http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/trudeau-beats-harper-but-canada-could-prove-hard-to-change/story-e6frg6z6-1227580473286
Trudeau beats Harper but Canada could prove hard to change
The Australian, Henry Ergas, Columnist, Sydney
As he prepares to leave 24 Sussex Drive, the large, somewhat dilapidated, limestone house in the New Edinburgh neighbourhood of Ottawa that is the official residence of Canada’s prime ministers, Stephen Harper remains an enigmatic figure.
He proved far more successful than Canada’s political pundits predicted, becoming Canada’s sixth longest serving prime minister by transforming the seemingly fragile minority governments he led after the 2006 and 2008 elections into a solid Conservative Party majority in 2011. And although he had been caricatured as a right-wing extremist, he showed himself to be a cautious reformer who — in the words of Canadian journalist Paul Wells — operated “not by revolution or even really by evolution, but by erosion”.
Now, with the charismatic Justin Trudeau leading a reinvigorated Liberal Party to a convincing victory, Harper’s goal of entrenching a conservative ascendancy lies in tatters. But Harper’s studied incrementalism doesn’t mean his legacy is insignificant, nor does his defeat mean it will be readily reversed. And despite its resounding win, it will not be easy for the new Trudeau government to deliver on even its relatively restrained election promises, especially as Canada’s economy, which contracted for a second consecutive quarter between April and June, continues to suffer from low prices for the crude oil and minerals that are the country’s largest exports.
Lacking both the long experience and the rigorous academic training his father, Pierre Trudeau, had when he swept to office in 1968, Justin Trudeau may therefore find it hard to manage the conflict between high expectations and harsh realities, with the risks made all the greater by the complex and volatile features of Canadian political life.
It is natural for Australians to assume those features essentially parallel our own. And yes, there are similarities in the trends at work, and lessons to be drawn from the Canadian experience. But it is important to understand that the dynamics of Canadian politics differ in important respects from those in Australia, giving the trends a distinct form.
At the heart of the differences is the fact Canada’s federalism, which vests far-reaching powers in the provinces, is immeasurably more vigorous than Australia’s has ever been. No doubt, that is partly due to the linguistic diversity Quebec brings to the federation, a diversity historian Garth Stevenson describes as the “dominant fact” in Canada’s history. But it would be an error to think Canadian federalism merely serves to accommodate the Quebecois’ demands.
Rather, the decentralised nature of Canadian government reflects and perpetuates deep-seated differences between the provinces in terms of political cultures and traditions. For example, even in Canada’s west, the Left-Right split does not appear in the same form: on the Left, the populism of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, with its agrarian roots, is not the same as the union-dominated radicalism of British Columbia, while the Right has long been more libertarian in British Columbia and Alberta than the “Red Tories” of the midwest.
As those differences crystallised, forces that in other countries encouraged centralisation did not do so in Canada. In particular, the Canadian welfare state developed largely at a provincial level, with Pierre Trudeau writing that Canadian social democracy had been built from the provinces up, instead of raining from Ottawa down. Quite contrary to what happened in Australia, the rise in social spending therefore led to a dramatic expansion in the remit of the provinces, rather than of the national government.
But Canada’s enduring federalism, and the diversity that underpins it, not only affects the allocation of powers, it also shapes political competition at a federal level. More specifically, because of that diversity the political contest does not merely involve a Left-Right dimension but also a clash between centralism and federalism in all their varieties. Periodically, those two aspects of party choice have come into conflict, disrupting, and at times restructuring, the political landscape.
Until the 1920s, for example, elections were fought between the Conservatives and the Liberals, with each major party representing highly heterogeneous interests. But those catch-all movements could not absorb the social tensions of the period, causing a proliferation of regional parties that mobilised interests the main parties had tended to ignore. Once those parties secured a firm, even if localised, base, party politics in the provinces came to diverge from that at the federal level. As a result, the federal parties developed only relatively shallow roots in the provinces, particularly where parties that did not operate federally, such as the social credit parties of the far west and Maurice Duplessis’s Union Nationale in Quebec, dominated the scene.
In itself, the disjuncture between the provincial and federal layer did not destabilise national politics. But that was primarily because the Liberal Party managed to acquire a hegemonic role, largely by sticking to a script Quebec Liberal Wilfrid Laurier, who served as Canada’s first francophone prime minister from 1896 to 1911, had developed.
The essence of Laurier’s script was that the Liberal Party accepted a relatively weak role for Canada’s executive branch, mainly keeping peace between French and English Canadians, while leaving responsibility for policymaking to parliament, and especially to the separate provincial governments.
