A Tale of Two Provincial Elections: Saskatchewan and BC

Saskatchewan: A Long Term Shift to the Right?

There will be provincial elections held imminently in two western provinces, British Columbia on Saturday October 24, followed by Saskatchewan on Monday October 26. Historically, the two jurisdictions have been of great importance to the New Democratic Party. Saskatchewan was home to the breakthrough election of 1944 that brought Tommy Douglas to office and would eventually produce Canada's first public health care plans. 

Map of 1944 Saskatchewan Election

The CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) and NDP have held office for 47 of the 76 years since that win in 1944, while three parties with different names but all representing the political right have held office for just 29 of those years. However, over the past several elections support for the NDP has been steadily declining while the conservative Saskatchewan party has won overwhelming majorities of the constituencies in the Saskatchwan legislature. 

The polls in the current campaign so far suggest that while the NDP can expect some improvement in vote share, and could pick up some seats, the Saskatchewan Party remains headed for an a big victory. Originally the CCF represented agrarian socialism (as the map suggests) but the party soon shifted to the cities. 

A new Saskatchewan Party win would mean that Saskatchewan would be headed for 17 consecutive years of small 'c' conservative governance, far exceeding the length of previous right-wing regimes. It has been a complicated multi factor process but in part it reflects the consolidation of the conservative support in almost all of rural agricultural Saskatchewan except the far north, and Saskatchewan's shift to becoming an oil province (probably a sunset industry later in this century) and conscious of its status as such - it is among the provinces vigourously challenging the federal carbon tax. Conservative parties also hold sway in rural parts of Canada elsewhere.

Results of federal elections in Saskatchewan have paralleled the provincial results, with the Conservatives under the prevous Saskatchewan-based leader Andrew Scheer winning a share of votes and seats similar to Alberta in last year's federal election. 

The NDP may well turn a corner upward in this election but, given that all governments accumulate grievances, that is to be expected. However, the Saskatchewan of Dream No Little Dreams (a book I highly recommend) seems in the distant past. Indeed it seems more likely at the moment that we will see a new NDP government in Alberta before we see one in Saskatchewan.

British Columbia: Becoming a Canadian California?

About fifty years ago a book chapter on British Columbia was sub-titled The Politics of Class Conflict. BC's history is of an economy based on natural resources such as mining and fisheries that has been characterized by strong class-based conflicts between strong unions and antagonistic employers. The unions have supported political parties on the left expressing their interests. 

The old CCF never won office in BC - it was not until 1972 that the NDP won office for a single term. However, the political right was sufficiently terrified of the electoral prospects of the left to have formed a coalition government of the Liberals and Conservatives in the 1940s to keep them from winning. The Social Credit governments that followed were that same coalition reconstituted along slightly different lines. The most recent expression of the same coalition can be found in the B.C. Liberal Party governments that followed the defeat of the first two term NDP government, albeit winning elections under two different leaders (Mike Harcourt in 1991 and Glen Clark in 1996). Notably, although Glen Clark lead the NDP to victory in 1996, the party actually won a smaller share of the popular vote than the BC Liberals.

While the NDP has had limited success in BC compared to Saskatchewan, the 21st century is providing brighter prospects for the party. In part the older class-based politics has given way to a politics that reflects the multiple and overlapping strains of modern political culture, marrying traditional concerns about social and economic inequality to emerging issues like climate change and the demands for recognition and respect for the range of peoples that compose our increasingly diverse society. While these social trends matter enormously, one can never underestimate the importance of leadership.

John Horgan

The NDP in BC is poised to win the election and form a second consecutive government under the same leader for the first time on Saturday night. A key reason for this is that the BC NDP has one of the most talented political leaders on this continent in the person of John Horgan. I am increasingly of view that when it comes to politics experience matters most when it comes to picking leaders (we have just had a demonstration in the New Brunswick election of what happens when a party chooses a politically inexperienced neophyte as leader). Horgan brought to the job not just years of direct political experience dating from his first election in 2005, but also deep experience working as both a political advisor and public servant in the BC NDP governments of the 1990s. The people I know in B.C. who have had dealings with him have the utmost respect for him.

The BC NDP continue to lead the opposition Liberals and the Green Party in opinion polls: based on the latest numbers I have them winning at least 52 seats in the 87 seat legislature. Beyond Saturday's result we can see that BC has a coastal politics similar to the US states of Washington, Oregon and California, a politics that trends to the left. I wrote about this in 2017 when I said:

The blue state-red state trend in the U.S. is of relatively recent vintage (until the mid-nineties Republicans were strong in California), but the trend to more left of centre views (and growing green consciousness) is clearly characteristic of the coasts in both places. Can it be too many more years before the trends evident south of the border become typical of B.C.?

In contrast, the politics of the plains province of Saskatchewan are beginng to appear similar to American states directly to its south. The last election in BC produced a close overall result between the BC Liberals and the NDP but the Greens produced a stronger showing than before. There was a dramatic increase in the combined NDP-Green vote from the prior election in 2013. The Green Party do have roots in both left wing and more conservative politics, but in BC overall they lean much more left. That jump in the combined vote from 2013 to 2017 and continuing in 2020 is something we should expect to be a theme of politics in the 21st century. As for Saskatchewan, while the analogy is far from perfect, their US neighbour North Dakota, now a highly conservative Trump voting state, was once ruled by the Non-Partisan League, a left of centre radical agrarian politcal formation that captured the state's Republican Party.

In praise of the Saskatchewan CCF... the roots of Medicare

On the March 21 edition of CBC radio's The House Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said, "This is a moment when all Canadians should get down on their knees and thank the people who gave us our universal health care system...."

Tommy Douglas

Sixty years ago in the spring of 1960 Saskatchewan's Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government led by Tommy Douglas was about to enter a successful re-election campaign promising "a province-wide medical care program". Today medicare is considered a given in Canada but that wasn’t always the case. A series of politically risky moves on the part of Douglas and his government made it happen. These events deserve to be remembered.

In the midst of a pandemic the importance of having a government-run health care system will instantly be recognized by most Canadians, who have come to depend on it for over fifty years. While the United States continues as the world's leading private sector based health care system (although it spends large amounts of public dollars through programs such as Medicaid), in the current situation the leading U.S. public voice, Dr Anthony Fauci from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, acknowledged recently: "The system is not really geared to what we need right now... let's admit it..."

The failures of the U.S. health system go well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. If we look back at some the historic developments that led to the establishment of Medicare by the Saskatchewan CCF, we can recognize there are elements of the story we would do well to remember at this precarious time. (For most of what follows I am drawing upon the account in the book Dream No Little Dreams: A Biography of the Douglas Government of Saskatchewan, 1944-1961, written by A.W. Johnson ; with the assistance of Rosemary Proctor.)  Note that Johnson was a founding father of medicare.

