Canada: Suffering The Legacy

One of the yardsticks used to measure the success of Canadian prime ministers is how successfully they manage the regions. Pierre Trudeau was rightly accused of fomenting Western alienation, but it was left to Brian Mulroney to bring it to climax with the formation of the Reform Party--the party of Western alienation. He was so focused on Quebec he was derisively referred to as “the Prime Minister of Quebec,” rather than Canada as a whole. Though he was ideally situated to placate Western alienation, with a clear mandate to do so, he inflamed it. His focus on Quebec was manifested in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional accords, both failed and resulted in Lucien Bouchard storming from the House of Commons and forming the Bloc Quebecois. Though it remains unacknowledged, the tenure of the Mulroney conservatives was a watershed in Canadian electoral politics. Not only did he destroy the flanks of his daunting coalition and what might have been a political dynasty, long sought after by the PCs, he destroyed his own party, and what was an effective, largely two-party system. Jean Chretien has been portrayed as an astute politician for having lead three successive majority Liberal governments, but the fact of the matter is he owes much to the mismanagement of Brian Mulroney--by splitting the right Mulroney became a Liberal benefactor of the first order. It was recently revealed that Chrétien was so imprudent as to try and initiate Meech III after totally misjudging the 1995 Quebec referendum which the separatists almost won. It was on his watch the notorious sponsorship scandal came to be. It is questionable whether the sponsorship program ever should have been undertaken, and if it was, the political volatility of any mismanagement should have been realized--but even basic safeguards were not in place. In the panoply of great Canadian leaders these two will be hanging out at Value Village. Now that the right is united the days of easy Liberal majorities are over. Where Jean Chrétien could coast on the entrails of political ineptitude Paul Martin has to count heads on every vote and hope his MPs have their cell phones turned on. But is the right really united? No! In an election where they should be coasting to an easy victory and a clear majority, they struggle. One obvious reason they struggle is that Quebec is no longer part of the federal election equation. Where Mulroney won big in that province it is now closed to both the Liberals and conservatives and is the bastion of the Bloc Quebecois- a profound political irony if there ever was one. Canada’s conservatives are prone to strategic error and merging the PC party and Alliance is the most recent. This so called merger is dominated by the Alliance-–the ultra right--where it should be dominated by Red Tories. One reality of the Canadian conservative dynamic is that Red Tories form the core of that vote and this is most prevalent in Ontario where the CPC must win big but won’t because too many conservative voters suspect the pedigree of this party and too many Red Tories have been purged from the party. In other words, the conservative movement has turned itself inside out, and upside down. The rump is showing and predominating where the mainstream core Red Tory faction has been purged or simply defected. Had the feckless Peter MacKay shown more political courage and cunning he would have shunned merger and rebuilt his party into a national presence. At the time of the merger it was obvious the Alliance was a dead-ended regional party and it was only a matter to time before voters, even in the West, recognized a vote for the Alliance was wasted and would return to the PC fold. There is every likelihood MacKay made a bad choice in a political mentor. This merger was but one more roll of the dice and a bad one. The split in the right was an ongoing embarrassment that had to be eradicated without regard for consequence. Had MacKay pursued the more noble obligation, rather than betrayal, he could now be leading the ill-fated PC Party into a majority government with himself as prime minister in waiting. Harper and his Alliance rump (assuming it wasn’t obliterated) could embellish this victory by bolstering the Western flank. This outcome would not only have been immensely beneficial to Canada’s conservative movement it would be in the national interest as it would re-establish an effective two party system, giving voters a credible choice. As it is, the CPC is not a political party but a political abnormality, especially in the Canadian context. Stephen Harper claims that he would not go into coalition if he led a minority government, but only the gullible would believe this as his credentials as a defender of Canadian federalism are dubious at best and he and the Bloc Quebecois are potentially a marriage from hell and kindred spirits. Both of the major parties have been sorely under cut by the utterly inane management of previous leaders, and this is the main reason we are looking at a minority government and possibly political deadlock. Balkanization of a country can come about in a number of ways. It can be legislated constitutionally as it would have been through the Meech Lake or Charlottetown Accords; it can come about through bad political leadership; it can about through the hegemonic intervention and presence of a much larger state, finally, it can come about through the collapse of will on the part of its citizenry. Canada has dodged the bullet on the first but must wrestle with the last three. Recently, a prominent Canadian journalist suggested that if Canada gets to uppity the US might just elect to annex us--and it is very much in the mood to do so as it pursues global domination. But in our present state annexation is not a worry as even the dullest of observers in the US State Department can see Canada is on the road to perdition, ably accelerated by our gutless political elites. Canada does not have the luxury of choosing a strong federalism; we are obligated to it by the presence of the US at our door step. Quebec separatists are foolhardy to think that separation or even the pseudo-separatist state they seek will improve their lot. Separation would be the death knell of French culture in North America as Quebec, along with the rest of Canada, drowns in American hegemony. The Parti Quebecois dominated by a xenophobic intellectual elite are determined to lead that province into an even greater isolation. Canada is a country retreating into its regions (lead by Quebec separatists and Kleinized Albertans) ably accelerated by a legacy of bad federal leadership that dates back more than two decades. It is little wonder that trust is a key issue in this election, and little wonder that it could end in deadlock. The arrival of effective leaders is part of the serendipity of history and there is non on the horizon, until then we must believe in the miracle that some how holds this country together in spite of its many disbelievers, within and without- especially those philistines who see this country as no more than a commercial transaction. Robert Billyard 1 3 06 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on January 4, 2006]