By Fahed Alsalem Saqer

Political analyst and researcher in international relations

Canadian voters go to the polls on September 20 , 2021 to elect a new government and Parliament for the next four years.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has led a minority government since October 2019 called the election in the hope of winning a majority and benefit from his high approval rating on his handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic crisis.

Under his leadership, Canada recorded the lowest overall infections and death rates per capita, among all of its Western partners.  Mr. Trudeau led a successful drive to procure millions of vaccines in record time and deliver them to the provinces and local health authorities to administer. This effort resulted in Canada having one of the highest vaccination rates in the World.  Over 78% of adults received at least one dose of the vaccine as of September 3rd, 2021.

The Liberal Party of Canada is rightly regarded as one of the most successful political parties in the Western hemisphere. The Liberals have ruled Canada for more than sixty years during the last eighty-five years since 1935, making it the party with the longest time in power since World War II.  The Liberal Party has endured throughout its history without any splits or major internal rifts, the kind of which have beset its main rival the Conservative Party of Canada, which has a history of internal divisions and turmoil  which have contributed to its decline and at times, its political irrelevance.

What’s more, the Canadian Liberal Party is historically credited with embracing progressive policies that have had significant and far-reaching impacts on Canadian society and had helped shape its unique national identity, and character. The bilingualism and multiculturalism Act, the National Flag Act passed in 1965 to replace the British Union Jack,  Universal Medicare Insurance, which is the pride of Canadian democracy. As well as the repatriation of the Canadian constitution of 1982, of which the late Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau 1919-2000, father of Justin, is rightfully considered as its godfather.

Ironically, all of these key landmark policies were met with ardent opposition from the Conservative Party at the time, represented by both its original ( Progressive Conservatives) and new ( Conservative) versions. In this election, nonetheless, the Liberals are running on the slogan “Forward for Everyone” and their platform calls for $10-a Day childcare, more help for the middle class and small business and tax breaks for first time home buyers. Besides an ambitious plan to combat climate change and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, among other things.

Six parties are now competing in this election; the Liberal Party (center), the Conservative Party (right), the New Democratic Party (left) the Greens (left) Bloc Quebecois (French separatist nationalist) and the People’s Party of Canada (far right). These parties contest the election according to the electoral system based on First past the Post  (Plurality vs. Majority) in the electoral district system, where the country is divided geographically into 338 electoral districts, which is the number of seats in Parliament. This is the same as the multi-party system followed in England.

Under this system, the winning party rarely wins more than 40% of the popular vote to form the government. Given the nature of the electoral system First past the Post ( FPTP), the Party may lose the total popular vote per se,  nationwide, but still win the election. This is owing to an advantageous and “balanced” distribution of its voter support base across all provinces and regions.  Similarly, concentrating the votes for a particular party in one province or region may hurt the party, as is the case in the western province of Alberta for the Conservatives.

For example, there are only 34 seats in Parliament for Alberta, and in a FPTP  electoral system, the winner, practically does not need more than a plurality of 30%-40% of the votes to win. As the remaining percentages are typically distributed among three or four other contenders. But what happens with the candidates of the Conservative Party in Alberta is unique. They win with very high margins, ranging from 55%-60% (an over kill). Which means, that these extra votes will go to waste.  Even though it counts for them eventually in the popular vote,  it does not translate into extra seats in Parliament.

While the Party might be in a dire need of these votes in other provinces such as the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, where almost two-thirds of the population is concentrated.  In Central Canada ( Ontario and Quebec)  the competition is usually very close in almost all ridings, where the winner is usually , sometimes, decided by hundreds or tens of votes or by a small plurality of no more than 2-3%.

But, having said that, the main obstacle facing the Conservative Right in this election, however, is not only the bad geographical distribution of its voter support, with its high concentration in the West, but rather its division and crisis of identity. Despite the image they pretend to project in public, there are serious deep, and unresolved internal sociopolitical differences within the conservative movement in Canada which has been running as a strong undercurrent since the 1990’s and will inevitably come to the surface at the first opportunity after an election or between elections.

For all intents and purposes, the Conservative Right in Canada has become a two-headed dragon, or a bi-polar political movement since the 1993 election. The first pole, being the “Progressives” with Mr. Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993, acting as its mentor. And the second pole, “Reform wing” whose mentor and guru is Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada from 2006-2015. The two are not in harmony, and there is no love lost between them, at all.

The first represents the pragmatic wing of the center-right, and the second represents the Canadian neo-conservatives and far-right, which is closest in its philosophy and political approach to the US Republican Party in its Trumpist version. The neo-conservative faction has been in control of the party since 2003, with the merger of Reform-Canadian alliance Party & the Progressive Conservatives, which many saw as a hostile takeover by the far-right wing.

Therefore, many of the prominent progressive Conservatives, such as former Prime Minister Joe Clarke, first female Prime Minister Kim Campbell, former Deputy Prime Minister and former Quebec Premier Mr. Jean Charest, and many provincial Progressive Conservatives’ leaders find themselves outside of their comfort zone with the current party leadership.

