’s system of proportional
representation would make Canada a more representative democracy—and,
consequently, make it easier for voters to put them in power.
They warn obsessively that Canada’s right-wing government could
become a vicious Tea Party. At the same time, they avoid thinking about the
spectacular success of America’s Democratic Party—that victorious alliance of
every significant center-left constituency in America.
Instead of taking their chances by uniting, by acknowledging
the pettiness of their differences, they’d rather change Canada—change the way
it elects governments and then, unavoidably, change the nature of government
itself.
They'd change Canada instead of going to the polls to elect a strong Harper,
Trudeau, Mulcair, or Elizabeth May government, and instead of throwing out the last
election winners when they overplay their majority in Parliament. They’d
have Canadians elect a coalition of parties—small parties with ideas and
constituencies too precious to fit within one platform, with one leader.
In effect, they ask Canadians to believe that their country
is too complex and too fraught with divisions to put the big decisions before
the electorate, in elections, in the form of two viable choices. They’d rather do
the heavy lifting after the votes are counted.
Canadian political observers have been very indulgent. They
don’t ask opposition leadership candidates aggressively why they don’t favor
merging now to beat Harper in three years. They generally accept the
explanation that their “cultures” are too different to fit under one banner.
Left opposition leaders are challenged only to “renew” their
party policies. Yet why would it sound naive to ask Justin Trudeau to explain why
Liberals and New Democrats can’t unite?—they all cheer for Obama, the UN, the
Charter, green growth, free trade, a strong, creative federal government, and
free enterprise.
Liberals and New Democrats are just as vain as Tories. And
they were left alone to waste a decade in the wilderness before accepting the
legitimacy of the Reform Party of Western Canada.
A left-of-center compromise, nevertheless, has been hatched
to avoid looking as reactionary as the old right.
Opposition figures speak favorably of “electoral
co-operation,” that is, agreeing to pick one anti-Harper candidate for each
winnable Conservative riding. This gambit was shredded yesterday by possibly
Canada’s toughest political analyst Chantal Hebert of
the Toronto Star.
“But too many of them (co-operative
arrangements) are really only looking for a shortcut to beat the Conservatives
without having to do the heavy lifting of seeking policy common ground with
their opposition rivals.
“In the absence of a joint
comprehensive platform, the single-candidate approach amounts to asking voters
to wear a blindfold as they craft a non-Conservative government.”
Not only would voters be asked to prefer any one of three
opposition parties over the Conservatives, they’d have to want Harper out so
badly that they’d accept any one of three alternative Prime Ministers, or a
troika, instead.
Canada and America’s mobile, liberal cultures and governing
imperatives have been well served by our transcontinental, two-party systems.
In times of severe stress and regional division, third
parties emerge in both countries, and fade away. These, however, are normal
times. The left is not divided among revolutionaries, communists, socialists,
and social democrats—and the right is not divided on the abolishment of the progressive
income tax, universal suffrage, or the restoration of the ancient powers of the
crown.
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