Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Our neighbours to the north

[UPDATE]: title changed to properly reflect Canadian spelling conventions…

[UPDATE #2]: Silly me ... in looking for MSM misreadings of the electoral results, I failed to look at the front page of our very own Seattle Times.  They borrowed Maggie Farley’s particularly clueless report from the Los Angeles Times:

Canadians elected a new, conservative government Monday that is expected to edge the country to the right politically and build closer ties to the Bush administration, marking the end of more than a decade’s reign by the Liberal Party.

The result represents a significant shift in Canada’s political scene, showing that disenchantment with the Liberal Party’s scandals and unfulfilled promises has grown so widespread that voters were willing to take a chance on the right-wing party leader, Stephen Harper, a man they had judged too extreme just two years ago.

But the Conservative Party victory was well shy of a landslide, and the failure to win a majority of the House of Commons will ensure that the country does not undergo dramatic change too quickly. Still, the new government is a symbolic change for Canadians, who traditionally have thought of their nation as a healthy rival to the American way.

My favorite part of that drivel is “well shy of a landslide”.  Ya think?  I’d say that well shy of what they hoped for is a whole lot more pyrrhic than not quite reaching landslide proportions.

Then again, Dubya tried to claim a mandate from his skin-of-the-teeth win over Kerry, so this sort of MSM reportage isn’t unexpected.

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Predictably, the American mainstream media is gushing that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have “toppled” the Liberal government of Canada, and that this FOG ("Friend of George") will turn the Great White North decidedly in Dubya’s neocon direction.  For example, here’s CNN:

The Conservative victory ended more than a decade of Liberal Party rule and could shift the traditionally liberal country to the right on socio-economic issues such as health care, taxation, abortion and gay marriage. Some Canadians have expressed reservations about Harper’s views opposing abortion and marriages between gays and lesbians.

Clifford Krauss writes in the New York Times:

Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party defeated the long entrenched Liberal Party in Canadian elections on Monday. A Conservative victory is a striking turn in the country’s politics and is likely to improve Canada’s strained relations with the Bush administration.
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Mr. Harper, 46, is a free-market economist who expressed strong support for Washington at the time of the American-led invasion of Iraq and shares the Bush administration’s skepticism of the Kyoto climate control protocol, which Canada has signed and ratified. His party was formed three years ago as a coalition of two conservative parties.

Such positions are in sharp contrast with those of Prime Minister Martin, who rejected cooperation with President Bush’s missile defense program, ratcheted up criticism of American trade policies and caustically criticized Washington during the campaign for not supporting the Kyoto protocol.

And in the Washington Post we find this article by Doug Struck:

Returns in the national election gave a strong victory to Conservative leader Stephen Harper, 46, a political strategist from western Canada who jokes about being dull. He shrugged off Martin’s accusations that he is too cozy with U.S. conservatives for liberal-leaning Canada, the same accusations that crippled his candidacy in 2004.
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He vowed to give more power to provinces and suggested a change that would open the first crack in Canada’s traditionally sacrosanct national health care program. He proposes giving patients a right to seek outside care if they are required to wait too long for a health care procedure in the national system.

Harper also is seen as ideologically closer to the Bush administration than is the Liberal Party, which balked at joining the invasion of Iraq and refused to sign on to the U.S. plan to develop an antiballistic missile system for North America. Harper has suggested he might revisit the missile defense decision and has said Canada would reject the Kyoto accord on global warming, as the Bush administration has done.

Balderdash!  In fact, if the reported breakdown of results is accurate, the Conservatives cannot form a government without the assistance of the Bloc Québécois, a party that aims to separate Quebec from Canada, a party far to the Tories’ left on social, environmental, and all political issues, a party more antithetical to anglophones and texasaphones than Paul Martin’s Liberals, a party that lost seats in Parliament largely at the expense of the Conservatives.

All of the other three major parties in Canada are on the left.  The Tories need to collaborate with at least one of them (they might also try to collect the New Democrats—the most progressive major party—but even with its significant gain in seats the NDP doesn’t have enough to add up to a majority coalition all by itself) in order to form a government.  Whoever partners with Harper will demand Cabinet ministries, will demand attention to its policy priorities, will stand ready to take down the government if its needs aren’t fulfilled.

The reality is that the Tories did far worse than they, and the vast majority of pundits, thought they would.  This is not a victory for Stephen Harper’s neocon dreams, not a repudiation of Canada’s positions with respect to social issues, not an expression of support for the cabal in power in its southern neighbor.  The Conservatives will form a government in Ottawa, but it will be weak.  Harper’s government will be teetering from the start, and in danger of collapsing at any moment.  I expect another Canadian national election well before the next American presidential one.

This election wasn’t about policies as much as about cleaning house in the party that really embodies Canada’s national soul.  Canada is, at bottom, a liberal (and Liberal) nation.  The people of the nation saw a tired, exhausted old-guard in Martin, and Chretien before him.  The top of the Liberal party had run out of steam, and there wasn’t a good way to bring in the next generation of leadership without briefly stepping down from running the national government.  Once the Liberals work through their revitalization (let’s not say purge, OK?) and rebuild their infrastructure, they’ll once again be ready to take their accustomed place at the helm of the great ship that is Canada.

I don’t pretend to know much about the inside baseball of the Liberal party.  A recent dKos diary names at least six potential replacements for Paul Martin as the next Liberal leader (and Prime Minister-in-waiting).  Other names, and issues that will shape the near-term political scene in Canada, are discussed in the comments to that diary.  Highly recommended reading.