A friend of mine was chatting about the election debate back home.
So, this got me to thinking. Why does Canada have so many more political parties then the U.S., and why do they all get invited to debates instead of having to wait outside, like Nader?
Any specific reasons?
Well, I’m tempted to turn this question around and ask, Why does Canada have so many political parties? Or, why so many that are in the debates? I mean, we’ve got Democratic, Republican, Green, and Reform (not to mention Libertarian, Communist, etc.). That equals Canada if you don’t count Quebecois (fair: after all, we don’t have a Francophone state). Of course, Green and Reform get very few supporters; that’s why they’re not in the debates. But these Canadian Parties, do you think they are different enough to jutisfy their separateness? Canada strikes me as a country that is particularly stable; not one to change its ideological bearings from election to election.
I realise the U.S. has the same number of parties, what I was really asking was why Canada doesn’t end up with a two party system like the U.S. does - with people voting Democrat instead of say Libertarian to avoid a Republican candidate.
A lot of people think changing the voting system will change this. Does Canada have a different voting system (I don’t know, I was underage when I left)?
Or is it due to greater provencial autonomy?
It’s not because we’re more open-minded. Canada has only ever elected two parties federally, and for 126 years they were the only parties that made any difference at the federal elvel. Simple historical reasons follow:
Prior to 1993, Canada at a federal level only had two and a half political parties; the Progressive Conservative party on the slight right, the Liberal Party on the slight left, and the half party, the New Democratic Party, which was always good for some Parliament seats but never had a hope in hell of forming a government.
Quebec screwed it all up. Let me explain.
Canada had a long history of having third parties that got seats in Parliament but never actually won; plus, provincial parties did not always follow the federal paradigm, and some provinces had parties in their legislatures unique to the province or region, like Social Credit in BC or the Union Nationale in Quebec.
Historically, however, the federal third parties came from the West. the old Progressive party, which died and was quasi-merged with the Conservatives to make our modern Progressive Conservative party, was once a third party force. They were followed by the CCF, which morphed into today’s NDP. However, we now have five parties. How, you ask?
The Quebec issue and associated headaches began a long time ago, but reached a head with the ascension of the provincial Parti Quebecois to power in Quebec in 1976. They attempted a separation referendum in 1980 and lost. In 1982, the federal government, under the leadership of Pierre Trudeau, repatriated and amended Canada’s constitution without Quebec’s signature; it’s binding on Quebec anyway, though they still complain. The rift between Ottawa and Quebec was never wider, but the PQ was badly damaged by back-to-back PR losses (the people of Quebec wanted to sign on with the new Constitution) and was voted out by the Quebec Liberal Party.
In 1984, Brian Mulroney led the Progressive Conservative Party - one of the two major parties, you’ll recall, but the one that usually lost to the Liberals, to a gigantic victory in the federal election, beating up Pierre Trudeau’s semi-retarded successor, John Turner. In so doing, Mulroney, a Quebecer, had to cobble together a tremendous cross-Canada coalition of Atlantic Canadian left-leaning Tories, Ontario “Red Tories,” disaffected Westerners who still hated Trudeau, and the other group that really hated Trudeau - Quebec separatists. By recruiting top Quebec sovereigntists into his coalition, Mulroney gained tremendous influence in Quebec, winning most of the seats there in 1984 and again in 1988. Many of his own cabinet ministers were supposedly reformed separatists, including none other than current separatist fuhrer Lucien Bouchard, Mulroney’s chief Quebec lieutenant.
Part of Mulroney’s design was to fix the 1982 constitutional rift by amending the Constitution to Quebec’s satifaction. thsi was partially because he wanted to be bigger than Trudeau, and partially because it was part of his deal with the sovereigntist weasels in his cabinet. This would include a clause that would give Quebec vague and undefined powers to pass whatever laws it needed to protect its being a “distinct society,” and if that sounds really suspicious, you’re not the only one. This proposal was hammered out by Mulroney and the provincial premiers and went over like a lead blimp. Federalist Quebecers mostly liked it; die-hard separatists hated it since it threatened their dreams of a pure homeland. The rest of Canada either grudgingly accepted it or really, REALLY hated it.