Medicare was always among the plans of the CCF when they came to office in August 1944. Saskatchewan was emerging from a decade and a half of war and depression, a period of austerity and scarcity that meant it felt compelled to balance its budget (farmers post-depression in particular were allergic to debt). However, that did not stop it from the beginnings of medicare. In 1946 Saskatchewan legislated the Saskatchewan Hospital Services Plan to start on January 1, 1947, a plan to pay for hospitcal care that was universal, comprehensive and publicly administered. It was expensive but Saskatchewan did not hesitate to find the necessary funding. Financing came from general revenues and family premiums (taxes), which were set initially at $30 ($425 in current dollars) per year for a family of four (less for singles and couples).

Before taking office the CCF contemplated abolishing the sales tax, but opted instead once in office to make it more progressive by exempting 'necessities'. The tax was an important part of financing hospitalization. Indeed, the sales tax rate was raised from 2% to 3% in the 1950 budget in part to cope with cost pressures from hospitalization. Provincial Treasurer Clarence Fines commented in his budget speech:

... the tax has been criticized more than any other provincial tax but this criticism has usually been political, and not based on sound reasoning. As originally drafted with few exemptions the tax did have some vicious features. Any tax on food stuffs must be considered regressive. The same is true of tax on many other necessities for which the poorest person in the province must pay as much as the wealthiest. It has been my purpose to remove these regressive features. 

The speech then proceeded to list many of these in detail, including, for example, foodstuffs, drugs and prescriptions, soaps and cleaners, weed control chemicals and animal feeds.

Fines concluded:

There is no doubt that certain persons would be prepared to sacrifice badly needed health and education services in order that they may gain whatever political advantage they can by their advocacy of removing a tax which they introduced many years ago. I am confident however, that most intelligent people realize that such a proposal can not be genuine, unless the welfare of the people of the province is to be sacrificed. (Saskatchewan Budget Speech, March 8, 1950)

The budget speech also attacked the federal government, making it clear that despite Saskatchewan's hospitalization initiative, the failure of the then St. Laurent Liberal government to act on proposals for a national program (made originally in 1945), and instead to take what Fines called "token action" served only to increase the "financial load" upon Saskatchewan. Bending to pressure the federal government acted in the late fifties. Once the federal legislation to create a national hospitalization program took effect on July 1, 1958 half the cost of Saskatchewan's now eleven year old program came from federal coffers. The extra dollars meant Douglas government could see it would have the financial capacity to enact medicare.

One can hear echoed in the budget speech the anti-tax attitudes the government faced, but it decided nonetheless to forge ahead. At the time the tax increase did not hurt the party politically. The CCF, which had seen its popular vote and seats decrease in the 1948 election, increased its majority in the legislature and popular vote when it next faced the electorate in 1952.

Less than a year after the start of national hospitalization, the Douglas government commenced planning for universal health care, announcing its intention to proceed at a public meeting (held as part of a byelection) in the village of Birch Hills on April 25, 1959. Plans for the program were drawn up by an interdepartmental planning committee that reported to cabinet in November 1959. The plan identified ten objectives that would become familiar elements of Medicare such as universality. In the context of the current crisis, I want to draw attention to objective number four. It argued that "in the design of the medical care program... the preventive objective should always be kept at the forefront...Medical practitioners... must be encouraged to participate in preventive programs and apply preventive measures to personal health care."

A pandemic makes clear the ongoing importance of preventive public health programs and spending. But conservatives both south of the border - Donald Trump - and north of the border - Doug Ford - have made recent cuts to the public health component of our health care services. Trump eliminated a pandemic preparedness unit in the White House.

For the Douglas government, enacting and implementing medicare would be a multi-year, highly contentious struggle that involved making a series of difficult decisions. The controversies, particularly the struggle with the doctors and the 1962 strike are the better known part of the story. This article written on the 50th anniversary of the implementation of Medicare in Saskatchewan for Canadian Dimension looks back on those events. It starts off saying:

Medicare was born in Saskatchewan on July 1, 1962. It would be the first government-controlled, universal, comprehensive single-payer medical insurance plan in North America. It was a difficult birth. The North American medical establishment and the entire insurance industry were determined to stop Medicare in its tracks. They feared it would become popular and spread, and they were right. 

In order to finance the introduction of Medicare in 1962 the CCF government, now led by Woodrow Lloyd, raised the sales tax by two percentage points (1½% for health care). In addition they added one point each to personal income and corporate taxes. By today's political standards these represented enormous tax hikes. One should not understate the political risks assumed by the CCF. Although the CCF would be defeated in the next election after 20 years in office, Saskatchewan's Medicare would become permanent.

A few years later the precedent established by the CCF (along with other factors) would lead to implementation of a national cost-shared Medicare program on July 1, 1968. Among the other developments that were important was the report of the Hall Royal Commission on Health Services appointed in 1961 by the Diefenbaker governmennt. The author of the report, Emmet Hall, was a fellow Conservative and old seat-mate from law school of Diefenbaker. Opponents of medicare had pressured for the appointment of the commission. However, they were to be disappointed. The report delivered in 1964 to the Pearson government strongly supported the establishment of a national medicare program.

Two other important political developments of the early sixties mattered. T.C. Douglas became leader of the New Democratic Party, which was established in 1961, carrying the advocacy of medicare to the national stage. There was also internal debate in the Liberal Party. A key proponent of medicare inside the Liberal Party was policy guru Tom Kent. In his book A Public Purpose he describes some of the internal struggle as follows:

... there always were within the party people of conservative mind who did not want Canada to have, for example, medicare; their numbers increased... as former Liberals returned to activity. Throughout, however, the ideological conservatives were mostly people not actively engaged in politics; many were business "friends" of the party those whom I call "the men who come to lunch." They were a nuisance, because they worried Mike Pearson and wasted time for many of us, but there was never much danger they would succeed in staying to dinner, in getting measures such as medicare taken out of the program.

In the end the pro-medicare forces were successful, in part because the Liberals wanted to win votes from the NDP and knew support for medicare was an essential condition of doing so. However, the conservative Liberals were pleased by Finance Minister Mitchell Sharp's delay in the introduction of medicare by one year.

With advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, we should all be grateful that the struggles to achieve medicare, beginning in the 1940s, were successful. We would be much worse off without it. The efforts to establish it were extremely difficult both politcally and financially. We will forever be in debt to those like T.C. Douglas and A.W. Johnson who worked hard and took risks to make it happen.

Saskatchewan Election

The Saskatchewan election is underway and as noted on September 6 by TC it looks like the Saskatchewan Party (essentially the provincial equivalent of the federal Conservatives without the nominal connection to the scandal ridden regime of Grant Devine) will win. This time series of polls by Environics conducted over the past four years makes it clear they went into the election ahead. However, it is my impression now that it will be fairly close. The result last time was NDP 30 & the Saskatchewan Party 28 with the NDP winning the cities and the north, and the Saskatchwan Party the rural areas - all nicely visually displayed in this map on the CBC election web site.

