Larry Zolf, writing for the CBC:
One wonders who Stephen Harper is listening to. Who's giving him the reality checks he badly needs to have? Harper's Unite the Right manoeuvres are as ill-founded as they've ever been. All polls show that the Tories prefer the Liberals to the Alliance as a second choice. Liberals added to by the NDP vote are clearly a majority of Canadians. There is no Right to be united and Harper hasn't been able to expand his western base.
Idyllic, isn't it?
APPENDIX: Stephen Harper is the current leader of the Canadian Alliance, the Canadian party of evil which is also the official Opposition. The CA, formerly led by Stockwell Day, who was more or less a walking, albeit sick, joke, is rightwing, anti-gay, pro-war, pro-Bush, et cetera, et cetera. It is outnumbered in the House of Commons by the Liberals almost 3-to-1; its support comes almost exclusively from the west, Alberta and British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
Despite this, strangely, the provincial legislature of British Columbia is overwhelmingly dominated by the Liberals, with 77 of 79 seats. The New Democratic Party is the official Opposition, with two seats. Funny, isn't it? Note that the Marijuana Party took in just over 3% of the popular vote in the last provincial election, well ahead of the CA or the Progressive Conservatives (who are federally puny these days), who apparently did not field any candidates at all.
The BC Marijuana Party: overgrowing the government!
Alberta is in the thrall of the Progressive Conservatives, though its Premier Ralph Klein is a pretty big asshole anyhow; he is opposed to full marriage for same-sex couples, and has threatened to keep it out of Alberta if it passes federally.
Note that Dr Ken Nicol, Leader of the Alberta Liberal Party, graduated from Iowa State University, my alma mater's perennial rival.
Saskatchewan is narrowly controlled by the New Democratic Party in a coalition with two Liberals. Note with some alarm that the NDP Leader is a clergyman, and the Saskatchewan Party Leader served on the board of a Full Gospel Bible Institute. I don't know much about the Saskatchewan Party, but it favoured de-insuring abortions, and has a lot of small-government, private-enterprise positions, like teaching entrepreneurship in the secondary schools. It's anti-affirmative action and favours harsher punishments for juvenile offenders. And it wants to amend the Charter of Rights to include a specific right to own property, which is just weird. And it favours 'traditional family values'. In short, as far as I can determine they're your run-of-the-mill social and fiscal conservatives, just like Grandma used to make. Saskatchewan is scary.
Manitoba is solidly New Democrat. The mayor of Winnipeg, Glenn Murray, is openly gay. Ontario's Progressive Conservative (despite the presence of Toronto); Quebec's now in Liberal hands, rather than those of its own Parti Quebecois. And then there are some other provinces too, but they're all teeny, and I can't be arsed to dig up details.
So the deal seems to be that the NDP has two provincial legislatures, but very little federal standing. The Canadian Alliance has some support federally from the western provinces, but does not exist on a provincial level. The Progressive Conservatives are feeble federally but control a number of provinces; the Canadian Alliance has approached them about a possible fusion of the two parties, but the Tories aren't biting, because the CA brand of conservativism (more religious, more American) just doesn't play in the East. And of course the Liberals are everywhere, with a solid lock on federal politics.
One last note, on the Alliance:
In 1999 the Reform Party was renamed the Canadian Alliance in an attempt to escape its perceived position as a party of western Canada, and with the express goal of "uniting the right" by merging with the Conservatives. The first name chosen for the party was the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party, which the media quickly noticed created the unfortunate acronym, CCRAP.
AFTERWORD (25/08/03): To avoid confusion, the NDP is not a right-wing party; I threw it in for contrast in Saskatchewan especially. Historically it's been to the left of the Liberals, avowedly democratic socialist. How socialist? Quoth their Manitoba wing:
We wish to create a society where individuals give according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs.
In practice, though, Gary Doer's provincial government hasn't been especially leftist; it's clung to a lot of the economic politicies its Progressive Conservative predecessors embraced, like relentlessly balanced budgets and strict limits on tax hikes. They're sort of middle-of-the-road-ists.
Nationally, the party is more radical, favouring things like proportional representation, standing up to the US over softwood lumber, and of course same-sex marriage.
FURTHER AFTERWORD (25/08/03): A commentator at Electrolite reveals that the ruling B.C. Liberal Party in British Columbia is not in fact connected to the national Liberal Party, and is not even a liberal party, but a sort of conservative one in disguise, which suggests all manner of possibilities for creative political public relations. I should start a Republicam Party, and run for office on a platform of revolutionary Communism.
Posted by aloysius at August 24, 2003 03:12 PM | TrackBack |