“Distinct society” remains a curse in Canada to this day, but hey, it was agreed to, right? Wrong. After some of the provinces ratified and Mulroney gloated in Parliament about his political genius - he actually bragged about how he “rolled the dice” with Canada and won - the deal, known as the Meech Lake Accord, failed. It was held up in Manitoba’s legislature by a native member named Elijah Harper on a technicality, out of his disdain for the accord’ failure to recognize anything for aboriginals. Eventually the Newfoundland legislature decided to give up on it.
The accord collapsed. Federalist Quebecers were outraged. Separatists were equally outraged, even though they’d opposed it, because it gave them something to be angry about. The rest of Canada was outraged because Mulroney had just blown an uneasy national unity peace out the window.
Had he ever.
Mulroney’s sovereigntist coalition collapsed. Lucien Bouchard abandoned him, starting the upstart Bloc Quebecois - by my count, the fifth of six parties Bouchard has belonged to - and others melted away. Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative party, elected to another majority in 1988, began to collapse. Quebecers no longer saw any hope for their demands in it; Westerners were alienated by Mulroney’s pandering to Quebec; everyone was turned off by the administration, which had become appallingly corrupt and had blown the nation’s finances. The national debt had more than doubled and the PC’s approval rating dipped below ten percent.
Mulroney and his cabinet had done two things that led to the splintering of the political landscape;
In the 1988 election the PCs had gotten 170 seats out of 295. In the 1993 election they won exactly 2. It was the worst defeat in any country in the history of modern liberal democracy.
Not only had Lucien Bouchard’s new Bloc Quebecois party taken off like a rocket, but a new protest party had come from the West, the Reform Party. Espousing fiscal and social conservatism, the Reformers argued they were the only conservative party around in 1990, and they were absolutely right. With the NDP having been around for decades without accomplishing anything and generally doing just as bad a job as anyone when they won provincial elections, Westerners flocked to Reform.
So now we have five parties; Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, Reform, New Democratic Party, and Progressive Conservative, who were blown off the map in 1993. But they didn’t die.
See, the problem is that the nation is now SO divided regionally that no party can cross regional lines and win. The Reform Party, now called the Canadian Alliance because they wanted a PR boost, is perceived in central and Eastern Canada as being a party of right-wing loons, so they won’t vote for them. The Liberal Party is still despised out West for everything Pierre Trudeau did, so the West won’t vote Liberal. The Bloc Quebecois only runs in Quebec. The NDP and PC parties pick up a little here and there but are now on the verge of annihilation.
So the reason we have five parties is that we’re not united as a country. I wish I could say it’s because we have a better system, but that isn’t true.
That was beautifully said.
I probably learned more that I did all through school, just from your post!
As a 30-something canadian from the east (New Brunswick) I can tell you that the politically educated in this area are VERY anti Reform (they can change the name all they want, they are still Reform) The Reform party referred to atlantic Canadians in a recent speach as ‘lazy’. Not a very bright move.
The NDP out her is almost non-existant, and will never have enough power to gain enough power to do anything. The <snicker> Conservatives, led by the incredible Joe Clark <wails with malicous laughter> will do nothing in the election, a seat or two at best. They have become, through lack of dynamic leadership, a true non-party. They have no issues, no substance.
And Cretien. He is incredibly embarassing. He cant really speak english, OR french, and he is a bumbling muttering buffoon. Like George W, except REALLY OLD!!! If he gets re-elected, and he will, he will be in office into his 70’s!
I somehow doubt he will accurately reflect my vision for Canada.
Its hopeless really.
Liberal - bumbling old buffoon - will get re-elected
Conservative - little nobody man (think Mr Magoo) nobody takes seriously
Bloc Quebecois - they dont even TRY to get seats outside of Quebec!