Besides, many progressive conservatives at the provincial level, especially in Eastern (Atlantic) and Central Canada, do not identify themselves with the current Conservative Party and have in the past find themselves less enthusiastic about voting for its Reform-brand of Neoconservatism. Some have opted  to vote or – switch allegiances- instead to alternative parties such as the Liberals, or for French nationalists – in the case of Quebec – or simply abstain from voting.

It is not possible to understand the origins and roots of this conservative ideological rift without  taking a quick look at the results of the 1993 election,  – which constituted a strong political earthquake on the Canadian political scene-  and its aftermath, especially the two subsequent elections of  1997 and 2000. Its repercussions still dominate the political scene until now.

The crux of the matter is that the current Conservative Party headed by Mr. Erin O’Toole does not exemplify the entire right-wing brand, nor does it represent the whole Conservative movement in Canada. No matter how much Mr. O’Toole tries to pretend otherwise.  As a matter of fact, Mr. Stephen Harper, O’Toole’s former boss, has expressed it unequivocally on many occasions and even boasted, that this Conservative Party is not the old Progressive Conservative Party.

Gone are the days when the Progressive Conservatives enjoyed a broad, extended and formidable base across the country.  In the mid-1980’s former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney forged a wide coalition of the Right, Center-Right and French nationalists in Quebec, along with conservatives from the Canadian West, all brought together by political expediency, under one tint against the Liberals. The “Grand Blue Coalition” as it were, artfully constructed by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, through which he was able to handily win two back-to-back majorities in 1984 and 1988, has all but vanished after 1993.

The October 1993 election marked a watershed in Canadian political history, with the rise of the then-obscure Reform Party to the Canadian political scene for the first time in its history, and the decimation of Progressive Conservative Party (ruling at the time) from the federal political stage. A humiliating and dreadful defeat which the Progressives have never accepted.

The opinion polls which keep popping up like mushrooms, and some favoring the Conservatives or showing the two Parties are running neck to neck are misleading and deceptive at best.  For several reasons, first, that the random sample, usually of 1,200 or 2000 potential voters to which they refer, does not reflect the correct distribution of voters as existing on the ground.

For example, were two-thirds of the participants in the sample taken from Quebec and Ontario? Because two-thirds of the voters live in these two provinces. Or were they taken equally from all provinces, regardless of population? Does the percentage of support for different parties at the national level reflect the same percentage of support for parties in the province of Ontario alone, where a third of seats are at stake?  And,  which warrants a separate poll for the Province of Ontario alone.

More often than not, opinion polls in the vote-rich Province of Ontario do not mirror the surveys nationwide, and the same is true – albeit more acutely, in the French province of Quebec. As a rule of thumb, the election battle is won or lost in Ontario. Quebec is the second most populous province and plays a very important role in determining the outcome of the election. But Quebec voters’ intentions are always everybody’s guess for nobody can predict with any amount of certainty how Quebec votes will lean on election day.

 Although, the current Reformist wing of the Conservative Party does not enjoy any significant support among the French electorate in Quebec.  These are two fundamental variables that opinion polls do not consider, and go unnoticed, in the service of media outlets’ political bias and convenience.

Likewise, did the poll’s sample consider, for example, the same proportion of the population along urban-countryside lines (pro rata)? taking enough respondents from major metropolitan areas such as Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria , Halifax, St. John’s, and Sydney where votes are concentrated, and where city dwellers tend to vote for center and left-leaning  parties more than for Right -leaning parties by roughly 2-1, while the opposite is true in the countryside and small towns.

There are too many variables and missing data which render these polls worthless and mere empty tools to manipulate public opinion, according to the whims of the media outlets  that have adopted it.

Since the defections by French nationalists led by Mr. Lucien Bouchard from the Progressive Conservative caucus in the early 1990s,  under then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and the subsequent defeat of the Progressives in the 1993 elections (The Political Earthquake) which gave rise to Reform Party, under the leadership of its populist leader Mr. Preston Manning.   And belatedly,  the defection of the Conservative Right-wing politician and leadership aspirant Mr. Maxime Bernier from the Conservative Party in 2018 to form the Canadian People’s Party, besides, the strong Progressives presence at the provincial level, the Canadian Conservative Right has become a scattered movement divided between at least 4 different, allegiances and political inclinations.

 Putting aside the 2011 election, the only election which the Neoconservatives under  Stephen Harper won with a clear majority, albeit with  dirty political tactics and character assassination of his main opponent Mr. Michael Ignatieff, in a contemptible and most reprehensible manner. A majority win by the current Conservative Party is considered practically highly unlikely, within the parameters of 2021 political landscape. The geographical distribution of voter support leans strongly in favor of the Liberals.

Keeping in mind that a minority win by the Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives will not cut it for them in a hung parliament, dominated by the left. The Left will not support a right-wing conservative government, except at a very high political cost – for both-  which will not be feasible.  While Mr. Trudeau  can rule with a parliamentary minority with ease as he did for the past two years, with the support of the left NDP, Greens, Bloc Quebecois and independents, whose more or less closer to his political philosophy.