Canada Archive

With the NSW Labor government on track for a massive defeat, I thought I’d look into the history of massive landslide defeats in Westminster system countries. Most of the examples I found came from Canada, mainly from provincial elections, along with a few other notable examples. The Queensland elections of 1974 and 1983, the South Australian election of 1993, the 2002 New Zealand election, and elections in the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

There is one example, that stands out from all others, which was the 1993 Canadian federal election, which saw the quick and painful death of a political party with over a hundred years of history.

Brian Mulroney had led the Progressive Conservative (PC) federal government from 1984 until early 1993. He had won a landslide victory in 1984, and was re-elected with a smaller majority in 1988. The government’s popularity collapsed in its second term, and its position worsened in the recession of the early 1990s. Mulroney retired in June 1993 and was succeeded by Canada’s first female Prime Minister, Kim Campbell. She led the government into the federal election in October 1993.

The election was an extreme result, with a majority of Canadian voters changing their vote compared to 1988. The PCs were assaulted on all sides, losing ground to the separatist Bloc Québécois, the opposition Liberals, and the right-wing Reform party. Reform had been formed as a conservative party with its base in the western provinces, promoting decentralisation and attacking the PC government from the right. The Bloc Québécois was formed in 1991 with the defection of a number of Liberal and Progressive Conservative federal MPs from Quebec, committed to sovereignty for Quebec.

At the 1993 election, the Progressive Conservatives collapsed, falling from 169 seats in 1988 to only two. Only one cabinet minister survived the election. While the party had been polling in the mid-30s six weeks out from the election, by election day this had plummeted to 16%.

The Liberal opposition increased its seats from 83 to 177, giving them a solid majority. Both the Bloc Québécois and Reform won their first seats at a general election, with the Bloc winning 54 seats and Reform winning 52. The Bloc became the official opposition, despite only running in one province. The left-wing New Democratic Party also collapsed, falling from 43 to 9. The 1988 election had been their best, but 1993 turned into their worst. They still won more seats than the PCs, despite polling substantially less.

The Progressive Conservatives never recovered from this devastating loss. They won 20 seats in 1997, but again fell to 12 in 2000.

The PCs merged with the Canadian Alliance, the successor to Reform, in 2003 to form the Conservative Party of Canada. The party is dominated by those aligned with Reform.

Meanwhile the New Democrats recovered their strength, and the Bloc today continue to hold a large majority of federal seats in Quebec. With the continued strength of these two parties, it has become incredibly difficult for either major party to form a stable majority government, despite Canada’s majoritarian electoral system.

Only days ago, Jack Layton’s NDP remained in a technical coalition with Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals in Canada. Yet after the coalition was dissolved by Ignatieff supporting the Conservative budget, Layton has lashed out at the Liberals in a new round of radio ads:

“Some things just don’t change,” intones a woman in one ad.

“Another Conservative budget rubber stamped by another Liberal leader. It’s official: Michael Ignatieff failed his first big test as Liberal leader. He’s thrown his lot in with Stephen Harper.”

The ad portrays NDP Leader Jack Layton as the only political leader who can be trusted to look out for average families.

“Jack Layton’s the only leader strong enough to stand up to Harper.”

It’s not that surprising. Clearly the NDP were preparing for Ignatieff to dissolve the coalition which he had never had much love for, and the NDP’s long-term enemy, despite its rhetoric against Stephen Harper, is the Liberals. The NDP aims to supplant the Liberals as the main centre-left party in Canadian politics, and is aiming to tar Ignatieff with the same “weak-leader” brush as Stephane Dion.

In other news, this week’s budget also shows a shift for Harper’s Conservatives away from wooing Quebec voters. After their 2008 election strategy of winning seats in Quebec failed, and the role of the BQ in the stillborn coalition drove a wedge between the Conservatives and swinging Quebec voters, Stephen Harper has shifted his focus.

The problem for the Conservatives is that there don’t seem to be enough seats for them to win to form a majority. They already hold a vast majority in the Prairies states and a large majority in British Columbia. Outside of Toronto, they dominate Ontario, and hold a decent number of seats in the three Maritime provinces. With this impressive result, they only won 143 seats, twelve short of a majority of 155. So where can they win the remaining twelve?

There are only three options: Toronto, Quebec, and Newfoundland. While the Conservatives have room to grow in Newfoundland, the province is too small to have a significant impact. At the 2008 election, the Conservatives made a large push to win seats in the more conservative Quebec seats held by the left-leaning Bloc Quebecois. However, they failed dismally, remaining stuck on 10 Quebec seats. Since then Harper’s relationship with the second-largest province has fallen apart, with much of his ire at the possible coalition being directed at the legitimacy of the Bloc to engage in national politics.