Reform (alliance whatever) young handsome dynamic leader who makes most people’s skin crawl - his ‘western canda is the ONLY canada’ platform will never fly
and the NDP Alexa MacDonough has more class and substance than any of the others, but she will never EVER get the seats to take the leadership of the country. Sad really, as she seems to have really good ideas, and her platform has real substance in regards to the environment.
I will vote liberal, because they are the least offensive of the two strongest parties: Liberal and Alliance.
Its not like we are doing BAD under the liberals…
I had heard that the reason many non-U.S. countries have more than 2 major parties is that they don’t adhere to the “winner take all” system we have in U.S. elections – i.e. if 12% of the population votes for the Bloc Quebecois, then 12% of the seats in Parliament will be filled by members of the Bloc Quebecois party, rather than having EACH seat be voted on individually by district like we have in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Does Canada use a winner-take-all election system like the U.S., or a proportional-party election system?
In 301 ridings across Canada, the first-past-the-post winner gets a seat in parliament. The leader of the party that gets the most seats becomes prime minister (unless two parties form a coalition that has the most seats, in which case they select the PM).
I think that this system lends itself to the current splintering of the Canadian political scene. As RickJay noted, the parties are regional: the Liberals get seats in Ontario (which has 103), Quebec (75) and the Maritimes (33 all together); Reform get seats in the West (88 collectively), and is trying desperately to penetrate Ontario; the BQ wins seats in Quebec; the NDP a smattering in the West and occasionally the Maritimes. The PCs used to fight with the Liberals for Ontario and Quebec, but they’re dead in the water. There was the National Party for a while (Mel Hurtig’s baby) which was fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but didn’t survive their failure to win any seats at all in the 1993 election.
At least the Natural Law party isn’t running candidates anymore…
he will be in office into his 70’s
hey thats nothing compared to strom thurmond who is into his 200’s 
Rick Jay, your analysis is really very good.
What do you think will happen four years from now? It is hard to believe the Liberals will be able to keep office in perpetuity. At some point, the economy will sour or Canadians will want to continue their long established tradition of throwing the bums out. Do you think it more likely that Conservatives will finally have the sense to toss Joe Who and work something out with Reform, or that a moderate national party will come out of left field and divide the Liberal vote?
It is worth mentioning the Conservatives are still very strong provincially in Ontario and out east and that the NDP has led a number of provinces at various times.
Like many Canadians, I despise Mulroney and his legacy. However, living in Quebec at the time of the near-schism, I think Chretien and his failure to do squat was also very embarrassing. I think the Liberals have done a pretty lacklustre job, but there really is no better party to vote for. All of the parties are arrogant, at least the Liberals aren’t incompetent.
Since when are the Liberals “not incompetent”? Did you miss the near-loss in the Quebec referendum, the HRDC scam, and APEC inquiry, to name just a few? (The last one proved they can’t even run a good coverup.)
Part 2 of my huge, long explanation. Bear with me.
As near as I can tell, there are basically three possible scenarios:
1. We could go on with a splintered Parliament, with the Liberals winning a few more elections and eventually blowing up and opening the floor to the Alliance or a revamped PCs, or even the NDP if blowing money comes back into vogue, which it always could.
Given the country’s current demographics, this is the probable scenario for another few elections. Ontarians will not vote CA now or in the foreseeable future, and Quebecers haven’t voted for a non-Quebecois leader since… uhhh… I dunno, Pearson? I do think the Liberals will win this election and maybe the next.
2. We could see some of the parties die. This is the likely scenario over the next ten-fifteen years.
The likeliest parties to die - and here I’m going to vary from the popular opinion - are the Bloc Quebecois and the Canadian Alliance. Not the PCs or NDP.
In keeping a party visible at the national level, the key to long term survival is legitimacy, not popularity, and this is where I really coolly tie this back into the American political system and Ralph Nader.
A lot of people agree with the things Ralph Nader stood for and campaigned for. A lot of people like Ralph Nader. A lot of people hated Algore and Dubya enough to vote for Bugs Bunny if they thought Bugs had a chance to win. The kicker is that Bugs wasn’t going to win.
