edwards block

It is frequently asserted by media pundits that, in Canadian federal politics, the Liberal Party campaigns from the left and governs from the right. Whether you agree with this or not depends on where you sit, ideologically, on the political spectrum. If you’re a contemporary conservative, you may be of the opinion that the Liberal Party is only barely rightward of Leninism. If you’re a more left-leaning New Democrat, you probably see little practical difference between Conservatives and Liberals, except that Liberals tend to keep their social policy reactionaries more or less subdued.

One might also say that the Conservative Party campaigns from the right and governs from centre, or that the New Democratic Party campaigns from the left and governs from the… uh, from the imagination. The NDP has never come even remote close to power federally, and until last week it was widely presumed that it never would.

However, in a peculiar turn of events, Canada’s third party, also known as Canada’s conscience, has suddenly and inexplicably leapt ahead in the polls with one week left in the election campaign, to the point that the Globe and Mail recently reported that the NDP might take 100 seats in parliament if the trend holds until Monday’s election. Most of the gain is said to be taking place in Quebec, at the expense of the Bloc Québécois, but the media are telling us of a spill-over effect in which the NDP are suddenly rising in the polls in much of the country.

It says a lot about the appeal of the other leaders when a bald, clumsy cyclist with prostate cancer and a fractured hip is seemingly on the verge of ruining the careers of guys with piles of money and the backing of powerful corporate interests. That’s not to say that all (ok, most) of those things should be taken into account when choosing a prime minister. Personally, I find it a little refreshing to see a major (male) politician who embraces his own natural hair loss proudly instead of wearing a toupee, especially one that looks like it was stolen from Ernest Angley.

If a random sampling of my Facebook acquaintances is a reliable indication, even the NDP faithful are surprised at the current turn of events, but they are nonetheless getting excited, even celebratory. And why shouldn’t they? Isn’t this what they’ve been working toward for so long?

I have to admit, I’m a little excited about this development myself. It’s not that I’m particularly sympathetic to the NDP: I’ve only voted for the party once in my life, and that had more to do with dislike for an opponent than affection for the NDP candidate. Exciting to me is that: A) voter participation appears to be set to increase considerably; B) that a shake-up of the established order seems possible; and C) that Quebec may be on the verge of rejoining the national conversation.

I’m also a little apprehensive, though. I wonder if my NDP friends are giving much thought to the longer term? It’s one thing to throw a wrench in the works and enjoy the gnashing of gears; I’m rather looking forward to that myself. Politics is very much about long-term strategy, however, and no one in this country is more aware of that, and no one is working it as tirelessly, as Stephen Harper.

What are the likely outcomes in this election? One is that Harper will win another minority, and in all likelihood – Ignatieff’s denials notwithstanding – he will quickly be deposed in favour of a coalition of the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc. It’s difficult to imagine any other result if Harper once again secures the most votes but fails to achieve a majority.

Unless there is a tidal change in affection for Michael Ignatieff in the next few days (which is also difficult to imagine), and assuming that the NDP poll numbers don’t dissipate when the actual time comes to cast real ballots, as it often does, the other potential outcome is an NDP plurality.

Which do you think that Stephen Harper – if he’s going to lose either way – would prefer? Harper’s not interested in perpetually revolving door opportunities for minority power. He may be a sleazy, scum-sucking, preacher-haired, far right, Rapture-inspired, warmongering, Christian fundamentalist zealot, but he’s not stupid. This man is a master tactician. He has longer-term ideas, and I can’t imagine that he’s not sitting in the lavatory of his campaign plane right now, fantasising about a coalition of the centre-left, practically orgasmic at the prospect of the NDP gaining a plurality. Think of it as sort of an auto-erotic mile-high club for wonks.

What if the NDP does get a plurality of votes? My NDP friends seem to imagine that all of the Liberals and all of the Bloc will fall in line to support a Layton Prime Ministership, if only to keep Stephen Harper out of office. And they might be right. But then what?

A minority Prime Minister Layton probably won’t be able to undertake any dramatically radical changes to Canadian society without losing the support of the more rightward members of the Liberal Party, on which they will rely for support. At any rate, Layton has, throughout his leadership, positioned himself as more of a left-leaning Liberal anyway. If Canadians do support the NDP, it will be this centrist party that they are supporting, not the NDP of its Waffle Manifesto origins. Layton will have no mandate to undertake significant moves toward a socialist vision, even if he were inclined to do so.