The key to the election is Saskatoon (Regina is the real NDP stronghold). The Saskatchewan Party picked up three seats there in 2003 (two on the semi-rural edges). It needs two more to put them over the top. An early local poll puts them ahead (with lots of undecided). However, the campaign has yet to acquire a clear dynamic. There is also one Regina seat and a couple of rural ridings they could gain as well.

The Saskatchewan Party is finally behaving like Ross Thatcher did in 1964 when he ousted the CCF regime of Douglas/Lloyd. It is tilting to the centre, for example, by offering a campaign promise of drug benefits following one from the NDP. TC suspects, however, it will also resemble the conservatism of the Thatcher regime once in office.

I hope to see some polls on this race but Saskatchewan seems to have fewer party preference polls than other places. In the end what seems to matter most is that the province, which gave Tommy Douglas five election victories, appears to think simply that it is time for change.

Provincial Elections in Newfoundland and Saskatchewan

Ontario is grabbing most of the attention, but there will also be provincial elections this autumn in Newfoundland (on October 11) and Saskatchewan (likely late October/early November), and a federal campaign might not be far behind.

A new poll gives the ruling PCs of Danny Williams (known on the rock as Danny Millions) 77 per cent of voter intentions, a level that, if achieved, would give the PCs every seat. The campaign is over before it begins.

The result will be closer in Saskatchewan where it appears certain that the opposition Saskatchewan Party will end 16 years of NDP rule. A time series of polls conducted by Environics Research shows the Saskatchewan Party has lead the NDP continuously since the last election (scroll down to the see the graph). Each poll has very small sample size but the accumulation of data is significant. Even if there is a change of government the election is likely to be hard fought and competitive.

An indirect beneficiary of an NDP loss could be the federal New Democrats. TC suspects part of NDP weakness in Saskatchewan at the federal level in recent years is due to the provincial regime showing its age.

The Fourth Term Problem

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to Liberal success in this campaign is the simple fact that they are seeking a fourth term. In recent decades with but a few exceptions, Canadians have tended to get fed up with the party in power, generally after two terms, but almost always by the time a party is seeking a fourth term. This applies to both federal and provincial governments.

There was a time, roughly the period after World War II until the 70’s, when it was quite common for governments to win multiple consecutive majorities. At the federal level the 22-year King-St. Laurent era from 1935 to 1957 won five consecutive majorities before falling to the Diefenbaker Tories in 1957. Between 1963 and 1979, the Liberals finished first five consecutive times, but won only two majorities (in 1968 and 1974). Since then the Liberals had a one-term government in 1980, the Mulroney era was two terms, and now the Liberals have won three majorities.

However, it is now barely more than ten years since Chrétien was first elected and the circumstances that produced his three majorities were unusual. His opponents in English Canada were weakened by divisions on the right, and unpopular provincial NDP governments in B.C. and Ontario on the left, plus less than sterling leadership of the federal opposition parties. In Quebec, support for the BQ was strong in 1993 but began to erode after election of the PQ provincially in 1994. My conclusion is simply that whatever his virtues as a political leader, which were considerable, he was one lucky petit gar de Shawinigan.

Now the right is united, the left reinvigorated, and the PQ out of office in Quebec. On top of it all the sponsorship scandal has acted as a symbol of the need for change that is fed naturally by the passage of time.

The Provinces
Except for Newfoundland and Alberta (and just recently Saskatchewan), there have been no new four term governments elected in Canada since the defeat of the PC dynasty in Ontario in 1985.

The Exceptions:
1. Alberta has had small ‘c’ conservative government since 1935, with a switch from Social Credit to Progressive Conservatives in 1971, but it is a virtual one-party state.

2. The Saskatchewan government first elected in 1991 won re-election last fall to a fourth term by a very narrow margin (two constituencies and 5%) over an opponent, the Saskatchewan Party, because the Saskatchewan Party was too strongly rooted in rural Saskatchewan, and unable to secure enough urban votes to win.

3. Newfoundland has been governed by multi-term administrations since entering Confederation in 1949.

The Others
In the period just preceding and the 30 to 40 years after World War II there were several multi-term provincial governments:

1. The CCF in Saskatchewan under Tommy Douglas won five consecutive majority governments, governing between 1944 and 1964.
2. The Liberal-Progressives in Manitoba won seven majorities (partly as a coalition) between 1922 and 1958.
3. The Ontario Tories governed for 43 years from 1943 to 1985, including winning seven consecutive majorities between 1945 and 1971.
4. In B.C. W.A.C. Bennett won six consecutive majorities and one minority while governing from 1952 to 1972.
5. In Quebec, the Union Nationale won four consecutive majorities, governing from 1944 to 1960.
6. In New Brunswick, Richard Hatfield won four majorities, governing between 1970 and 1987.
7. In Nova Scotia, the PC’s won four consecutive majorities beginning in 1978, leaving office in 1993.
8. In P.E.I. the Liberals won six majorities commencing in 1935, finally being defeated in 1959. They then won four more majorities between 1966 and 1979.

The contrast is clear, multi-term governments were once the norm in Canada but are no longer. The task of satisfying the electorate and keeping the opposition at bay has clearly become a much more difficult task. Mr. Martin faces a significant challenge simply from the appetite for changing government after a few terms that now seems to prevail in Canada.

Saskatchewan Election Polls

There have been three polls released in the Saskatchewan election, all completed one week or more prior to the actual vote, so there is still some room for movement. One is by Insightrix Research, another by Sigma Analytics, and a third from Winnipeg-based Probe Research.

Averaged together the poll numbers are:

Saskatchewan Party - 51.7%
NDP - 34%
Liberal - 9.1%
Green and Others - 5.1%

The yields the following seat distribution:

Saskatchewan Party - 37
NDP - 21

After 16 years in office the longest-serving administration in Canada (apart from that one party state in Alberta) is going out of office.

Saskatchewan election poll confirms SK Party to win

A poll on the Saskatchewan election out today gives the Saskatchewan Party a commanding lead in public opinion. It gives the Saskatchewan Party a lead of 50% to 35% for the NDP and 10% for the Liberal Party.

My forecast model suggests this would produce a majority SK Party government of 35 seats to 23 for the NDP and none for the Liberals.

The television debate is on now and can be seen on the net on CBC, but it is unlikely to make any difference, especially as the format seems to encourage a free for all.

By-elections: Contrasting Results

TC's observations:

1. The Liberals did exceptionally well in Toronto, poorly out west. Can one generalize about Dion on the numbers? Doesn't look like it. TC's guess is local factors were important. The candidate controversy in Saskatchewan hurt the Liberal. Turnout differential within the riding may well have helped the Conservative. The Liberal candidate in BC seemed to be weak.

