Vote a death knell for conservatives?

Re Power shift turns Ottawa on its head, Nov. 6 In the “change election” of 1993, a divided political right in Canada gave 18.69 per cent of the vote to Preston Manning’s Reform Party and 16.04 per cent to Kim Campbell’s Progressive Conservatives, for a combined total of 34.73 per cent of the popular vote.

In the “change election” of 2015, a united political right in Canada gave Stephen Harper’s Conservative party just 31.89 per cent of the popular vote.

Some right-wing pundits have been suggesting that the outcome on Oct. 19 was a positive one for the “conservative movement,” that achieving a result of 99 seats in the House of Commons is something a new leader can build upon. That is poppycock.

Robert Stanfield, even less charismatic than Harper, still managed 31.43 per cent of the popular vote for the PCs against the Trudeaumania Liberals of 1968, winning 72 out of 264 seats, or 27.3 per cent of the seats available at that time in the House. Harper’s winning of 99 out of 338 seats in 2015 is only slightly higher at 29.3 per cent of the House seats that are now available.

With the arguable exception of Brian Mulroney’s PCs in 1984, with 50.3 per cent of the popular vote, every federal election for many decades now has shown that by far the majority of Canadi- ans support politics that is clearly left of centre.

If Justin Trudeau were to bring in electoral reform to eliminate “first past the post” from federal elections, it would be difficult to imagine how a right-ofcentre party could ever form a majority government in Ottawa again.

There is no “conservative movement” in Canada. To state otherwise would suggest that there is a cause that is growing, or a silent majority that just needs the right motivation to stand up and be counted. The united right’s embrace of hate, manipulation, fear and a reliance on an assumed ignorance and indifference or stupidity of the broader electorate is not a path to the growth of anything, never mind a vision of what Canada should and can be. Trevor Amon, Victoria, B.C.