Such a minority will probably last for at least a couple of years, and in the interim, the Liberal Party will probably implode and gradually cease to exist, except for a few stubborn rump members. Some Liberals will join the NDP, certainly. But if New Democrats believe that the two parties will simply combine, and thenceforth recreate a natural governing party that will dominate Ottawa for years, I think they are quite mistaken. There are a lot of people who support the Liberal Party who are wealthy, of old money, and while these Liberals are averse to the religious fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism of the Harper right, they care more about maintaining their wealth than they do about social justice. When push comes to shove, many will decamp for the Conservative Party, even if they have to hold their noses in doing so.

Jump ahead to, say, 2015. Prime Minister Layton has been embarrassed by a string of controversies by some of his new, inexperienced MPs, many of whom had been nominated without much thought because they had no chance of winning back in 2011 anyway. He is vastly unpopular with his own base because he’s been unable to satisfy their social-democratic demands while he tries to maintain power. Those Liberal party supporters who’d been sustaining the party financially have all lost interest. A pack of Liberal MPs cross the floor to the Conservatives, and soon after the Layton government is brought down by a motion of non-confidence. In the subsequent election, the Conservatives win a massive majority, chiefly because many disillusioned leftist New Democrats stayed home, and because three quarters of the Liberal Party voted Conservative out of self-interest.

And what, then, will be the longer-term result of polarisation? We need only look at British Columbia, or the United States, to see how much a part of mainstream public discourse is the subject of social justice. This, perhaps, will be Jack Layton’s legacy for Canada. He watered down his message in order to get closer to the seat of power, and in the process, perhaps, history will find that he strengthened the position of the right, and helped to eliminate strongly social-justice related discourse from the public conversation. Before he got ambitious, Canada had a visible, audible social conscience. It served Canada well. Now, I fear, the message will vanish altogether.

Of course, it may not work out this way. But I feel pretty confident that at this moment, Stephen Harper is sitting in that lavatory, rubbing his hands (or whatever) in glee at the prospect of the polarisation of Canada’s parliament. The bastard’s a warrior, and successful warriors don’t think just about battles.

Back in April, I contacted my member of the provincial legislature via e-mail to voice my opposition to the government’s plans regarding what I consider to be the giveaway of public rivers for the purpose of private power generation. I received in return a standard form letter telling me how important my views are to the government, and other BS crafted by the Liberal spin office. No big deal – that’s exactly the response I expected.

However, since then, I have discovered that by writing to a representative of the provincial government I am now being spammed by the MLA in question, Lorne Mayencourt, who subsequently resigned as provincial sycophant to Gordon Campbell and is now the Conservative Party of Canada candidate in the federal election campaign.

The first e-mail invited me to attend the announcement of Mayencourt’s candidacy for the Conservative nomination. The most recent message invited me to a Conservative Party rally with Stephen Harper at the Bayshore.

I’ll overlook for the moment the obvious idiocy of a homosexual choosing to join a band of religious zealots who, it’s widely believed, would rather ship him off to a penal colony than shower with him in the Commons gym. My friend Colin, not one to mince words, would equate such misplaced loyalty to a fictional ‘Jews for Hitler’, a rather tasteless phrase but one that nonetheless conveys the idea pretty clearly.

Normally I would frown upon attacking someone’s personal appearance in a political campaign, but since old Lorne has decided to start spamming me, and since he has presumably betrayed my confidentiality by passing along my private e-mail address to the Conservative Party, I figure all’s fair now. Thus, I present you with an image from Lorne’s own web page:

I’m not sure how Lorne expects to attract votes with an image like this. First of all, he’s posing with a man who, when I look closely at his eyes, I can’t help but think of the bastard child of Jerry Falwell and Karla Homolka.

Secondly, what’s with that hair? Is that a perm? And those glasses! A rather poor combination that makes him look more like the fifth runner-up in a Dame Edna lookalike contest than a serious candidate for federal office. How is Lorne going to be taken seriously as the Minister of Social Cleansing looking like that? He’ll never get out of the backbench, if he’s elected, relegated to standing up to support every bit of regressive legislation Stephen Harper’s masters thrust into his hand in the hopes of being looked kindly upon by the men with power and decent toupees.

Oh well. To each his fashion.

For the convenience of my readers, here are the other, more worthy, candidates running in Vancouver Centre:

• Adrienne Carr, Green Party
• Michael Byers, NDP
• Hedy Fry, Liberal