2. Bad night generally for the NDP. Their vote held up better in the Saskatchewan and BC than Ontario. Their effort appeared to be minimal.

3. Good night for the Greens. It lends credibility to polls showing them doing well. They look like a continuing problem for both the Liberals and the NDP. However, the close outcome in Quadra will likely lead to strategic voting in the general election that boosts Liberal numbers next time. The Greens continue to have the least efficient vote. In most of TC's forecasts in the past few years they don't win a single seat. Their leader's claims (that they can win 6 to 12 seats) should be discounted.

4. Mixed night for Harper but winning even one seat is a boost. Loss in Quadra, which could have gone the other way, is a blow. His inept Finance Minister probably cost them votes in Ontario.

5. TC has a method to project province-wide numbers from the individual riding results. Here is a table that displays them and calculates province-wide seat numbers from the projection (need to be taken with a grain of salt).

	Liberal	C.P.C.	NDP	Green
Ontario	47.0	32.0	10.3	10.0
Seats	83	23	0	0
Saskatchewan	16.0	53.6	25.9	4.5
Seats	1	13
BC	19.0	43.1	24.0	13.1
Seats	4	25	7

Enough said.

UPDATE: Well, not enough. The by-election numbers are essentially consistent with this latest Harris-Decima survey.

Clarence Lyle Barber

One hundred years ago today my father, Clarence Barber, was born on a farm near Wolseley Saskatchewan. His father was a farmer who sent milk to Regina, paying my father as a child to milk the cows. However, his mother had been a school teacher who highly valued education.

Clarence Barber

My dad was the second of four sons, three of whom would receive a PhD. In his early years he attended a one room school house, and loved to tell the story of being called on to give an answer in the late morning, but only after he had put on his skates to play hockey during the lunch hour.

He entered the University of Saskatchewan in 1937 three years after graduating from high school (the depression prevented him from starting sooner). By 1943 he had degrees from the University of Saskatchewan (1939), Clark University in Massachusetts (an MA in 1941) and had completed his course work for a PhD at the University of Minnesota (received in 1951).

At the conclusion of a summer course at the University of Chicago during his doctoral studies, the course professor, Frank Knight, handed him a copy of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Although trained to that point by Chicago school free market economists, my father, as a result of this encounter, became a life-long Keynesian with an ongoing interest in seeking practical solutions to the economic difficulties facing ordinary people.

After two years in the RCAF he left the air force early in 1945 to participate in the preliminary work at the then Dominion Bureau of Statistics that would lead to the postwar creation of Canada's national accounts.

By 1949 he was established as a professor of economics at the University of Manitoba, where he would remain until his retirement in 1983. However, he worked for one year each at the Queen's (1954-55), McGill (1964-65) and the University of the Philippines while serving as an advisor with the United Nations in Manila in 1959-60.

His very accomplished career had some real high points:

• He published a seminal article titled simply Canadian Tariff Policy in 1955 that articulated for the first time the theory of "effective protection" provided by the tariff.
• He served as Director of Research for the Manitoba Royal Commission on Flood Cost-Benefit from 1957 to 1959. Without his pioneering work in cost- benefit analysis, the Red River Floodway around Winnipeg might not have been built. 
• He served as President of the Canadian Association of University Teachers in 1958-59, at a time when it was dealing the academic freedom scandal at United College in Winnipeg arising from the dismissal of Harry Crowe.  
• In 1966 he was appointed by the Government of Canada as the only member of the Royal Commission on Farm Machinery, delivering its final report in 1970. 
• In 1972-73 he served as President of the Canadian Economics Association.
• In 1977 he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. 
• From 1982 to 1985 he was a member of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada.
• He co-authored with John C.P. McCallum the book Inflation and Unemployment: the Canadian Experience.
• In 1987, he was appointed to the Order of Canada and to the Order of Manitoba in 2001.

His personal side was captured well in the Lives Lived column written by my brother Dave and published in the Globe and Mail in the summer of 2004 following his death at age 86 the previous February 27.

But it wasn't always hard work. In the early 1960s, he built a summer cottage on an island in the Lake of the Woods where he would spend the summers reading and relaxing. He loved to build and fix things: tables, a toy castle, a boat. My brothers and I joked that dad's handiwork was evident when we discovered some broken object that he had pasted back together in some ingenious manner.

Most importantly, he bestowed upon me and my brothers a profound sense of fairness, critical thinking, and acceptance of others. His favourite phrase was, "Where's your evidence?" Always sticking up for the underdog in defending an alternative viewpoint, he loved to debate issues of the day at the dinner table. At the height of Brian Mulroney's problems, I declared: "You know, dad, nobody likes Brian Mulroney." He replied emphatically, "In certain parts of Quebec, they do."  

A world traveler, he took my mother (affectionately known as "Babs"), me and my three brothers all around the world (with stops in the Philippines, Japan and London) when we were just kids. All this travelling exposed us to other cultures at a very young age - that was important. And he passed on to all of us a deep love of music; his record collection included everyone from Miles Davis to Ravi Shankar, Miriam Makeba and Glenn Gould. 

During the cold prairie winters he loved to ski and curl. But eventually Babs persuaded him to retire to a warmer climate in 1985 in Victoria, B.C. He developed a love of gardening, walking, and creating lists of the top 10 books he had read in that past year. Incredibly well-read, his lists reflected a huge curiosity about the world around him. He would often send these out at Christmas time as recommendations to friends. I marveled at the huge diversity of subjects on these lists. My dad championed the values of compassion, fairness and equality. Underlying his life and career was a deep thoughtfulness and kindness to others. If the measure of a man is whether he has made a difference in other's lives then my dad succeeded gloriously. 

There is nothing more for me to say except that we all still miss him.

The four federal by-elections: what should we expect?

There will be four by-elections on Monday March 17 in ridings won by the Liberals in the last election. Three of the four are in urban constituencies won by wide margins by well known incumbents, all of whom were members of Paul Martin's cabinet. In the 2006 election in Toronto Centre Bill Graham won with 52.2% of the vote; in the Toronto riding of Willowdale Jim Peterson had 55.2% while in Vancouver Quadra Stephen Owen won 49.1% of the vote. The fourth, in the northern Saskatchewan riding of Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River, elected Liberal Gary Merasty in 2006 by a mere 67 votes out of 24,636 cast as he won just 41.4% of the vote.

They are seen as a test of Stéphane Dion's leadership because there does appear to be a real lack of confidence in his leadership within the Liberal party, not just by the usual suspects in the media. TC isn't sure, however, that the by-elections provide much of a test.

In the case of Toronto Centre Liberal candidate Bob Rae is better known than his predecessor and could thus top Graham's 2006 performance. By comparison Martha Hall Findlay is not nearly as well known in her Willowdale riding (she ran previously in Newmarket--Aurora in 2004 where she lost narrowly to Belinda Stronach), but should win easily although her vote percentage could well fall short of the Liberal share in 2006.

