WORKED UP OVER APATHY
Opposition needs to make the case that democratic reform matters economically
Much has been made of the Liberal success in the recent byelections, and not entirely without cause: As on previous occasions, the party has greatly increased its share of the vote over what it won in the 2011 election, and while that’s not setting the bar very high — or at all — the trend is clear.
Well, maybe. It’s hard to draw any strong conclusions given that, averaging across the ridings in play, three in four of those eligible to vote didn’t bother. In the two Alberta ridings, where the result was never in doubt, turnout fell below 20 per cent for the first time in any federal election, ever. If there was a clear winner Monday, it was the Party of Indifference, and its forceful and dynamic leader, Who Cares.
That turnout should have sunk to quite such depths might be written off to the prime minister’s fetching decision to schedule the elections for the day before the national holiday. But, as the estimable Alice Funke (of PunditsGuide.ca fame) has pointed out, turnout in federal byelections has been falling steadily since the 1970s, mirroring the trend in general elections. Once it was considered a calamity if turnout dropped below 50 per cent. Now it’s a good day if it comes in above 30 per cent. Perhaps before long we’ll be into single digits.
Is that, as some have suggested, a vote for the status quo, by default? After all, if voters were not exactly flocking to the polls to support the government — the winner in Fort McMurray, Alta., was the choice of just seven per cent of the electorate — they weren’t quite racing to support the opposition parties, either. I don’t know that we can read too much into why people didn’t show up either way, other than the obvious: It wasn’t worth it to them.
That’s obviously worrisome for the future of our democracy. It also has to be of more immediate concern to the opposition. The biggest indictment of this government is its contempt for accountability, and for the institutions and individuals that embody it: from the Supreme Court, to the various officers of Parliament, to Parliament itself. But, as the public has made abundantly clear, it does not see Parliament as relevant. Given the opportunity to choose who should represent them in that august body, more and more of them can’t be arsed. If the public doesn’t care about it, how does the opposition make it an issue?
That’s only part of the story, of course. The other factor working against the opposition is that, quite simply, times are good — not boomtown, fast-living, “let the good times roll” good, but appreciably better than at most times in our past, and in most places on Earth. It’s not polite to say it, but facts are facts: the highest median family incomes, after tax, in our history, and among the highest in the world; likewise record-high household net worth, record-low rates of poverty, a deficit near zero and a rate of inflation scarcely higher. Unemployment is still higher than one would like, but at seven per cent it is at a rate to which we would once have aspired, and judging by the freshening growth in our export markets, headed lower. By this time next year it could well be near six per cent, its pre-recession low.
There’s a theory out there that in good economic times people are more willing to take a chance on a different party. But it’s just not borne out by the evidence. So long as the economy is relatively strong — in fact, short of a recession — people are highly reluctant to “throw the bums out.” We’ve seen that in several recent provincial elections, but it’s just as true federally. The last time a majority government was removed from office when unemployment was below seven per cent was in 1957 — and unemployment was rising then, not falling. With the Tories boasting of balanced budgets and free-trade agreements and doling out tax cuts this way and that, will anyone care that, for example, they’ve cut off debate 75 times in the current Parliament alone? Once upon a time, maybe, but Parliament has already withered to such inconsequence that it’s tough to show people what they’ve lost.
Yet it’s not impossible to make people care about how they are governed, beyond whether the economy runs on time. I don’t believe Michael Ignatieff’s failure proves anything on that score. But it won’t be easy. The opposition will need to do three things. One, they will have to reassure people that, frankly, they won’t change much on the economy — that they will keep budgets balanced, trade free, inflation and taxes low. Two, they will have to show, concretely, how they will make things better on the democratic front. It isn’t enough to complain about the incumbents’ atrocities. We’ve heard all that before. And three, perhaps most important, they will have to show why the second matters to the first.
Which is to say that rule from the centre is not just autocratic: It makes for bad government. It’s not just arbitrary and high-handed, but stale and unimaginative as
The biggest indictment of this government is its contempt for accountability.
well, with a strong aversion to risk. Whatever our current prosperity, the country has some tough economic challenges ahead of it, mostly to do with the aging population, and some big choices to make. It’s going to need a politics that is open to new and controversial ideas, the kind that can’t easily be managed, the kind that party leaders and their people hate. And, as important, it’s going to need the ability, once those choices have been made, to rally public consensus behind them. That’s not happening right now, and it’s materially harming our economic prospects: Witness the mess that has been made of the Northern Gateway pipeline issue.
I’m not sure any of the party leaders get this, to be honest. But that’s the meat-and-potatoes case for democratic reform: not because it’s nice, but because it’s necessary.