After seven years of minority governments and all the acrimony that goes with them, Canada now has the stability of a parliamentary majority to address the tough economic issues.
The ruling Conservatives can address some pressing issues, such as the need for a modern telecommunications ownership policy, perennially lagging productivity, clarification of the foreign investment review process, a national securities regulator and, of course, the federal deficit.
But there will be some risk management required, just the same. The federal election of 2011 will go down in this country’s political lore with the Liberal sweep of 1993 and the Ontario election of 1990 that elected the New Democratic Party as one of the great protest votes of all time.
As a result, all political parties are anxiously looking ahead to the 2015 election. They know that the NDP probably isn’t going to keep all its 59 seats in Quebec next time when so many of its candidates clearly didn’t expect to win in the first place. They also know the NDP benefited from an emerging generation of young voters who are just beginning to make their presence felt in politics. All parties will be tracking the mood of the sons and daughters of the baby boomers very closely over the next four years.
It might be tempting to write off the Bloc Québécois. But Quebec voters have always given extra definition to fickleness. Ask members of the former ADQ party, which came within a couple of seats of throwing the Charest Liberals out of power in that province’s legislature just a few years ago. Today, the ADQ is just a footnote in history.
If the Quebec NDP suffers the same vanishing act, their replacement is anybody’s guess at this point. Perhaps Quebecers will take a shine to the Greens. After all, the Reform Party elected just one member of Parliament in 1988 and then wound up dominating the West in 1993.
Here are some things that will be on the major parties’ minds in this new Parliament:
> Conservatives: Among the things Prime Minister Stephen Harper did after the election was to announce that the first cabinet shuffle would be minor, just patching up a few vacancies. Given that he had to fill six vacancies (two from retirement, four from election defeats), had fired two members from the previous government and wound up producing one of the largest cabinets on record, that statement was just rhetoric.
But it does say something about Harper’s strategy coming out of a successful election. The Conservatives remain mindful that much of their new Ontario support formerly belonged to the Liberals. Harper appears to be borrowing from Jean Chrétien’s strategy of keeping surprises to a minimum after the Grit surge of 1993.
Such a strategy doesn’t mean the Conservatives aren’t prepared to take tough measures. Chrétien’s government, after all, produced the toughest budget of all time in 1995 as a prelude to eliminating the deficit two years later. But the Liberals made sure the public was ready to accept major change. Expect Harper to do the same.
> NDP: When the NDP has been in power provincially, for the most part, they have been fiscal conservatives. The scary rhetoric about nationalizing banks and other unrealistic policies was left to the federal party. But, after Jack Layton’s near-flawless performance in the election campaign, the federal NDP leader has shown himself to be someone not to be underestimated.
Under Layton’s leadership, the federal NDP has reinvented itself as a centre-left party, like the Liberals. The NDP not only could keep official Opposition status but could form the next government in 2015, depending on what happens. Such a scenario may be a long shot. But we have just witnessed an election of long shots.
> Liberals: Just as soon as they can put the lid on their latest internal feud over leadership, the Liberals may start thinking the NDP takeover of Quebec is a hidden blessing. Although it’s been some years since the Liberals have been able to call Quebec a fortress of their own, the party has always been Quebec-centric in its outlook, policies and hierarchy, probably because conventional thinking up until the 2011 election had been that you can’t win a majority without Quebec voters.
Maybe now the Liberals are free to pursue being a truly national party again. IE
Stable majority has its risks
Given the centre-left positions of Layton’s federal NDP, the Orange Crush potentially could spread beyond Quebec
- By: Gord McIntosh
- May 30, 2011 October 29, 2019
- 12:55
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