The Conservatives could easily win the Saskatchewan riding (which they did win in 2004) but it may not be of any significance. The NDP is a factor here too (Rick Laliberté won this riding in 1997 and then was re-elected as a Liberal in 2000). Their candidate is Brian Morin. The Liberal candidate is Joan Beatty a former NDP cabinet minister in the Calvert government who defected to the Liberals just after the last provincial election. She might confront resentment at the opportunism of her move. TC certainly has not been able to find any hard information to suggest which way the political winds may be blowing in northern Saskatchewan, but purely local factors could well predominate.

In Vancouver Quadra the Liberal candidate is former BC cabinet minister Joyce Murray, who previously represented a riding quite distant from Quadra. Her situation looks much like that of Martha Hall Findlay at the riding level.

The public opinion evidence can best be described as unclear. The last Angus Reid Online Poll found the Conservatives well ahead in BC outperforming their support in 2006, but trailing the Liberals in Ontario by roughly the same margin as in 2006. By contrast the most recent Harris-Decima found the two parties approximately tied in both BC and Ontario in terms of their three week averages, meaning better Liberal support in BC than 2006 but a weaker performance in Ontario.

The impact on a possible federal election is relatively simple to assess: a Liberal sweep by higher percentages than in 2006 would put us on the road to an early election. A perceived setback for the Liberals would likely postpone a federal election at least until the autumn.

The debate about Dion's leadership seems almost pointless to TC. He will lead the Liberals in the next election regardless, and he could even win. Typically governments lose elections; opposition parties don't win them. While an upset by Dion doesn't seem at all likely, don't forget that the inept Joe Clark defeated Pierre Trudeau in 1979. Five years of unemployment and growing inflation are what made the difference then. The economy in Canada is strong today, but the deterioration now happening south of the border will get here eventually, so the outcome of the next election cannot be predicted this month with any certainty, and the by-elections, whatever the outcome, won't mean a thing in six months.

Many elections coming in 2007

TC has had a hiatus in posting due to an old computer giving way to a new HP machine.

Happy New Year one and all.

2007 is going to be a big year for elections.

We are likely to have a federal election, and provincial contests in several provinces, including Ontario and Newfoundland for certain as they both have fixed dates in October. As well, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec & P.E.I. may go to the polls, but the governments in all those provinces are in political difficulty to one degree or another so delays are possible.

One interesting potential is that there could be minority governments in both Ontario and Quebec after the votes have been counted. Quebec has long had monolithic politics dominated by the Quebec Liberals and various nationalist competitors, but it is becoming more fragmented both federally and provincially. The big development of the past few years is the emergence of the leftist Quebec Solidaire, not as a serious contender for power or even seats, but as a drain on PQ votes. Despite recent strengthening on the part of the Quebec Liberals, this election is still leaning to the PQ.

In Ontario, there have been many polls in the past two years showing a close race between Liberals and the PCs, with the NDP making gains. More recently the polls have been suggesting a second albeit reduced Liberal majority.

TC thinks it highly likely that the Saskatchewan NDP, in power since 1991, will finally lose office. See this time series of Saskatchewan party preference polls conducted by Environics. (You have to scroll way down to find it.)

In Manitoba the election looks to be both close and interesting. The NDP have never won a third term in Manitoba but Premier Gary Doer is an astute and highly experienced politician, and gives the NDP their best chance ever of yet another victory. The most recent Probe Research Poll does give the Conservatives a narrow three point lead, but the pollsters theselves argued after the release of the poll that because the Tory gains were concentrated in rural areas, the poll could actually mean an NDP win. TC shares that assessment; however, the real message of the poll is simply that it could go either way.

Final official June 28 2004 election results

Elections Canada has now published the final official results of the June 28 2004 federal election. This has allowed me to perform a little experiment. We all know the actual outcome on voting day differed significantly from the final pre-election polls in terms of the vote percentages. Suppose those last polls had accurately captured the final outcome. What might the distribution of seats have looked like? Using the final results as the base, I have calculated the seat outcome that would hypothetically have occurred.

It is first worth pointing out that almost all of the difference between the last set of polls and the final vote shares was in Ontario. The final poll in Quebec by Léger Marketing, for example, was almost dead on. I have used for the calculation the Léger poll in Quebec, and a weighted average of the final four national polls (Ekos, Ipsos-Reid, Compas & a national Léger Marketing survey, which differed from the final Léger poll in Quebec both in its numbers and the fact that it was completed a day earlier) . I can justify using the last Léger poll in Quebec because there was a trend towards the Liberals during the last week in Quebec, which the final Léger poll appeared to capture.

The result that we might have seen, if opinion had not moved in the last few days (to repeat, almost entirely in Ontario), was: Liberal – 114, Conservative – 109, BQ - 54 NDP – 30, and Other – 1.

The results by province are almost identical in the projection to the actual in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta and B.C. The calculation shows the Conservatives losing 16 seats in Ontario, offset by gaining 6 in Saskatchewan, while the NDP wound up losing 7 seats in Ontario and another 4 in Saskatchewan. I think the differences in Saskatchewan can best be explained by polling error rather than late movement, which I think clearly accounts for what happened in Ontario.

Campaign 2015: the story so far, poll by poll

This post has already been published at iPolitics. 

Most elections experience a moment where the campaign gels — a point where political ideas and forces come into focus, framing the likely outcome. It can happen when a party or candidate departs from the pack on a key issue: think of Tim Hudak's pledge to eliminate 100,000 public sector jobs early in the 2014 Ontario provincial election. It could be a major stumble by a leader — such as John Turner's "I had no option" exchange with Brian Mulroney in 1984, or Jim Prentice's unfortunate "math is difficult" crack in the recent Alberta election.

When the moment happens, you know it; twists and turns may follow, but the campaign itself is suddenly on a track going in one direction.

The issue of Europe's refugee crisis may turn out to be 2015's moment. Soon after that shocking photo of a drowned 3-year old Syrian boy made its way around the world, the campaign narrative instantly turned to foreign policy, with Stephen Harper's Conservatives largely on the defensive. The Nanos Poll released September 6 was conducted the weekend after the issue arose, and it reported a dip in Conservative popularity that continued into the next day, dropping the incumbent party to third place.

It's still too early to tell how the refugee issue will affect the remainder of the campaign. We've been at this for 40 days now, but polling on national public opinion has changed little since the campaign began. Regional numbers tell a different story.

If we compare the average of the national polls released since August 2 to the July numbers, we find just a slight change: the Conservatives are down just over two points, the Liberals are up just over two and the NDP is up less than one, holding a narrow lead.

Monthly National Polling Averages

For all this apparent precision, there is wide variation in reported poll results. For example, in Ontario different polls have reported support for the Conservatives ranging between 40 per cent and 21 per cent since August 2.

Campaign Polls in Ontario since August 2

Ontario has the most seats, so this variability is something to watch.

