So, here’s the initial Canadian election results:
Liberals 169
Alliance 68
Bloc Qué. 39
NDP 13
PC 12
**Total: 301**
So, what do people think this means? PM Chrétien’s got his third straight majority government, and seems to have edged the Bloc in the popular vote in Québec; Day’s increased their seats; Clark and McDonough have survived; Duceppe lost popular vote. (And, best of all, no hanging chads!!)
Good things? Bad things? Mixed?
Chretien was apparently quoted as saying he would probably retire in two years. What was the point of this whole thing?
Egad, I’m an American, Sue, and even I know what this election in Canada was about: the Liberals attempting to take advantage of the political situation to give their party control of Parliament for another however many years it is y’all let your guys go without an election. Assuming the Liberals have a majority, their gamble was paid.
Don’t complain about it: it is a common tactic in parliamentary governments. Got a problem with it? Go to regularly scheduled elections, and have the same stupid regular fun we do down here. 
I’m glad that both the NDP and the PCs retained official party status (a minimum of twelve seats in the house), which entitles them to federal funding, and is pretty much necessary to have a federal presence.
Given the massive swing towards centrism in the U.S. and Canada in the last decade, I’m frankly amazed that the Canadian Alliance would field an extremist like Day. No matter how the CA softens his policies, he’s a right-wing ideologue who’d feel more comfortable at a meeting of the Moral Majority than in Parliament. I can’t believe that anyone thought he’d have a good chance of seriously damaging the Liberals. Once again, the protest parties get to squabble over the position of official opposition, while the Liberals perpetuate a mediocre majority.
I’d prefer a strong NDP, but I doubt that will ever happen. Lacking that, I’d like the right wing in Canada to present a viable opposition so that the Liberals get off their asses and do something.
OK, now don’t get me wrong here–I’m glad the Liberals won a majority, I think Stockwell Day should be put down, Canada is a great country, etc. etc. etc.
However.
Looking at it from an outsider’s standpoint, don’t Canadians feel their election system is a tad, well, unbalanced, when the Liberals can bag 100 seats (or almost 2/3 what they needed for a majority) just by winning 51% of the vote in one province (Ontario)? It seems to me bad for the country when the Liberals could, as so nearly, win a majority with those 100 seats, half the Quebec seats and a handful from the Maritimes, while ignoring everything to the west. I mean, if you’re looking for reasons for the rise of the CA and antipathy in the western provinces, perhaps you need to look no further.
Just a thought.
Actually, the rise of the Alliance is an instructive lesson in the differences between the political/governing systems of Canada and the United States. The Alliance is, at its roots, a party that is founded in cynicism and frustration, the people of Western Canada feeling left out of government. Its parallel party in the US is the Reform Party, which arose here in the early 90’s out of the same sort of frustration and cynicism. But, whereas in Canada a third party can gain some national traction by obtaining enough seats in Parliament to do some serious heckling, requiring only that it have enough of a regional backing to win in some ridings, in the US, with its separate executive and with its winner-take-all Senate seats, third parties have much more difficulty obtaining a national presence. Further, the rapidly dwindling feeling of regionalism in the US makes regional factionalism even more unlikely.
In a further parallel, the Alliance has effectively been co-opted by a totally different political faction, just as the Reform Party got co-opted this year. But whereas Mr. Buchanan ejected the original message of the Reform Party, Mr. Day continues to embrace the basic philosophy of the Alliance (get federal government out of our provinces). In the United States, the ‘conservative’ (what I prefer to call orthodox) faction prefers to remain part of a traditional party, because in the US, the political mechanisms and structures make it very difficult for a third party to survive, even with as energized a base as you have on the ‘right-wing’.
As is usually the case with Parliamentary systems, the Liberals will maintain their pre-eminent position as long as the opposition remains fractured, and no national emergencies cause the people to rethink their affiliations.
One note regarding the post by Duke: While it is true that Ontario is important, your statement about how easy it is to win a majority in Parliament is inaccurate. Winning 51% of the popular vote in Ontario translates to nothing in particular. With multiple parties, it is conceivable that a party could bag ALL the seats from a province and win as little as 33% of the overall vote; a plurality is all that is required to send a member to Ottawa.
By the same token, it is equally possible for a party to win a strong majority of the overall vote, yet gain only half or fewer of the seats in a province. All it takes is close wins in several ridings, with large victories in the ones they win.
