WE COULDN’T AGREE LESS
IT’S NOT OFTEN EASTERN CANADIANS FEEL LIKE CHEERING when a Progressive Conservative government is re-elected in Alberta.
But that’s what happened this week when Premier Alison Redford scored a Hail Mary victory over the right-wing Wildrose Party, which had been widely expected to topple 41 years of Tory rule.
In the end, Albertans were spooked by Wildrose, whose leader, Danielle Smith, cast doubt on climate change, bashed Quebec’s social programs and failed to censure candidates who claimed gays will burn in a lake of fire and that white politicians have a natural advantage over minorities.
Most Alberta Conservative MPS backed Wildrose and were said to be devastated by the outcome, although Prime Minister Stephen Harper remained officially neutral.
But the results came as a relief to many in the rest of the country who worried a U.S. Tea Party-style government would further fragment Canada’s already divided political landscape.
“I think about the rise of the Wildrose Party in Alberta. It seems to me there’s a very outlaw mentality attached to these policies,” said Danielle Lustgarten, 46, a substitute teacher and mother of three who ran unsuccessfully for the NDP in the 2004 federal election in Pierrefonds-dollard.
“I think there’s a lot of Canadians who just don’t feel any attachment to that whatsoever,” she added.
One year into Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first majority government, Canada seems increasingly split between rival political visions.
Canadians used to view themselves as centrists who didn’t identify strongly with either the right or left side of the political spectrum, says Frank Graves, president of EKOS Research Associates. That has changed in the past decade, coinciding with the rise of the Harper Conservatives, first elected in 2006, he said.
Voters are sharply divided over Conservative policies like laxer gun laws, harsher sentencing, looser environmental regulation and a more militaristic foreign policy, Graves said.
“In terms of the whole panoply of issues, from foreign policy to economic policy to crime and justice policy to issues about parliamentary democracy, I have never seen Canadians this polarized,” he said.
Polarization is the tendency of political parties to move toward opposite ends of the political spectrum instead of hugging the centre. As the parties move farther apart, their supporters find they have less and less common ground.
Two-thirds of Canadians tend toward middle-of-the-road or progressive positions but their votes are fragmented between the NDP, Liberals and Green Party, a situation that favours the Tories, Graves said.
Liberal MP Justin Trudeau unloaded on the government’s neo-conservative values in February when he told a Radio Canada radio show he was so appalled by the coun- try’s new political culture, he was almost ready to contemplate Quebec’s separation.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize this country. And millions of Canadians don’t recognize this country,” said the son of late Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who defined the federalist cause.
While the media portrayed Trudeau’s outburst as a gaffe, Lustgarten (who is a federalist) said his words rang true for many.
“I really do think that what he said is very important and I think that there are a lot of Quebecers and probably a lot of other Canadians that feel the same way that he does,” she said.
“We may not necessarily want to choose independence, but we’re looking at alternatives to the country we’re living in at the moment because we feel it doesn’t speak to us as Canadians,” she added.
But Geoff Norquay, a public policy and communications specialist who was communications director to Harper when Opposition Leader and a senior adviser to former prime minister Brian Mulroney, dismissed the idea Canada is becoming more polarized.
“I don’t think it’s more partisan or contrary today. That’s the way politics is. That’s just the way it is,” he said.
Norquay said the average Canadian avoids political labels and simply wants a government that runs things efficiently and stays out of citizens’ hair. “Run the government, don’t steal my money, make it relatively efficient and effective and don’t bother me because I’ve got a lot going on in my life here,” he said.
However, Graves noted that polls show Canadians are, in fact, more politically aligned than in the past.
Eight years ago, fewer than half of Canadians identified with a particular political orientation. Today, seven out of 10 define themselves as on the political right or left, with 30 per cent calling themselves small “C” conservatives and 40 per cent small “L” liberals, he said.
The time-honoured recipe for success in Canadian politics used to be to straddle the centre in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, said Antonia Maioni, an associate professor of political science at Mcgill University.
Parties acted as brokers, mediating between different interest groups and regions, she said.
“Political parties in Canada have normally seen their role as being more of generalists, trying to capture a variety of different voices. What we’re seeing now is that political parties are finding ways of being more strategic, in terms of addressing themselves to certain types of groups or interests and using that as a way of building a political base,” Maioni said. In the U.S., polarization has risen dramatically in recent decades, fuelled by a dramatic increase in campaign spending and the greater role of special-interest groups like the anti-abortion movement or the gun lobby. The trend has resulted in a bitterly partisan atmosphere that has deadlocked government at times and alienated voters.
Technology has also enabled parties to target groups more likely to be receptive to their message and avoid wasting time on voters who don’t support them.
In Canada, the Conservative Party pioneered the use of archetypes to build support among certain groups, for example, Jews concerned about Israel, rural hunters opposed to gun control and people worried about crime, Norquay said.
“What we see is what might be termed a parcellization of policy according to the interests of readily identifiable groups,” he said.