The campaigns at the level of individual provinces and regions differ greatly; every party holds a lead somewhere. When it comes to individual ridings, it's the vote share in the provinces that determines wins and losses. Let's break them down.

In Atlantic Canada the Conservatives are down about four points since the campaign started, and we see a corresponding increase for the Liberals. This appears to represent an early election-related shift.

Atlantic Polls

In Quebec, NDP support has grown significantly since the campaign began at the expense of the Conservatives and the Bloc, while the Liberals have held steady but far behind the New Democrats. Decisive polling shifts are always unmistakeable; the dramatic shift during the Alberta election was a striking example. Compared to the first three months of 2015, Quebec now looks dramatically different. The NDP has gained over 14 percentage points in support since then from all of the other parties — including six points in just the first month of the campaign. This implies a repeat of 2011's 'Orange Wave'. Has the campaign in Quebec already gelled?

Quebec Polls

In Ontario we've seen a small apparent shift away from the Conservatives, more to the Liberals' benefit than that of the NDP. However, given what we know about variability, it is not clear that a shift this small is significant. Along with its size, Ontario's apparent indecisiveness will make it the key target for leaders touring the country.

Ontario Polls

When we move west to the Manitoba/Saskatchewan region we see a clear pattern of movement away from the NDP, which appears to be a partial fading of the NDP surge following the Alberta election. It peaked in July here and in B.C. The 2015 campaign appears to have had not much of an impact to date.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan Region Polls

The Alberta pattern is similar to that of Manitoba-Saskatchewan, with a slightly greater drop happening sooner here for the NDP. There has been a gradual improvement in Conservative fortunes here.

Alberta Polls

In British Columbia the NDP's upward trend preceded the Alberta election, but the Alberta outcome did give it an extra bump. The NDP's losses have gone more to the Liberals than the Conservatives. Polls here are notoriously volatile and variable, reflecting B.C.'s many political microclimates.

British Columbia Polls

The race may be a dead heat nationally; at the local level it's a different story. Given that polling is intrinsically variable, the post-Labour Day campaign is moving into a political climate of high uncertainty.

The crisis in the Manitoba NDP: the politics of taxes

The current crisis in the Manitoba NDP has its roots in the decision of the Greg Selinger government to raise Manitoba's 7% provincial sales tax to 8% in its 2013 budget, making it effectively the same as that in Ontario (where it is blended with the federal GST into an HST) and some other provinces. The government was looking for revenue (see the 2013 budget speech page two) after over a billion dollars in flood protection infrastructure was identified in a report commissioned following the devastating Manitoba floods of 2011, which were, as the report put it of "a scope and severity never before experienced, in recorded history...". They decided on the sales tax increase despite promising in the 2011 election that they would not raise the PST. However, the government faced urgent revenue pressures if they were to fund the infrastructure required for flood protection. The alternative in a real sense was an infrastructure deficit, something other governments, especially conservative ones (think Mike Harris and the cemented in Eglinton subway and its role in Toronto's current transit crisis), have chosen in the past.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger

A sales tax increase regardless of the circumstances was inevitably going to be unpopular. Theresa Oswald, one of the dissidents who just resigned (and thought to be Selinger's most likely successor), saw the problem right away when she spoke to Free Press columnist Gord Sinclair a week after the 2013 budget. According to Sinclair, "Oswald said Gary Doer had a saying: 'You don't increase beer prices, and you don't hike the PST.'" What was Doer referring to? It is worth unpacking.

We live in an era where a large number of those in the labour force face stagnating real wages and incomes, in part as a product of the 2008 financial crisis, but more because over a long period incomes have become more unequal as many workers can't increase their incomes enough to keep up with prices. There are many reasons: union power is weaker while an international race to the bottom has depressed wages here and driven jobs abroad. On the other hand the power of the wealthy, particularly in the financial sector, has become stronger. For many struggling to make ends meet, taxes are an easy and tempting target. Hence the frequent efforts, particularly on the part of conservative governments, to promise tax cuts, especially highly visible sales taxes (think Harper and the GST), even while they raise invisible taxes.

However, the reality is that a community cannot increase its net income by cutting taxes (apart from the context of national macroeconomic stimulus policy and that does not apply here). Doer I think intuitively understood the dangers from hiking visible taxes like the PST in the context of growing income stagnation. Note he said beer prices, not single malt Scotch. But the reality remains that one can only increase private consumption by cutting public consumption and sometimes there are urgent public needs for expenditure. Flood protection is arguably in that category.

The trade-off often seems opaque, so unless the public is convinced that a vital highly valued service, say health care, is truly endangered, they are likely to recoil at this kind of tax increase. Infrastructure even for flood protection can seem like an abstraction to many and not nearly as meaningful as direct ongoing services such as health care and education.

PC Leader Brian Pallister

The trade-offs are real but conservative politicians, such as Manitoba PC leader Brian Pallister simply pretend they are not a problem. He met recently with the Winnipeg Free Press editorial board in a session the paper televised online.

Columnist Dan Lett wrote about it afterwards:

The problem for Pallister is that with an unprecedented opportunity to galvanize the support needed to form his own government, and bury the NDP once and for all, he continues to struggle on the most basic policy issues. ...

At times, we were reminded just how incomplete many of Pallister's plans really are. He was asked to explain, once again, how he would roll back the one-point hike in the PST now dedicated to infrastructure -- a central Tory pledge -- and still maintain current spending on roads, bridges and sewer/water projects.

Pallister said he can replace the $260 million generated by the PST increase via cost savings without cutting infrastructure spending, laying off staff or cutting core services.

When pressed, Pallister impatiently said that despite not having outlined how he will find hundreds of millions of dollars in savings without fewer people or services, it can be done. "I guess you'll just have to take me at my word on that." 

Pallister can't say because he understands all too well how unpopular a candid answer would be. Perhaps the most widespread dishonesty used by conservative politicians today is the pledge to reduce spending by only cutting waste and inefficiency. This was a canard used by Rob Ford, who promised in 2010 when he was elected Toronto's mayor "No cuts to services, guaranteed", but eight months later he was proposing hundreds of millions in such cuts. I have little doubt Mr. Pallister will be just as unsuccessful in this respect as Rob Ford, when, as now seems likely, he becomes Manitoba's next premier.

The 'lower taxes but no cuts to services' pledge is a delusion. It is a posture, however, that can pay political dividends. In the recent Toronto mayor's race, Rob's brother Doug received a third of the vote with a platform of large spending increases on subways combined with pledges to reduce taxes. It was pure fantasy, but did not get the political humiliation it deserved because the delusion of tax cuts for nothing has a powerful appeal in the context of stagnating incomes.