Ontario is a pretty diverse province, with everything from industrial to suburban to rural districts. Liberals have done well there of late because the Alliance preaches a message that doesn’t resound with the members of the province, and the other opposition parties have lost all their energy. But Ontario in the past hasn’t always been so solidly in one camp or the other, and yet, your thought about the ‘balance’ of the situation is, of course, exactly what energizes the Western Provinces into voting Alliance. 
But Duke -
Aren’t seats assigned based on the population? In other words, Ontario and Quebec have the most seats because they have the greatest concentration of population. Now if those people wish to vote Liberal or PC or what have you, then ought they not vote their concience just as, I believe, the Western and Eastern provinces do?
It’s sour grapes for them to whine about how much attention Upper and Lower Canada get without considering that they are essentially the centers of political power in Canada.
One can just as easily argue that if the Western provinces got on the ball and stopped electing right minded extremist leaders like Manning and Day (and their many racist party members) then their views might also become more commonly shared by voters in Ontario and Quebec.
The problem is that Canada is polarized between the east and west and the strength in voting numbers remains in Ontario and Quebec. As you say, the western provinces are doomed to be disappointed at every turn if they continue to polarize the country, as they have, with their choice of extreme right leadership and anti-Ontario/Quebec rhetoric.
DSYoung and QuickSilver:
I’m not saying so much that it’s wrong for Ontario to have 103 ridings; nor am I saying that it would have been “wrong” (insofar as any election result is “wrong”) for the Liberals not to have a majority after winning such a large plurality.
It just seems, well, strange that the Liberals received 97% of the seats in Ontario after winning 51% of the vote there. To try to give voice to their arguments: what if a “regional Ontario” party took those 100 seats without putting up candidates in any other province?
It’s the sort of result that would have proponents of Proportional Representation up in arms. In the UK a number of politicians have been clamoring for a change in the electoral system so that MPs are selected by the percentage of votes received. In Ontario, for example, such a system would have given the Liberals only 52 MPs instead of 100. The system seems to work well in other countries (I know Germany and New Zealand use it) though it does tend to lead to an overkill of coalition governments.
Any thoughts on a Proportional Rep system in Canada?
The western provinces seem to me to be locked into a self-reinforcing loop. People feel excluded from federal decision-making, and so vote for a ‘protest party’ (CCF/NDP, Reform/Alliance) which has NO chance of forming the national government, which in turn means that they are shut out of the decision-making, and so it goes…
The fact is that for the most part, the three main federal-level political parties are regionally-based, Liberals = Ontario, Alliance = West, BQ = Quebec, and since Ontario is so populous, the Liberals have a huge head-start on a majority.
The two ‘minor’ parties, the NDP and the PC, are more national in scope, but since their policies are more heavily based on (differing) economic theories, rather than regional self-interest, that is to be expected.
Bill
A more interesting fact, I feel, is the fact that we got only about 63% turnout, the lowest figure since 1896. And the Liberals got 41% of that. In other words, the Liberals got a mandate to govern from only 26% of the electors, which they will proceed anyway to treat as a blank cheque on continued neoliberal auctioning-off of social programs and national sovereignty. </pissed-off Kneedipper>
I’m amazed that anyone still takes this stuff seriously. For the first time in my life I haven’t voted or campaigned for someone. It’s pretty obvious to all but the most dedicated idiot that the game is rigged. It’s painful to watch people talk about alledged party platforms and alledged differences in economic policies - when they’re all the same. Interchangeable masks on the corporate face. Oh well. I guess some folks are still dazzled with the illusion of “choice”.
Which is more or less what happened in B.C. and Alberta, where the Alliance took over 90% of the seats with about half the vote.
Duke, foist not unto either Canada, or the US, any system of government that provides for representation by minor parties in the legislature (and especially not unto Canada and other countries where the legislature is also the executive)! One needs only to look at Italy and Israel for graphic representation of the evils of coalition building to make a government.
Besides, proportional representation misses an essential point to representative government: the representative isn’t representing the people of the province/state, but rather the people of the district from which he/she is elected. I certainly enjoy knowing that there is someone in the national government who is devoted to the needs of my local area. And if my local area tends to be Republican while I am a Democrat, or a Libertarian, or some other stripe of political philosophy that never gets represented in my area, at least it is a LOCAL Republican who goes to Washington (or, in the case of Canada, to Ottawa).