If you’re going to invest your volunteer time, votes and effort into a party, the key is to convince people you’re in it for the long haul. The real problem Ralph and the Green Party faced was NOT the fear over anti-Bush vote splitting. The fear is that a vote for the Green party is a vote on a party that will be running some no-name in 2004 with a shoestring budget. A party needs - I don’t know how else to put this, so I’ll call it a critical mass of support, a point at which you know it will be around next time, and the time after that, so that the effort its members put into it now will help continue its efforts, even if it loses.
Consider this; Walter Mondale had no chance of winning in 1984, did he? NOBODY thought he could win; he was no likelier to win in 1984 than Ralph Nader was this year. Walter didn’t even think he could win. He was annihilated and everyone expected it; as Dennis Miller put it, Miller and Mondale almost tied and Miller wasn’t even running. But the DEMOCRATIC PARTY remained a key institution despite the 1984 slaughter because it had been around for two centuries, held innumerable other offices, and was simply a traditional staple of U.S. politics. You knew, as a Demo supporter, that they’d be there in 1986, 1988, 1990…
That’s why the Green Party will more or less collapse.
That’s why the Canadian Alliance is dead meat.
The Reform Party was formed in 1990 as an alternative to existing parties. They’ve been running since 1993 on the presumption and expectation that they would become the Liberals’ chief opponents, the other party prepared to form a government, and eventually win and form a government. The fact that they couldn’t in 1993 was expected, but nobody minded because there was an open, honest understanding that they hadn’t matured that far, that acceptance east of Manitoba was a future target. When they failed again in 1997 despite a lot of effort, nobody jumped off ship - but it cost Preston Manning his job, and it forced an image change and a new name, Canadian Alliance.
If the same thing happens on Nov. 27 (and it will) the Alliance will either begin to unravel or be one election away from collapse. The realization will sink in to ALL its new Eastern members and many of its grassroots members that the party cannot win an election, ever, no matter what happens. If the party cannot win an election, the party has no reason to exist, and the members will drift away, mostly to the Progressive Conservatives or entirely out of politics.
That’s start to happen slowly after Nov. 27. When they lose again in 2004, the Alliance will die quickly. Their major error to this point has been not forming provincial wings - a move that would give them legitimacy in government, create “name” star candidates for future elections, and keep the party’s name in the forefront of national affairs.
The same thing will eventually happen to the Bloc Quebecois, which promised to dissolve after one term and is now about to compound that lie a second time. The BQ gets a lot of votes now because Quebecers have no other reasonable option for voting against the Liberals; if the Alliance dies and the PCs resurge, though, the PCs will be the alternative vote, and the BQ will become suddenly, stunningly irrelevant.
That leaves the Liberals, the PCs will the offal of an Alliance collapse, and the NDP, who will continue to shamble along with the 8-12% of folks who will always vote socialist. Unlike the Alliance, the NDP were smart enough to go provincial.
3. The country could explode, which is more of a possibility that people are willing to admit, although this is not a short-term possibility. But in 30 years, who knows?
A quickie explanation: Canada’s executive branch is Queen Elizabeth II, who doesn’t get voted for. We have no elections for our executive branch.
Our elections are basically equivalent to voting for the U.S. House of Representatives; we call it the House of Commons. Instead of districts, Canada is divided into 301 ridings, which are districts of roughly 100,000 voters. Matt_mcl’s running in one in Quebec, can’t remember what it’s called. I vote in “Mississauga East.”
Each riding elects its own representative; that’s the whole federal election. There’s no proportional representation of any kind, and no runoff elections; if you get 26% of the votes in your riding you can get elected if nobody else gets 25%. The party that gets the most seats then forms the government, selecting a cabinet and all that good stuff; their leader is the Prime Minister. If they get a straight-out majority they get an easy ride because they can basically make any law they want as long as it’s constitutional. If they don’t have half the seats, they have to cooperate with other parties.