If you want to increase sales taxes it is possible, but an extremely difficult political sell. One successful example was provided by the Saskatchewan CCF albeit during a period of strong rising real incomes. In 1950 Provincial Treasurer Clarence Fines raised Saskatchewan's sales tax by one point in his March budget from 2 to 3 percent. He needed the extra revenue to  help finance Saskatchewan's hospitalization plan (implemented January 1, 1947) and argued that the sales tax increase was fairer than raising a per capita tax in the form of a health premium, which was introduced under the expectation that the federal government would have by this time have introduced a national health program first promised in 1945. It would have paid 60% of hospital costs and the health premium was expected to be a condition, but the federal hospitalization program would not see the light of day until 1957-58. Exemptions to the sales tax on food, drugs, cleaning supplies, second hand goods and other items, previously implemented by the government, meant Fines could argue that the sales tax was 'less regressive'.

The CCF had originally promised to eliminate the sales tax but even before taking office concluded they could not do without it in the short term. However, the sales tax was contentious. So it is understandable that Fines would complain in his speech: "This tax has been criticized more than any other provincial tax, but this criticism has been political and not based on sound reasoning." The difficulty remains today and is compounded by how such taxes interact with growing income inequality.

The split in the Selinger government's ranks has likely become more problematic politically than the tax itself or the breaking of a promise. To cite an example from history, the fall of the Diefenbaker government in 1963 was not about nuclear weapons, it was about disarray in cabinet. There is nothing more likely to sap confidence in an administration than division in the ranks. The only realistic way out now for Manitoba's New Democrats is for Greg Selinger to resign so that a leadership convention can resolve (perhaps only temporarily as the federal Liberals have shown) the internal conflicts. That said, the dissenters all voted for the sales tax and won't escape political responsibility unless the tax is rolled back, but then whoever governs were that to happen must deal with the consequences, which, as Mr. Pallister has so aptly illustrated, are not so easy to address.

The dissenters should have recognized that after 16 years in office the accumulated grievances that accrue to any administration would likely have produced defeat (the election is likely to take place in April 2016). I am quite skeptical of the claims of imminent electoral disaster. However, it is likely the dissenters think a change in leadership might bring yet another victory, which also seems unrealistic despite the weaknesses of the opposition parties on the sales tax issue. We have seen the inadequacies of Mr. Pallister in dealing with it; the same is also the case for the Liberal leader, Rana Bokhari, who has promised only to place revenues from the sales tax hike in a separate fund for infrastructure. The election remains a long way off, but the divisions within the NDP must be addressed. While the exact outcome is far from certain, five term governments in Canada (apart from Alberta) have been exceedingly rare.

There is an irony for the NDP finding itself in a political crisis based on the sales tax. The Manitoba sales tax was introduced in 1967 by the PC Duff Roblin government as the Education Revenue Tax (the Saskatchewan tax had a similar name at one time). When Roblin left to enter federal politics reaction within the Progressive Conservative Party to his record including the sales tax led in part the PCs to chose Walter Weir, a rural small 'c' conservative. Roblin's government was highly progressive building a modern state in the province, expanding provincial expenditures on education and funding considerable capital investments such as the Red River Floodway, which as most Manitobans know has saved billions in flood damage. The result of the PCs moving right (along with the provincial Liberals) was the election of Manitoba's first NDP government in 1969 under Ed Schreyer.

Manitoba election - long term implications

The election produced (as expected by the end of the campaign) another majority for the NDP. It was nonetheless a remarkable outcome. Not only was it an unprecedented third majority for Gary Doer and the NDP, it was only the second time in modern Manitoba political history that it had happened, the other being Duff Roblin's three majorities of 1959, 1962 and 1966.

The modern era of Manitoba politics dates from 1958 when the Liberal-Progressive coalition that had ruled in one form or another since 1922 was defeated by Duff Roblin. The Roblin Progressive Conservatives formed a minority government he transformed into a majority a year later. The PCs initiated a new party system in Manitoba in which the Progressive Conservatives were dominant while the opposition was fairly evenly split between the Liberals and the CCF-NDP - it continued for the next decade. Following the NDP's first victory in 1969 a new party system was initiated that could best be described as a competitive two party system with the NDP and the PCs alternating in government, the governing party generally holding only a small majority of seats in the Manitoba legislature, with the Liberals as a third party trailing distantly behind the other two in votes and seats. The Carstairs Liberal uprising, which emerged suddenly in 1988 and had all but disappeared by 1995, caused this system to waver temporarily, but the return of the NDP to power in 1999 seemed firmly to re-establish the post-1969 party system.

However, one other unprecedented aspect of the 2007 election is that it witnessed not just the third majority for the NDP, but the second time in a row that their majority of seats had increased. And for the second election in a row NDP support has become relatively more concentrated in the City of Winnipeg. The NDP had a higher percentage of votes overall in 2003 but they increased their share of the vote in the City of Winnipeg in 2007 (from 52 to 53%) and this gave them two additional seats there (and almost a third). The only constituency they lost was in Brandon.

These numbers can be seen in Winnipeg's electoral map, which is now completely NDP orange in the city except for three ridings in the southwest corner (and one in the northeast). Combined with the absolute NDP dominance in the northern ridings, where NDP strength has grown steadily stronger over time, the NDP's control of much of the city suggests we may be seeing a new party system emerge. This analysis is still speculative, but it is possible that this new party system will be one where there is a single party (the NDP) that would dominate the political scene most of the time, while the opposition PCs would only able to take power occasionally, and subsequently would not able to hang on to the reigns of power for longer than a term or perhaps two.

We do have other party systems in Canada where one party has been generally stronger than the others for a prolonged period - in Alberta since 1971 the Conservatives have been completely dominant federally and provincially, while in Ontario the Liberal Party has tended to dominate the federal scene since 1963, and the CCF-NDP has held power for 47 of the past 63 years in Saskatchewan.

The NDP in Manitoba has been in office more often than not since 1969 but generally by a small margin until 2003. This does look very much like a new party system in Manitoba - one where the NDP completely controls such a large share of the seats in Winnipeg and the North that it becomes extremely difficult for the Conservatives to find a way to win office. In a year where it seems certain the NDP will lose office in Saskatchewan it appears the centre of electoral gravity for the party is going to edge a little to the east.

Will strategic voting make a difference to the outcome of the 2015 election?

This has been cross-posted at iPolitics.

Since the 1960s, the Conservative party — in its various identities — has been moving steadily to the right. This has opened a widening gap between what is now a very right-wing party and the various parties of the centre and left.

Most voters do not have strong partisan alignments, but a large number hold values and political views that place them a considerable ideological distance from Stephen Harper. They have a strong incentive to vote strategically and they likely will. Their impact on the election could be significant.

The first person in Canadian politics to embody Harper’s ideological outlook was former Ontario Premier Mike Harris (several of Harris’ former ministers became part of the Harper cabinet, including Tony Clement, the late Jim Flaherty and John Baird). In 1999 Harris was the first major target of strategic voting.

