| "Those are my principles. If you don’t like them… well, I have others."
It’s a line usually attributed to Groucho Marx. But watching Prime Minister Paul Martin and NDP leader Jack Layton unveil their "agreement in principle" last week, I couldn’t help but think it belonged to them. In agreeing to Layton’s demand for $4.6 billion in additional public spending, Martin effectively undermined his own Chancellor’s carefully calculated budget. In pledging his support for the minority Liberal government, Layton surrendered his right/duty to criticize a government he’d vociferously condemned in the last election.
It’s easy to understand, though not condone, Martin’s action. His relatively short political career has been aimed almost exclusively at becoming Liberal leader and prime minister, goals that eluded his father a generation ago. Having finally secured both positions so recently, it was clearly exasperating to him to see each threatened by his party’s failure to win a majority victory last year.
At the same time, the Canadian Liberal Party has always been prepared to compromise whatever "principles" it might loosely claim to hold in order to win and hold on to office. Hence Wilfrid Laurier’s abandonment of free trade as party policy in the election of 1896; hence Mackenzie King’s vague conversion to Keynesian economics and government intervention during the Second World War; and hence Jean Chrétien’s full-scale adoption of former adversary Brian Mulroney’s policies, such as free trade, GST and reduced government intervention.
In short, the Liberal party represents the ideal of brokerage politics. That is, principles and ideals don’t matter; what matters is doing whatever deals are necessary to win power. That’s how, in large part, the Liberals formed the government in Canada for 70 per cent of the 20th century.
But then there’s Jack Layton.
The NDP has been around for more than 50 years now. In essence, it is the successor of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), an uncompromisingly socialist party launched here in Calgary during capitalism’s darkest days in the 1930s. Both the CCF and the NDP were parties founded on ideals and principles, far more than on any realistic hope of forming the federal government. Often described as the "conscience" of parliament, each party has fought well and hard to keep the government of the day mindful of broader social issues.
During the minority governments of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau in the 1960s and 1970s, the NDP was even able to parlay its "balance of power" position into some tangible gains and concessions, and it was no doubt with this in mind that Layton acted as he did last week.
The problem is, Canadian politics have changed dramatically in the past decade or so, rendering Layton’s attempt to curry favour with Martin totally wrongheaded.
To understand why, you have to go back to the election of 1993. That was the occasion on which the voting public unleashed its wrath on Brian Mulroney – courtesy of scapegoat Kim Campbell – and all but destroyed the Progressive Conservatives as a political force. As a consequence, the three-party system – Liberals, PCs and CCF/NDP – that had characterized Canadian politics since the Second World War lay in tatters, replaced by a messier five-party system. The Liberals and NDP remained as national forces, more or less. The PCs were still there, in name at least, but they were now joined by the Bloc Québécois and Reform Party, unabashed regional parties. Events of the past dozen years have, in essence, seen the old model of Canadian politics attempt to adjust – massively unsuccessfully, it must be said – to this new five-party reality.
An unexpected side-effect of this new system has been to allow the single largest parliamentary party (i.e. the Liberals) to hold on to power with an ever decreasing share of the popular vote. In short, the more parties there are, the fewer votes you need to win the race. (Sidebar 1)
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Liberal Victories, 1993-2004
Year% Popular VoteSeats
199341177
199739155
200041172
200437135
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For three elections (1993, 1997 and 2000) this worked in the Liberals’ favour, allowing them to form majority governments with far less than 50 per cent of the popular vote. But as their support dipped to 37 per cent in last year’s contest, the tipping point was reached. Martin’s Liberals were returned to office with just 135 of 308 seats. The NDP won 19 seats, but with a Liberal MP serving as Speaker of the House, this means that even a full Liberal-NDP alliance falls short of a working majority.
This fact alone makes last week’s deal difficult to understand. A concerted effort by Bloc, Conservative and Independent MPs will still be enough to bring down the Liberal government on any major vote – such as the budget – and with it the credibility of Layton’s NDP. More to the point, and as Layton himself has argued on more than one occasion, Liberal promises are inherently untrustworthy. What realistic hopes does Layton have of ever seeing a single cent of the promised $4.6 billion?
What should Layton have done? The one promise that may have made sense would have been a written commitment from Martin to implement some form of proportional representation (PR) before the next federal election. Long-touted as an overdue reform – Canada is one of the few remaining first-past-the-post (FPTP) democracies in the "developed" world" – and as a means of making the new five-party system workable, PR would also have elevated the long-term profile of the NDP in Parliament, far beyond any short-run benefits that Layton’s deal might provide.
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NDP Seats, 1993-2004
% Popular Vote Seats under Seats underDifference
FPTPPR
19937921+12
1997112133+12
200091327+14
2004161949+30
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At present, the NDP is significantly under-represented in Parliament. (Sidebar 2). Under a system of PR, it would eclipse the Bloc and even rival the strength of the western-based Reform/Alliance/Conservative party. As such, a commitment to PR would elevate the NDP’s influence in the national political discourse.
Instead, Jack Layton’s sleazy showroom deal last week has likely condemned the NDP to future parliamentary impotence. There can be few Canadians who, in 2004, voted NDP in order to prop up an obviously corrupt Liberal regime. And with Layton’s party currently representing as many as one in six Canadian voters, this amounts to a sad and significant betrayal of principle.
Thanks, Jack. You gave us shit. |
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