In practice, Canada has no separate executive branch of government. The Queen and her Canadian representative, the Governor-General, are figureheads with ceremonial duties; if they tried to run the country the monarchy would be disposed of with all speed. Consequently, the Prime Minister and his cabinet are not only the leaders of the Legislature but are also the de facto executive branch. The only check on their power is A) the provincial governments, who have constitutionally delineated powers, and B) the courts, who can strike down law.
Canada also has a Senate; it, too, is unelected (it’s appointed by the Prime Minister) and is mostly ineffective, though occasionally conflict does break out. In general, the House of Commons runs the country. Incidentally, the provincial governments all run the same way, except that most do not have Senates. Their representatives from the Queen are called Lieutenant Governors are are also figureheads.
The other key difference is that Canada has no set terms; like Britain, the ruling party may call an election any time they want as long as it’s within five years of the last election (can’t go any longer than that.) An election could also happen if a ruling party suffers a vote of no confidence, essentially any situation where they lose a major vote on a Parliamentary matter, like a budget. If that happens Parliament dissolved and a new election happens. It’s not much of a possibility if a party wins a flat-out majority.
Hey thanks, RickJay. Good stuff.
I don’t suppose you would care to expound on exactly how it is determined that a vote is a vote of confidance. It that the right term?
APEC was a national disgrace.
I voted in the Quebec referendum and was very POd at the Liberals for not seriously challenging the very glib advertising done by the separatists.
Chretien has caved in to the banks and been very lax about making sure money given to First Nationals did not end up in the hands of a few corrupt leaders.
The Liberals have done lots of other crappy things. But not as crappy as Mulroney. And not facist.
Incompetent? Sure. Incompetent by the standards of Canadian politics and compared to other parties? Hmmm…
Chretien has not told single welfare mothers “you can often bargain with your grocer to get a few cents off a box of Kraft Dinner” or similar advice. The economy has done well, not that the Liberals had much to do with that. Chretien is lucky to be alive, given he has the RCMP defending him. At least Martin pooh-poohed the bank merger, and Canadian foreign policy continues to take admirable moral stnces instead of agreeing with the US, eg on Cuba. I do not like Chretien, but here in Canada, we vote for parties, not the person. Except maybe Ed Broadbent. He was a class act.
I wish I could tell you using exact technical terms, but I can’t.
Basically, a vote of confidence is either:
An actual vote of no confidence, e.g. the opposition calls for a vote of no confidence and gets it, or
A vote on a bill the ruling party attempts to pass as law, which would include things like budgets and major legislative bills but would not include free votes (votes in which party discipline isn’t expected) or other minor affairs, like voting on whether March should be Pork Industry Appreciation Month or something.
The last time this happened was in 1979. Joe Clark, then as now the leader of the Progressive Conservatives, won a minority government; when they attempted to pass their budget they screwed up somehow and didn’t have enough voters in the House. They lost, an election was called, and they were turfed.
Obviously, the “pork” issue takes on a different light depending on which side of the border you’re on!! 
via my Cape Breton grandma. I was just up there in August, in fact, but it was before the election was called, so not many politics were discussed, besides grousing that NS doesn’t get enough investments and jobs coming in. Seems to be a perpetual problem, however, which is why said Grandma ended up in Brooklyn in the first place (leaving in 1936), but it did give me a good insight into exactly how regional Canada is.
RickJay, thanks for your wonderful summaries! My question is: Since there’s no primaries, you voters don’t get to choose who the leader of the party is going to be. So, what do you do if there’s a guy or gal who’s been your trusted MP for a zillion years and brings back the Canadian bacon (snerk) to your district a lot, and then his/her party somehow elects a leader that you wouldn’t trust with a burnt match. You can’t cast a vote for your good guy/gal without electing the moron as PM, right? How do you handle this?
I’m sure that RickJay will correct me if I’m mistaken, but MPs don’t bring back the bacon. In fact, MPs are usually little more than warm bodies in Ottawa, as far as their ridings go.
In the Canadian government, there’s no equivalent to Congressional or Senatorial panels or committees that have real power to direct funds or other benefits to one area or another. An MP really has little power to benefit his/her constituents, so a vote for an MP is largely a vote for the party and the candidate for prime minister.
