| 1968 was a big year for lefty politics. Trudeaumania was in full swing, the United States had just experienced the Summer of Love, and millions of students and striking workers were storming the streets of Paris in an insurrection that nearly toppled the French government.
And Calgary was right there on the vanguard of the progressive, permissive times, with the voters of Calgary South electing, of all things, a Liberal. Patrick Mahoney of Calgary South (a riding since dissolved) eked out his victory by 756 votes, and became only the second Liberal MP – ever – to represent our city in Ottawa.
"I can’t even really take credit for winning," says Mahoney, now retired and living in North Vancouver. "It was just the combination of circumstances… Trudeau was very popular, and the Conservative establishment in Calgary South was in total disarray, with some very prominent members engaged in a wife-swapping scandal."
Well, it was the ’60s. Wife-swapping or not, four years later, Mahoney lost the riding by more than 16,000 votes.
Since then, every MP elected in Calgary has been from a right-of-centre party, whether that be the Progressive Conservatives, the Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance or the new Conservative Party. Provincially and locally, the political landscape is slightly more varied, with a handful of Liberal MLAs and even four NDP MLAs, plus a mix of ideologies on city council. But federally, Alberta and Calgary speak in one monolithic conservative drone.
"It really affects the way we’re seen outside the province," says Roger Gibbins, president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation. "People don’t see the city in its full complexity, and it’s a frustrating characteristic of the electoral system."
The facts bear Gibbins out. You only need to look at the numbers to see that Calgarians don’t all swing one way, politically speaking. In the 2004 election, 232,706 Calgary votes went to the Conservatives. But 149,335 went to other parties – mostly Liberal, as well as the NDP and the Green Party. Then, of course, there are those who didn’t bother to vote at all, which in Alberta is a lot. According to Elections Canada, only 58.9 per cent of eligible Alberta voters participated in 2004’s election, which was below the poor national turnout of 60.9 per cent – the lowest voter turnout in Canadian history.
Interestingly, the groups who are staying away from the polls in the greatest numbers are the same groups most likely to espouse centrist or leftist politics: young people, minorities and the transient.
"The youth voters are definitely less conservative than older voters, that’s a general rule of thumb across time and place," says Gibbins. "So Conservatives, as we might expect, seem less enthusiastic about driving up the youth vote than other parties."
The same holds true for ethnic minorities, though Gibbins points out that while immigrants tend to vote more liberally than born and bred Canadians, the difference is not overwhelming, and many immigrants, depending on their culture and homeland, are actually quite conservative.
The real problem, Gibbons believes, is the current electoral system, which he advocates replacing with a system of proportional representation, whereby a party is awarded parliamentary seats that reflect the number of votes they receive, not the ridings they win. In the current system, parties are often awarded a much greater or lesser percentage of parliamentary seats than would be indicated by their share of the popular vote (for example, in 2004’s federal election, the Liberals won 22 per cent of Alberta’s popular vote, but only held two of the province’s 28 seats).
At the very least, says Gibbins, such a system would bring to light the real political diversity of Calgary, a city usually, and inaccurately, painted a deep shade of Conservative blue come election time.
CONSERVATIVE CARICATURE
"Yeah, we’re pretty much a one-party situation," agrees Dr. Keith Archer, a political scientist at the University of Calgary. "The Conservatives have overwhelming dominance, and it’s a very poor reflection of the opinions of Albertans."
Gibbins and Archer believe that Alberta’s perceived political homogeneity not only does a disservice to our province’s real diversity, but is a serious hindrance to a functioning democracy nation-wide, with each region’s politics being simplified almost to the point of caricature.
"We have these regional clashes," Gibbins says. "People say, ‘Oh boy, Alberta is sure different than metro Toronto.’ And it is, but there are Liberals here and Conservatives there. This country is sadly divided by cultural and political differences that really aren’t nearly as significant as we think they are."
Mahoney agrees, and for that reason he’s optimistic that as Calgary becomes larger and more cosmopolitan, a non-Conservative will again be elected, eventually.
"I think there’s a third of the population, at least, who would certainly not vote Conservative," he says. "So a Liberal or any other party does have a chance, but it takes a young person with some idealism and enthusiasm to run. It’s a real tough racket today – I sure wouldn’t do it."
Mahoney, incidentally, doesn’t support proportional representation, arguing that it would lead to a string of ineffective minority governments. Archer and Gibbins say that’s probably true, but believe the current system is flawed enough to justify the changeover.
"We’ll just have to figure out a way to make minority governments work better," says Archer.
Archer also suggests that voters who feel frustrated and alienated from the political process should consider getting politically engaged outside the electoral process, whether they join an interest group, lobby their representatives in Parliament, or volunteer for a party they believe in.
"Campaigns these days rely more on ads and muck-slinging than on volunteers and hard work," he says, "It’s really too bad, because that’s what gets average people involved. It’s up to us as citizens to reclaim that." |
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