This all comes back to the budget, where it appears that Harper has chosen to strip money out of the two provinces who have bucked the Conservative-voting trend, with the budget being opposed in Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador for alleged cuts to funding to those provinces. In contrast, Harper is aiming at the so-called “905” region around Toronto, named for the telephone area code for the outer suburbs of Toronto. The Toronto metropolitan area, despite the decline of the Liberals, remains almost totally represented by Liberals. There is a 35-seat block which jumps out at you when you look at the electoral map of southern Ontario. Within this block, only two NDP seats and one Conservative seat buck the trend. If only 12 of these 32 Liberal MPs can be toppled, Stephen Harper is on track for that long-sought-after majority.

In other news: The Globe and Mail today includes an interesting email discussion between a Liberal member and NDP member, dissecting the late lamented coalition.

So Canada’s conservative government has brought down a budget, eight weeks after Parliament was prorogued to prevent a new Liberal-NDP coalition government being formed.

The NDP and the Bloc have clearly stated that they will vote against the budget, and have been joined by the Newfoundland premier Danny Williams, who actively campaigned against Harper at the 2008 election. The new Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, is yet to announce whether his party will support the budget, and will make an announcement at about 3am AEDT. If the Liberals decide to vote against the budget, Harper will attempt to call an early election, with the alternative being a new Liberal minority government or Liberal-NDP coalition government.

I don’t know enough about Canadian politics to do in-depth coverage of provincial elections, but I thought I’d do a wrap-up of yesterday’s provincial election in Quebec.

Liberal Party premier Jean Charest was re-elected as Premier. Charest was a minister in Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was the sole minister to survive the 1993 landslide, becoming PC Leader. After recovering ground in the 1997 federal election, Charest moved to Quebec politics, leading the Liberals into the 1998 election, which saw the separatist Parti Québécois government re-elected with a similar result.

At the 2003 election the PQ was defeated, and Charest was elected Premier, leading a majority Liberal government. While the party is called the “Liberal Party”, it does not have formal links with the Federal Liberals, and the main dividing line between the Liberals and the PQ were along federalist/sovereigntist lines, with Charest effectively leading the anti-separatist effort in Quebec. The election also saw the right-wing Action démocratique du Québec gain seats. After its leader Mario Dumont won the party’s only seat in 1994 and 1998, the party won four seats in 2003.

After four years in office, Charest went to an election in 2007. The surging ADQ won a massive 37 seats, bringing them to 41 seats. The result was an effective three-way tie in both popular vote and seats. Charest’s Liberals formed a minority government with 48 seats, while the ADQ won 41 against 36 for the PQ.

Yesterday’s result, only 21 months after the last election, saw an expected result, with the Liberals regaining a slim majority, with 66 seats, and the PQ regaining its clear position as the Official Opposition, with 51 seats. The ADQ was decimated, falling to 7 seats, which saw Mario Dumont resign as leader of the party he founded.

So after the last 21 months, it appears that Quebec politics has returned to the norm of a centre-right federalist party and a centre-left independence party, which has existed for the last 35 years, and the PQ are now in a position to return to government in 2012.

Following Governor-General Michaëlle Jean’s decision yesterday to prorogue the Canadian Parliament until January 26, Canada’s parliamentary democracy is effectively suspended, and the decision has grave consequences for all countries that follow the Westminster system of government, including Australia and the UK.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who theoretically holds office because of success in elections to the House of Commons, now serves in office despite a clear majority of the House making it clear that they plan to vote against his government and support a new Liberal-NDP coalition government.

The Westminster system, as practiced by Canada as well as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, gives power to a government led by a Prime Minister despite the fact that neither the Prime Minister or his party faces a direct national election, as in presidential systems. The main effect of this system is that the Prime Minister remains accountable to the lower house of the Parliament throughout their term in office. During the later years of George W. Bush’s US presidency, it has been repeatedly noted that, were he a Prime Minister in a Westminster democracy, he would have been defeated.

A Westminster Prime Minister can only be considered to be a democratic leader as long as they have been selected by the Parliament for the position, either directly or indirectly through the election of party leaders. As soon as a Prime Minister loses the support of the House they become illegitimate, whether there has been an opportunity for the House to formally vote no confidence in the government or not.

By preventing Parliament from sitting for the explicit purpose of avoiding the defeat of his government, Stephen Harper has acted in the same way as many dictators around the world who have dissolved or inhibited democratic legislatures in order to prevent their opposition challenging their hold on power.

