Thursday, January 8th 2009

By unknown

Written By: John M. Mullin

Much has been said, written, theorized, and plain gotten wrong with respect to Canadian federal politics since Brian Mulroney attempted to realign the Canadian polity to accommodate Quebec nationalism, the ambitions of the West, and the Liberalization of Ontario in the late 1980’s through the 1990’s. Since then, Canadian federal politics has been dominated by third party politics, an obsession with cutting deficits, and a moratorium on constitutional politics.

After the 2008 federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government announced a variety of measures their administration hoped to pass into law. Among other things, the government sought to eliminate the funding official parties receive on a per-vote basis, and the government also announced plans to run the first deficit budget since the Chretien Liberals. The fallout of these policies, as is well known, has been the formation of a coalition between the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, supported legislatively by the Bloc Quebecois.
The purpose of this piece of writing is simple: I believe that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has, quite deliberately and with full intentionality, effected (or will effect) the most significant political re-alignment in electoral terms since Mulroney’s ruination of the Progressive Conservative Party.
The presentation of these events in popular media have highlighted a variety of interpretations for why Harper’s government would advance such radical, and indeed draconian, policies – especially the funding issue. These interpretations have focused on Harper’s enhanced political hubris, his commitment to ideology as a motivating political force, and his general attitude of search-and-destroy that he has foisted upon his party. These interpretations have gotten it, as newspapers so often do, only somewhat right – Harper has shown political hubris, a cut-throat approach to politics, and is an ideologue. However, the media coverage of these events has not been able to accommodate Harper’s outstanding sense of political timing and his mastery of political manipulation with his recent, seeming, poor political judgment – the best explanation for the policy statements post-election has been that Harper has somehow overplayed his political hand.

I take a skeptical attitude towards those explanations. How has a master politician, the architect of a revival of an ideology and a party, suddenly lost his political compass? How has Harper, so competent and so ruthless in so many ways, suddenly been unable to recognize his own hubris and excess? A more likely explanation, and the one that I suggest, is that Harper was absolutely clear in his intentions when he announced his intention to “pull the plug” on public funding for Canadian political parties.

The response from opposition parties to Harper’s policy of removing public funding from all parties could only be two things: first, parties other than the Conservative Party would all go bankrupt, effectively leaving only Harper’s party functional in any real sense. Since this option is unthinkable – and rightly so – there was only one other outcome: a coalition of all opposition parties, united against both this policy and the Conservative ideology in general. However, in order for any effective coalition to either defeat the government and force another election (Harper was keenly aware of the near-certainty that a new election was unlikely, given the proximity to the last election) or form a new government, a deal would have to be made which would require an agreement between the NDP, the Liberals, and the Bloc Quebecois. The numbers in the newly constituted House of Commons necessitated that this be so – no Liberal/NDP or Bloc/Liberal or NDP/Bloc coalition could stave off the imminent death that Harper sought to deal them with his funding policy. The three parties had to get together, or be eliminated. Again, an election on this issue is unlikely – though uncertain – and Stephen Harper is keen enough to recognize this..

Upon hearing of coalition plans, Harper and his government changed their stance on the funding issue as well as a host of other key issues. The speed and ease with which they moved away from these policies, including new plans to introduce a stimulus package, demonstrate their lack of commitment to them in the first place – in other words, Stephen Harper never planned to need his policies to become law to eliminate his opponents. He would force their hand, which is precisely what he has done, and in brilliant fashion.

Stephen Harper knew this, and so pushed forward with his funding policy. In doing so, he was following a well-heeled tradition in Canadian high politics – force the other parties to make a move that will end up doing them harm. Trudeau did the same thing in 1972, proposing a ridiculous budget that was not acceptable to either his legislative partners or the Opposition, and forcing a surprise election. What was not surprising, however, was the claim throughout the election that followed that the Opposition members as well as the coalition had somehow wronged the country in forcing an unwanted election. It has of course come to light since then that the Trudeau government intended to cause an election and so tabled a budget that would ensure the government was defeated. Trudeau waltzed to a second majority in Parliament on the basis of a tactic that proved his mettle as a calculating politician.

Harper’s gambit was more ambitious but premised on the same principle: force your opponents to do to themselves what you could only dream of doing. The outcome of Harper’s funding policy would either be the direct elimination of opposition parties through the law’s acceptance by the House – an outcome Harper neither expected nor wanted – or a legislative coalition whose optics, if not spirit, would realign Canadian politics for a generation.

Voters in English Canada who support any of the coalition partners are outraged that the Bloc Quebecois is the instrument of support needed to uphold the new government. Gilles Duceppe is slated to become the most powerful and important politician, in terms of optics, in Canada. This is not a positive development for the coalition, though Harper’s move made this inevitable. Voters will punish all three parties by voting Conservative in the next election, or by staying home – this is the predictive element of this paper, but also appears deeply plausible.

Stephen Harper’s gambit has forced the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc to fall on their own swords, knowing full well they would never fall on his. The only hope for avoiding a Conservative majority in the next election will be Stephane Dion’s suggestion that perhaps Bloc voters will recognize the value of working with other Canadian political parties, and that voters in other parts of Canada will somehow suffer the apparent insufferability of being propped up by separatists. If my prediction is correct, then the political future of Canada for the next ten years will gravitate towards the Conservative Party. The issue of Quebec has once again become a wedge issue for Canadians, and unless this coalition governs brilliantly, we are in for a Conservative majority in the next Federal election.