Tomorrow we go to the polls. The fourth time in seven years. By all rights people should be vote-weary. However, I see a new dynamism where voters are actually discussing issues and what each party’s take is on each of them. I also see more young people engaged. Whether that engagement will overcome the usual inertia that overcomes young people at election time is yet to be seen.
From a larger perspective I believe that Canada is no longer satisfied with “more of the same”. We have come through seven years of legislative gridlock not because there has been a minority government but there has been no will to govern. Each party has been so engaged in partisan politics that they have, collectively, failed to govern. Conservatives, an amalgamation of right wing reformers and Progressive Conservatives (whatever a “progressive” conservative means?) have not yet moved sufficiently to the center to get a majority of the seats in Parliament. I am not sure that the message that Ignatieff has sent—the message that Harper has lost the confidence of the House for good and sufficient reason—has gone unheeded. While the Conservatives have solid support from their reformer supporters in the West many undecided centrists do not trust Harper. They fear that a Harper led majority government would result in the Canadian version of the Tea Party.
The Liberals have been the largest disappointment of the election. The voters have largely voted with their feet in retreating from the Liberal party in droves. Left of center Liberals have joined with the NDP and right of center Liberals are either holding their noses and voting Conservative or are not voting at all. The problem is in the message and in the leader. Ignatieff has not sold himself to the electorate as a person who should be entrusted with government. The platform is a bunch of hashed over centrist policies that don’t improve on the NDP platform and don’t offer the voter a solid choice between Liberal and Conservative policies.
The Bloc has gone the way of all Quebec-centered parties. Among younger voters, they would prefer to be at the table when it comes to government then eating table scraps. The Liberals have been so emasculated by the Bloc that rebound support will not go to them. They will not go the Conservatives. The NDP will make a strong inroad in Quebec in part because of the likeability of the leader and a strong left wing reformist sentiment of the younger voters.
That leaves the NDP. The general platform of the NDP embraces center left policies. No reduction in corporate income taxes. Cap and trade energy policies. More tax help for families, the elderly and the disenfranchised. However, there is no wind that does not blow some ill. Recent remarks about “subsidizing” gas prices and reopening the never-ending Quebec constitutional question indicates that some of the loonies are not necessarily all on the dollar coin. Most left of center parties government in the G8 have done so from a free market perspective. Subsidizing gas prices leads directly in the wrong direction. Gas prices should be allowed to rise to the point where consumer demand feels the pinch. And demand drops. Where there is a need of reform is in the tax structure for energy companies. They have not been allowed to make egregious profits without contributing to tax revenue. Any party short of the Conservatives should engage in this kind of tax reform.
I still believe that an NDP-Liberal coalition will take some of the steam out of the interventionist bent of the NDP. If the NDP comes in second and the Conservatives try to form a government, the Conservatives will fall on a vote of confidence and the NDP and Liberals will form a stable government much like the one that exists in Britain. Canada could do worse.
Bernie
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