When Parliament resumes in January, it is expected that the centre-left coalition will vote no confidence in Harper’s government. It appears that the Liberal-NDP coalition will then ask the Governor-General to commission a new government. In contrast, it appears that Harper will ask the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and call a new election. Again, it is blatantly undemocratic for a Prime Minister who has lost the one claimed to democratic legitimacy to insist on staying in office and dissolving a Parliament which has rejected him and embraced an alternative candidate, particularly so soon after an election.

In order to improve the Westminster system, a series of reforms could simplify the process, reduce the role of the Governor-General in crises and clarify the democratic solutions in positions of minority governments and constitutional crises without effecting the day-to-day functioning of parliamentary democracy when stable majority governments exist.

Firstly, the appointment of Prime Ministers should be explicitly handed over to the lower house of the Parliament. The ACT does not have a Governor, but rather the ACT Legislative Assembly elects its Chief Minister as the first act of business after the election of Speaker. Rather than making issues such as a budget “confidence votes”, simply allow votes to dismiss the Prime Minister/Chief Minister/Premier.

Furthermore, the scheduling of Parliament needs to be taken out of the hands of the government. Either Parliament could explicitly approve the parliamentary schedule, or a body that represents all parties could make the decision, to allow for urgent circumstances when the schedule must be altered without Parliament returning. This would prevent the ridiculous circumstance of a government shutting down Parliament to prevent the Parliament acting against the government.

Finally, the calling of elections needs to be reformed. I have always supported fixed terms, but I tend to think it needs to be more nuanced. There are occasions, particularly in a hung parliament where no stable government can be formed, that an early election must be held. Firstly, terms would be regularly fixed to happen on a particular day. An early election can then be held, but only with the explicit support of both government and opposition, which could be expressed through a 75% vote through both houses (or just the lower house in the UK and Canada where upper houses are unelected). This could also be used in circumstances like those in Australia in 1975. If 75% agree that the situation is irreconcilable, the Parliament can be dissolved. Short of that, the parties need to find a way to cooperate. It would prevent the reckless point-scoring of the Fraser opposition in 1975, since it would be impossible for an election to be called without the government agreeing, making the blocking of supply pointless except for policy purposes.

By adopting these simple reforms, almost all of the remaining ways that the Governor-General has a practical impact on the political system. It’s conceivable that, by taking away the power to decide government in minority government situations and resolve deadlocks, the role of a Governor-General, Queen or President could be made redundant.

So it looks like Canada, only six weeks after an election saw a swing to the Conservative minority government, is headed towards another left-of-centre government.

Today the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party signed an agreement to form a coalition government, with the support of the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

The agreement would see the Leader of the Liberal Party as the new Prime Minister in a cabinet of 18 Liberal ministers and 6 NDP ministers. The government would be the third minority government, after the Martin government of 2004-2006 and the current Harper government, with the Bloc holding the balance of power. The BQ has vowed to support the government for 18 months.

The Harper government remains in office until a no-confidence motion is passed, which is currently scheduled for December 8, although there is discussion that Harper will prorogue the Parliament until January, when a budget can be presented to the House. The “opposition day”, when the Liberals have an opportunity to present motions, has already been delayed from the 1st to the 8th.

The immediate cause of the election appears to have been caused by the financial crisis, and in particular Harper’s proposal to drastically reduce political party public funding, which seems to have sparked action on the opposition benches. Harper has backed down on the proposal, but the Opposition appears to have tasted blood in the water, and are on the hunt.

While the recent election clearly saw increased support for Harper and a rejection of Stephane Dion as Liberal leader, it remains true that the three largest left-of-centre parties collectively received a significant majority of the vote as well as a majority of seats.

Indeed, it seems to make sense that the last election would end in the election of a centre-left government. Anyone who watched the election debate would’ve been struck by the clear sense of four left-wing party leaders on one side pounding the Prime Minister. It is also a good step forward for the country in terms of restoring its place in the international community’s push to deal with climate change. Along with New Zealand, Canada is only one of two countries which have gone backwards on climate change in the last decade.

The biggest complication in the Liberal-NDP plans is the upcoming Liberal leadership election. Stephane Dion announced his plans to resign as leader straight after the election, and an election campaign was kicked off. Liberal Party delegates will meet for a convention on May 2 to elect a leader from three candidates. The plans at the moment appear to be for Dion to take over as Prime Minister for less than six months, before giving it up to the new leader after May 2.

So what are the consequences for the political parties? In the short run, the Conservatives will attack the others for supposedly overturning the will of the people, but in the long run the lack of incumbency will surely hurt the Conservatives. Jack Layton’s plans for the NDP will likely remain to see his party overtake the Liberal Party, and if the Liberals struggle it could benefit the NDP. On the other hand, smaller coalition partners tend to get hurt at the next election. Yet the NDP has never previously had the opportunity to govern, and if they govern competently it could push the party to new levels of support.