No confidence, no alternative?

Nov 30th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

A sleaze scandal from years past has helped to bring down Canada’s Liberal government, led by Paul Martin. But opposition parties have problems of their own, and the Liberals are likely to regain power in the January election

ONE of Canada's mottos is “peace, order, good government”. Few would dispute that the country has succeeded in maintaining the first two under the Liberal administration that has held power since 1993. But the Liberals are widely deemed to have failed on the last, and on Monday November 28th they paid the price: the government was defeated in a confidence vote. Following a winter campaign, which promises to be bitter in more ways than one, an election will be held on January 23rd.

The Liberals have been losing support among voters ever since the revelation, in 2003, of the so-called “sponsorship” scandal. In 1995, voters in Quebec narrowly rejected a referendum on secession from Canada. In the following years, the Liberal government, under then prime minister Jean Chrétien, spent money on advertisements in the majority-francophone province promoting Canadian unity. Some of the money found its way to advertising firms with links to the Liberals, and thence back into party coffers. Mr Chrétien’s successor as prime minister, Paul Martin, asked a judge, John Gomery, to look into the accusations. His commission reported this month that money had indeed gone criminally missing, but explicitly exonerated Mr Martin. Nonetheless, the Liberals now seem tired and faintly corrupt in voters’ eyes.

But will this usher in a government led by the main opposition party, the Conservatives? The odds are surprisingly long. The current Conservative Party is the result of a recent merger between the western-based Canadian Alliance, which resembles America’s Republicans in its social and fiscal conservatism, and the ideologically softer Progressive Conservative Party. Led by the Alliance’s Stephen Harper, the new Conservatives seem more right-wing than many Canadians are comfortable with. Mr Harper’s opposition to gay marriage and reservations about abortion—both of which are espoused by the Liberal government—make him easy to portray as out-of-touch with tolerant Canadian values.

Mr Martin did just that at the last election, in June of last year, which helped his party win the largest share of seats. However, the Liberal Party lost its majority in that poll, largely thanks to the then-emerging sponsorship scandal. It has since limped along in a minority government. It scraped through a confidence vote earlier this year, thanks only to the support of the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP), which demanded various spending increases. After Judge Gomery reported, the NDP bolted, leaving the government to fall on Monday.

Now Canadians will face an unusually acrimonious campaign. Ugly language has already been flung around, with Mr Harper saying that the Liberals were involved in “organised crime” in the sponsorship scandal. Meanwhile, the Liberals have suggested that Mr Harper and his party have a “hidden” right-wing agenda.

One area the Conservatives will seek to exploit is government spending. Mr Martin, known for his careful stewardship of Canada’s public finances as finance minister under Mr Chrétien, has gone on a bit of a spending spree in the run-up to what he knew would be an early election. On November 14th, the government promised C$39 billion ($33 billion) in new tax cuts and spending over the next five years. Mr Harper accused Mr Martin of promising over a billion dollars a day in order to hold on to power.

Despite the Liberals’ woes, the Conservatives currently sit on too narrow a base to expect an easy win in the election. Their stronghold is Alberta. The energy-rich western province has a testy relationship with the federal government. Though it has control over its extensive natural gas and oil deposits, it fears that the government might try to take charge of these, or move further to redistribute Alberta’s wealth to the rest of Canada.

Though the Conservatives do well from the west’s sense of alienation from Ottawa, the federal capital, beyond the region they are weak. They lag the Liberals in Ontario, by far the most populous province, and have no seats at all in Quebec, the next biggest prize. Despite the sleaze scandal and a ruling party that looks weak, the opposition party has gained surprisingly little in the polls since the last election—not unlike America.

But Canada differs from its southern neighbour in a big respect. The two big parties must compete with the NDP across the country. And, more significantly for Canada’s future, these three parties must contend with the Bloc Québécois, the national party advocating “sovereignty”—independence—for Quebec. Gilles Duceppe, the Bloc’s leader, promises that voters in his province will pass “harsh judgment” on the Liberals for a scandal which, after all, misused funds designed to promote Canadian unity in Quebec. And not only is the federal government unpopular, but the provincial one, run by the Liberals, has failed to impress. This combination of forces will probably strengthen the Bloc’s hold on Quebec’s delegation in Ottawa in the January election.

Opinion polls suggest that support for independence has been growing in Quebec since the 1995 referendum. But much of this support looks fragile—many people say paradoxically that they favour independence but do not want to see a referendum soon: in other words, they are for it in theory, but against in practice. The Parti Québécois, the provincial counterpart to the federal Bloc, has promised a referendum as soon as possible should it gain control of the province in the future. Given the ambivalence of Quebeckers, any such vote could go either way. But there is no doubt that the sleaze scandal has hurt the Liberal—and federal—cause in sometimes fickle Quebec.

Overall, Canada would seem to be doing well: its public finances are sound, its people enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, and its economy is roaring—it grew by a better-than-expected 3.6% on an annual basis in the third quarter, according to figures released on Wednesday. But Canadians are grumpy. They worry about government ethics, but they fret even more about things like the state of their health-care system. The Liberals have a 12-year run in government behind them. They are likely—but not guaranteed—to convince Canadians to give them yet another chance. But a majority in the House of Commons may again elude them.

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