By thus casting itself as the protector of provincial prerogatives, including, crucially, those of Quebec, the Liberal Party was able to win nearly two-thirds of Quebec’s seats throughout the period from 1900 to 1980, giving it almost half the seats it needed to form a majority government in the federal parliament. With the party hewing rigidly to the centre on the Left-Right dimension of politics, it could then always secure enough seats in the other provinces to get over the line.
Thanks to that grasp on Quebec’s federal votes, the Liberal Party was not seriously threatened when the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a socialist movement that was formed in Alberta but acquired prominence in Saskatchewan, emerged as a national party, eventually transforming itself, with backing from the Canadian unions, into the New Democratic Party.
Unlike the situation in Australia, the rise of a labour party did not therefore lead the forces that opposed labour to consolidate, creating a two-party system; instead, Canadian federal politics evolved into a three-party system, with a centrist party flanked by parties on its left and its right. Nor did the fact that the centre party so overwhelmingly dominated federal politics cause its weaker rivals to reposition themselves, as their stance was sufficiently attractive in particular provinces to allow them to control those provinces for lengthy periods.
There was, however, an inherent tension between a three-party structure and Canada’s strict first-past-the-post electoral system. As was apparent in the provinces, the effect of having both could be to entrench governments that had a relatively narrow electoral base: for example, thanks to competition between their opponents, the Conservatives held office continuously in Ontario from 1943 to 1985, despite never securing a majority of votes. But as was also clear in the provinces, the combination of a three-party system with first-past-the-post could lead to dramatic instability, both because voters did not need to move very far along the Left-Right continuum when they changed their vote and because small shifts in voting behaviour could induce large changes in the seat count.
The seeming stability of the Canadian political system was therefore somewhat illusory, with political scientist CES Franks estimating in 1987 that “only 20 per cent of Canadian MPs at most can reasonably feel assured they, and their party, will hold their seat in the next election, whereas nearly 80 per cent of British and US members can have this confidence”. Moreover, the instability became more acute over time.
A number of factors were at work. To begin with, in Quebec, which had long been intensely socially conservative, the “quiet revolution” of the 60s drastically weakened historic elites, shifting public opinion both to the left and towards Quebecois separatism. As that happened, voters who had reliably voted for the Liberals in federal elections became increasingly volatile. At the same time, the development of energy sources in the west gave rise to new rows over fiscal federalism, reigniting the sense that Canada’s west got a raw deal.
Faced with those tensions, Pierre Trudeau made the situation worse, with his constitutional centralism alienating the Liberal voting base in Quebec, while his move to the left aggravated the hostility the Liberals had long encountered in the west. Trudeau was, in effect, trapped: to retain Quebec he needed to move to the left and in the direction of giving Quebec greater powers; to retain any support in the west he needed to do the exact opposite; and the policies he had in train undermined his grasp on the shrinking middle ground.
He thereby created an opening for Brian Mulroney, whose Progressive Conservatives forged an alliance between Quebec nationalists and conservative voters in western Canada. But while Mulroney triumphed in the federal election of 1984, the alliance on which his power rested was as unstable as it was unnatural. Unsurprisingly, it collapsed when Mulroney tried to cement the structure of Canadian federalism in new constitutional agreements; in the process, the Progressive Conservatives shattered, with a new, right-of-centre Reform Party forming in the west, while the Bloc Quebecois, the first Quebec-based party to contest federal elections, gathered the province’s disaffected centrist leaders.
The result was to fragment the conservative vote, leading to the disastrous election result of 1993, in which the former majority party saw its share of the vote fall from 42 per cent to 16 per cent while it went from a 151-seat majority to holding just two seats. The unprecedented rout gave the Liberals a new, lengthy, term in government; but the forces that had produced the instability did not go away.
On the contrary, as the Liberals, mindful of Trudeau’s errors, tried to recapture the middle ground, powerful challengers emerged. On their left, the NDP, under the highly effective leadership of Jack Layton, patiently developed a national footprint, securing a presence in social-democratic Quebec; while on the right Harper had managed, by 2003, to consolidate the conservative forces into a new Conservative Party, strongly anchored in the country’s west. With the Liberals caught up in an ugly corruption scandal, the ground was set for the Conservatives to claim government in 2006.
Subsequent elections only underscored the volatility that by 2006 was already apparent. Especially startling were the outcomes in 2011, when the Liberals, who had so completely dominated Canadian politics in the 20th century, got barely 10 per cent of the vote, and the party’s leader, Michael Ignatieff, lost his own riding (as electorates are called in Canada) to a little-known management consultant.
In contrast, the NDP doubled its share of the vote, as nearly a third of those who had voted Liberal in 2008 moved to the NDP.