You may think that your MP is a good person who belongs in Ottawa, but generally, MPs don’t get elected on promises to direct money or jobs or anything back home.
I agree with RickJ’s detailed answer, and would jsut like to highlight an important institutional detail that he touched on (it also replies to McKenna’s question), and that is that in the parliamentary system, you only get one vote, for the local MP. You have to weigh at least three factors in decidiging how to cast it: the local candidate, the policies of the different parties, and the leaders of the parties. You may like the local member, but decide that you can’t stomach the policies of that member’s party, or the leader of that party, and so vote for someone else accordingly. You can’t split your vote, and vote for one party for the local member, and another party for the PM.
This has important implications for the viability of new parties. For example, take the Nader campaign. He appears to have pockets of strong support in some states in the US, but in spite of the votes he got, neither he nor any other Green party member is going to Washington. Those votes do seem to be “thrown away,” as the Goreites were afraid. The Nader campaign may have a long-term effect on whether the two big parties pay more attention to the Green Party’s issue, but they have no immediate effect of electing Green Party members.
If you transplanted that dynamic to the Canadian parliamentary system, someone with that much support would likely have succdeeded in electing a few members from some of the provinces where the vote was concentrated. The only way a Nader supporter could vote for him would be to vote for the local Green Party candidate, and it sounds like there were some locally concentrated pockets of support, enough to elect a member or two. So, in the parliamentary system, a vote for Nader would have an immediate effect - some members in Parliament. Since the vote is local, rather than state-wide, some members go to Parliament. That gives the party a base to build on for the next election, and by being in Parliament, they get a chance for the next four years to express their views and get public attention.
This local approach has another implication for building new parties. The incumbency factor is not nearly as important in Canadian politics as it is in the US Congress. If I want to vote out Jean Chrétien, I have to vote against the local Liberal candidate, even if I think that person would make a good MP for the constituency, and even if that person has been in office for donkey’s years. So it’s easier for a new party to ride a local wave of discontent and knock off the incumbent, most notably in the defeat of the PC government in 1993. (We do have safe seats, but nothing like the safe incumbent seats in the Congress.)
And, to get back to one of Polycarp’s original questions, all five of the leaders get invited to the debate because all five of them held seats in the last Commons, leading their particular caucus. Jean Chréien was Prime Minister, Stockwell Day was the Leader of the Official Opposition, and the other three were leaders of their particular parties. They’ve all earned the right to participate in the debates, because their parties have all previously elected members to the Commons.
You’re welcome!
As to the dynamics of local MPs and voting for that party, I can’t top hansel and jti and their analysis. I will say, though, that you CAN bring home some bacon if you belong to the ruling party, especially if you’re a big mucky-muck in the Cabinet; but it’s not as easy or above-board as it is in Congress.
Local MP’s here also provide services to their constituents, things like facilitating citizenship hearings, passports, birth certificates, and government serices of all types. That’s easier to do if you’re an MP and have 100,000 people to represent than if you’re a Congressman and represent 700,000.
Leaders of parties are chosen in conventions of the party’s members, basically the same was the Republican and Democratic parties pick presidential candidates except - well, with no primaries. The party just rents a stadium or something, thousands of party members and tens of thousands of media show up, and they keep voting until someone wins a runoff. It allows for a bit more drama. In the last Alliance leadership they went the mail-in vote route and it was a catastrophe so I think they may dump that idea.
What’s interesting about this system is that you can name a leader anytime, even when you’re in power, so it’s possible for Canada to have an unelected Prime Minister, at least for a little while. In 1993, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney resigned (this is a way of retiring here, not a way of avoiding impeachment a la Tricky Dick) while his party was in power, so a leadership convention was held and Kim Campbell became leader and Prime Minister; a few months later she got wiped out in the election, so badly that she quit politics and now does piano tours with her trophy boyfriend (really.) The previous guy to do this, John Turner, also got wiped out. Not a coincidence; both previous leaders resigned at least in part because their parties were in trouble, leaving a stooge behind to take the fall.