Right in the centre - Decision time

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Published on Thursday, October 15, 2015

By Ken Waddell

The Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

With election day looming next Monday, the whole country is holding its breath to see who will form the next government. It would appear that The Banner readership area will vote Conservative. It has usually done so and that’s because the people of Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa have made their assessment that the Conservative Party most closely represents their views. It’s a pretty simple process.

What’s confusing to people in this area, and I am sure in any other areas of Canada, is why we don’t all agree on a particular party. What is it that makes for traditional voting patterns in specific parts of the country? I can’t answer for other parts of Canada but I am sure there are reasons, well thought out and good reasons for a particular voting pattern. We know that Quebec often votes strategically. Quebec knows, or at least feels, they have  to negotiate for every inch of legislative ground and so it’s best done with a either a protest party (such as the Bloc) or by being on the side of government. Last election combined a protest vote with a vain hope that the NDP would form government. It didn’t happen and so the NDP vote in Quebec appears to be crumbling somewhat.

This part of Canada, all the prairie region that is, tend to vote small ‘C’ conservative. They always have. The old Liberal regime, back in the days of Laurier and Mackenzie King, was pretty conservative by today’s standards. They encouraged farming, they tried to be nice to free traders, they encouraged immigration. These are all pillars of the faith in western Canada, a part of the country that depends on immigration, farming and trade. Somewhere along the line, say about the first Trudeau era, Liberals went another direction. They became more interested in changing the  cultural landscape, enforcing bi-lingualism and bi-culturalism and generally changing stuff. To western Canadians, there was no need to go hyper cultural, we already had plenty of cultural diversity. We didn’t see a need to go metric or to make divorces simpler to obtain. Roman Catholics and protestants didn’t always get along 100 per cent, but they agreed on some bedrock issues and saw the Trudeau liberalisms as an intrusion at worst and an annoyance at the best. Trudeau pretty much converted western Canada to the Conservative cause by being annoying and intrusive.

Today, that feeling is well rooted in Western Canada. Manitoba strays away provincially by voting NDP when they get tired of Conservatives. Alberta tried that as well and are having severe doubts about their collective sanity. It should also be noted that when you have three parties, you have some really strange things happening. With thee parties, you almost never get a majority vote. Chretien rode the split between Progressive Conservatives and Reformers to several election victories. As long as the reformers and the conservatives were fighting each other, the Liberal party was laughing all the way to the electoral bank. The same happened in Alberta where the Wildrose party and the conservatives refused to get their act together and mount a united front against the NDP. They have a couple of years to figure it out, to swallow some pride and get their political act together or else the NDP will strangle Alberta. Strangle is a strong word but that’s what’s happened under 16 years of NDP in Manitoba.

Federally, it could be a minority government, likely a Conservative minority government. The Conservatives could pull off a majority, statistically, so could the Liberals. Both scenarios look doubtful, but we have seen some huge shifts in voting before, just ask Kim Campbell.

Whatever the case, the majority of Canadians won’t get their choice of government. The multiple party system doesn’t serve the country all that well. With only two parties, the majority opinion is the clear winner. 

Some will argue that we need proportional representation so that the voter percentage gets reflected in the parliament. That’s simply not workable, it’s too complicated. Better to have two strong parties at both the provincial and federal level and let them set their policies and duke it out. Then we will get a majority decision.

Canada, our provinces and our municipalities all need decisions; good, well thought out decisions. What we have now at all levels is a lot of indecision. The bureaucrats, the lawyers, the lobby groups, the accountants and the public service unions all love it. As long as there is indecision, there are endless meetings and conferences to attend. Everybody looks busy but very little gets done.

It’s decision time folks, in more ways than one.