It was an appreciation of that volatility, and of the risks it posed, that underpinned Harper’s gradualism. Attempted revolutions, he knew, are soon enough undone, as had happened to Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution in Ontario, with its laudable emphasis on slashing public spending and restoring fiscal discipline; rather, Harper’s goal was to change Canada in ways that are difficult to reverse. For that, he needed the time to take many small decisions, whose cumulative impact would be felt only in the longer run; and as the Conservatives, even in 2011, had secured only 40 per cent of the vote, it would not take much for his party to lose government.
Harper consequently shunned high-profile initiatives far removed from Canadians’ everyday concerns, such as the constitutional reforms Pierre Trudeau and Mulroney had attempted. He also avoided overblown rhetoric and, after winning a majority, emphasised the dangers of hubris. His strategy was to seek ownership by the Conservatives of the issues the electorate truly regarded as crucial.
At least in 2011, that strategy proved highly effective. According to Canadian Election Study, which surveys voters at each federal election, until 2000 Canadians rated the Liberals as the best at creating jobs, managing the economy, fighting crime and improving healthcare. By 2008 and 2011, the situation had almost completely reversed, with the Conservatives leading in economic competence and the commitment to law and order.
Harper’s careful management of the stimulus spending, where Canada’s auditor general even congratulated him on the care his government had taken in ensuring proper rules were followed, helped cement the perception of competence.
But the strategy was hardly without risks. Lying low might blunt voters’ hostility, but it did not endear Harper to them, or bridge the gap that separated him from the 60 per cent of the electorate that had not voted Conservative; rather, it increased his vulnerability to a competitor who had greater public appeal. Moreover, having veered to the left in 2011, there was always a danger the Liberals would edge back towards the centre, combining a plausible economic platform with a more socially progressive message than Harper could or would adopt.
And once Layton died, to be replaced by the much less popular Tom Mulcair, the NDP might prove less effective at taking the Liberals’ votes, strengthening their chances directly and by reducing the flow to the Conservatives of Liberal voters intent on preventing the NDP from securing government.
As it turned out, all those risks eventuated this year. Not only was Justin Trudeau more charismatic than Harper, he managed to seem more centrist than his platform actually is, while his social progressivism contrasts with Harper’s avowedly socially conservative views. Moreover, the ethnic vote, which Harper had cultivated and secured in 2011, proved far more fickle than conservative strategists had expected. And instead of the inexperienced Trudeau crashing in the course of the long election campaign, its casualty was Mulcair, with the NDP losing two-thirds of the Quebec seats it had gained in 2011.
The outcome, by Australian standards, seems catastrophic for the Conservatives, whose share of the vote is now back to where it stood in 2004, immediately after the new party was formed. And equally, it seems like an triumph for the Liberals, who, it may be thought, are positioned to reclaim their historic hegemonic role.
But Harper will cast a long shadow. As the Conservatives slashed the GST and federal income taxes, the kitty is bare. Even if they raise income taxes on top earners, as they have promised to do, the Liberals will struggle to meet their commitments to cut taxes on middle-income households and increase infrastructure spending, while nonetheless meeting their fiscal targets.
And a slowing economy will make it even harder for Trudeau to square that circle. With the fiscal noose being among Harper’s most constraining legacies, there is every likelihood that the budget performance of Trudeau fils will come to resemble that of Trudeau pere, exposing the new government to a chorus of criticism.
Moreover, as with Pierre Trudeau’s national energy strategy, Justin Trudeau’s climate change policies and his reluctance to confront the US on the Keystone XL pipeline extension will touch raw nerves in Canada’s west. And however large its loss, the Conservative Party, which is now firmly implanted in the west, will find those sensitivities easy to exploit.
Finally, although Quebec has swung solidly Liberal, the serried ranks of novice Quebec MPs can prove a poisoned chalice, pushing the Liberals away from the centre.
The difficulties of managing electoral volatility are therefore as great as they have ever been. And if there is a lesson to be drawn from the Canadian experience it is that there are no magic bullets that can bring it under control.
Where voters are inherently footloose, failures may be fleeting, but triumphs are too. And tactical and strategic errors are punished sooner, and more severely, than in earlier, less competitive, days — perhaps making politicians more risk averse than the gravity of the nation’s problems would warrant.
None of that may much worry Trudeau; nor could it console Harper.
As Tony Benn wrote in his diary when Margaret Thatcher resigned, prime ministers, on losing office, “drop into the darkest of all worlds between the headlines and the history books”. Like his close friend Tony Abbott, that world awaits Harper at the exit to Sussex Drive.