Brooke Jeffrey, a professor of political science at Concordia University and former research director for the federal Liberal Party, said the Conservatives’ tactics are modelled on those developed by Republican media gurus like pollster Frank Luntz, known for inventing emotionally-charged labels like “government takeover” for President Barack Obama’s health-care plan and “death tax” for a proposed inheritance tax.
Tory innovations like attack ads in non-election periods and policies that play on fear and anger, for example toward criminals or illegal immigrants, have ramped up the confrontational tone of Canadian politics, said Matthew Hayday, an associate professor of history at the University of Guelph who specializes in modern Canadian politics.
“Where I think there really is a shift is not necessarily, or not entirely, in terms of the policies, but in terms of the way that the political culture has changed. It’s clear that we have shifted into an era of constant campaigning. The 24/7, 365-days-a-year media campaigns and really virulent partisanship, I think that is new. And it’s an angrier, nastier form of politics that was less evident in an earlier era,” he said.
Hayday suggested the strategy of constant attack ads might be intended to cause regular Canadians to dial out of politics. “It might be deliberately designed to turn people off of politics, to deliberately disengage voters who don’t respond well to that message and to make them think that politics is about nasty partisanship,” he said.
Disengagement is strongest among young voters, a trend that favours the Conservatives, since Tory support is highest among people over 65. Elderly voters are also six times more likely to vote than people under 25 and nearly four times as likely as those age 2544, Graves said. The median age of eligible voters last year was 47 (compared to 39 in 1986). The median age of those who actually voted was close to 60, he said.
The split opposition was hampered by both the NDP’S and the Liberals’ lack of a permanent leader for much of the past year, Hayday noted.
“Part of what is fuelling that polarization has been an ineffectual opposition, an inability to counter the types of advertisements and tactics and strategies that have fuelled the discourse of the right in Canada,” he said.
Key to Harper’s long-term success is whether he will succeed in redefining Canadian values by shifting public opinion to the right, Hayday said.
Many people think of certain values – multiculturalism, official bilingualism, public health care, Canada’s international role as a global peacekeeper, for example – as being quintessentially Canadian. But the national narrative evolves over time, Hayday said.
“Values are not fixed, static things necessarily. They do change over time. And that can be done whether through direct persuasion or more subtle forms of altering people’s perceptions around given interests,” he said.
“If you looked back 60 years ago, we wouldn’t have talked about public health care as a Canadian value, but it did become one. It’s one of the few semi-sacred cows left in terms of the welfare state as part of Canadian values,” he said.
Crime and punishment are an example of the Conservative government’s efforts to shift opinion. The Tories have focused attention on victims of crime and heinous offenders in order to paint the need for stiffer penalties, even though in fact, the crime rate has been declining for years.
“If you switch to a system that is more based on punishment, and let’s assume that our current trend of declining crime rates continues,
Disengagement is strongest among young voters, a trend that favours the Conservatives.
eventually people won’t necessarily think critically about it,” Hayday said.
“So I think what’s happening right now is that the government is trying to lay the planks for changed attitudes towards different sectors like crime, on the basis that this will become institutionalized, and something that just is in the background for Canadians, that they accept as part and parcel of what Canada does.”
The government has also tried to redefine Canadian identity by reintroducing symbols of the British royalty and celebrating military history, particularly the War of 1812, he noted.
The abortion issue – which many Canadians thought had been laid to rest – resurfaced this week when the government allowed debate on a private member’s bill that could open the door to restrictions.
Hayday said that so far, the opposition parties have failed to counter the Tories’ aggressive attacks, which have inflicted considerable damage.
“There has been an unwillingness to engage in the same sorts of tactics but I think there will prob- ably come a realization that fighting back is necessary, if there is going to be a shift in the political terrain. This has proved to be a very effective strategy for the Conservative government,” he said.
However, Tory messaging has notably fallen flat in Quebec, the most liberal region of the country for attitudes on social issues and the role of the state.
The 2011 election marked a realignment of federal politics when the Conservatives won a majority without support from Quebec – long seen as a prerequisite for power, pointed out Mcgill’s Maioni.
“It’s marginalized what used to be thought of as a necessary accessory for that national base, which is Quebec, she said.
“What that means in the longer term for national unity I think remains to be seen. Certainly it opens up the question for Quebecers of, are our values still congruent with what’s going on in the rest of Canada?” Maioni said.
While the Tories seem determined to shift public opinion to the right on issues like the role of the state in health care and pensions, and law and order, she noted, in fact, the Harper government has tacked toward the centre, as seen in the last budget, which fiscal conservatives painted as a betrayal of the party’s agenda.
“This is a Conservative government that, if you look at what’s actually happening, in terms of the budget, in terms of different kinds of positions on issues, it’s not completely radical. There’s a calibration at hand, which is I think important to recognize,” Maioni said.
Canada’s future political equation will reflect the Conservatives’ success at moving Canadians to the right, and voters’ influence in moving the government toward the centre, she said.
“I think the point now is how the government actually figures out what it’s going to do between now and the next election and how it intends to maintain power, either by calibrating further to the centre or by really embarking on that polarization and taking a wider group of Canadians along with it,” Maioni said.