In the 1999 Ontario election, Harris was re-elected. Nonetheless, that election saw a wave of strategic voting that had an impact. Harris received a vote share almost identical to that received by his party in 1995. However, the same voting support that won the PCs 63 per cent of seats in the legislature in 1995 secured just 57 per cent of Ontario constituencies in 1999. A detailed analysis of voting patterns I prepared after the election identified at least eight of a total of 103 seats where strategic voting accounted for the defeat of the PC candidates (seven of those ridings were won by Liberals, one by a New Democrat). In five more constituencies this voting pattern narrowly missed defeating Tories. The Dalton McGuinty-led Liberals were the principal beneficiaries as the NDP continued to be hobbled by the unpopularity of the Bob Rae regime defeated in 1995.

The 1999 precedent suggests that similar behaviour in the 2015 federal election could be a factor in up to 40 constituencies. Let me draw attention to some ridings on the front lines of the strategic voting war.

In Winnipeg, the riding of Charleswood-Assiniboia-St. James-Headingley has long been assumed to be safely in the hands of former Harper cabinet minister Steven Fletcher. However, Liberal support is up dramatically in the province and a recent province-wide survey by Manitoba pollster Probe Research reports the Liberals and Conservatives tied at 39 per cent each. In 2011 the Conservatives won 53.5 per cent of the Manitoba vote versus 16.6 per cent for the Liberals.

Much attention has been paid to the possibility of three south-end Winnipeg ridings switching from Conservative to Liberal, but little to this west-end constituency. However, my seat projection model suggests this seat is ripe for the picking by the Liberals and strategic votes from the approximately fifteen to twenty per cent of the vote won by the NDP and Greens last time could make the difference. The fact that the NDP recently replaced its candidate here makes the chances of it happening even greater.

In Saskatchewan, where the NDP last won a seat in the 2000 election, there has been a similar decline in Conservative support from the 56.3 per cent they won in 2011 to somewhere in the low forties, while both NDP and Liberal support is up. Since the last election a significant redrawing of boundaries has opened up the possibility of deep erosion of the near-monopoly of seats held by the Conservatives (the exception in 2011 was Liberal Ralph Goodale).

Several New Democrats could end up taking seats in Regina and Saskatoon, possibly shutting out the Conservatives. A recent riding poll in Regina-Lewvan placed the NDP six points back of the Conservatives (note of caution: constituency polls don’t have a great track record and have a difficult time properly locating the residences of cellphone users). If enough Liberal supporters vote strategically in Saskatchewan’s cities for the NDP, several Conservative-held seats could fall.

In 1999, several strategic voting organizations set up in Ontario to endorse candidates. However, their organizational strength and financing paled in comparison to the political parties; their efforts were too little, too late. Political parties are highly organized in every constituency they think they can win. They knock on every door and make direct appeals to voters by phone. They build up databanks of “positive” supporters and pull them out to vote. Strategic voting advocacy groups simply cannot hope to match this.

Strategic voting in 1999 was a grassroots phenomenon on the part of highly-motivated voters. There are strategic voting groups active in this campaign with the resources to do their own polling — at least one is planning to call households on election day — but my guess is most voters who want to cast a strategic ballot will simply do it on their own, as they did sixteen years ago.

There are two weeks left until voting day, and the split in the polls that has opened up between the Liberals and the NDP suggests the Liberals will be the principal beneficiaries of strategic votes. But voters need to do their homework. Canada is a large and complex country. Those who feel strongly about getting rid of Harper ought to take their local, regional and provincial circumstances into account before making a decision.

No party should automatically get a strategic voter’s ballot if the point of it all is to replace the Harper government as efficiently and effectively as possible. The Harper government could be dispatched on October 19, and strategic voting could well play a role.

Mulcair's prospects and the Nova Scotia Election

Recent national columns have suggested that the loss by the NDP in the recent Nova Scotia election is harmful to the national NDP's hopes for 2015.  For example see these commentaries by Thomas Walkom, Chantal Hébert, and Jeffrey Simpson. Inevitably all this foretold gloom for the NDP did lead to a counterpoint from Aaron Wherry.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair

TC's view is that the Nova Scotia defeat will, if anything, be beneficial to the federal NDP.  We live in era of slow growth-induced fiscal pressures on Canadian governments, pressures that result in a dampening of the popularity of incumbent governments when like the Nova Scotia NDP they cut spending and increase taxes.  Even though many have recovered to win elections, we should remember that incumbent governments including those in Ontario, B.C., Alberta and Manitoba had to come from behind to do it. Fumbles by their opponents played critical roles in the final outcome (let's not forget the contribution of Michael Ignatieff to the Harper majority in 2011).

There is an overlap between the federal and provincial political spheres that often causes political grief for the federal cousins of provincial administrations when the latter get into trouble. None of the columns cited above have taken that into account.  Let me give a few examples of this impact, both good and bad for the NDP, from history:

1.  The only one-term government in Manitoba's history was that of Tory Sterling Lyon, who ruled as a prairie Thatcher from 1977 to 1981. In the 1980 federal election, the NDP won half the Manitoba seats (7 of 14). Mr. Lyon's unpopularity contributed significantly to the outcome.  
2. Further back a poor showing for the NDP in the 1974 federal election in B.C. (just 2 seats) can be attributed in part to mid-term blues on the part of the NDP Dave Barrett government.  However, the impact of the wage and price control issue was likely more important (the threat of controls pulled union votes toward the Trudeau Liberals).  By 1979 and out of office provincially the NDP bounced back, taking 8 constituencies, more like their long-term normal. 
3. In the 1988 federal election the NDP had enormous success in both Saskatchewan winning, 10 of 14 seats, in no small measure because of the profound unpopularity of the PC government of Grant Devine, and B.C., winning 19 of 32 seats, where Premier Bill Vander Zalm was on his way to destroying the B.C. Social Credit party, a provincial cousin to the federal Tories. The 1988 election was the previous high water mark for the NDP when they won a record of 44 seats, not exceeded until 2011, including 10 ridings in Ontario. 
4.  In the 1993 election by contrast the NDP was decimated in Ontario losing all their seats.  The austerity program of the Bob Rae NDP Ontario government (most prominently the social contract) played a part in this. Similarly in B.C. the NDP lost all but 2 of its 19 seats where, with the NDP Mike Harcourt government in office in Victoria, the political implications of provincial incumbency reversed the effects felt in 1988. The NDP did win 5 of 14 seats in Saskatchewan where an NDP government elected in 1991 and beginning what would be 16 years in office was still holding its popularity.  (Its own austerity program could be blamed on the previous PC Devine government.)

So Thomas Mulcair faces 2015 with an almost clean slate provincially. Only in Manitoba where the incumbent Selinger government has recently been taking a beating in the polls does trouble beckon. As it is the NDP holds just two federal ridings in Manitoba currently.

Not being in office provincially has in the past been and is now an asset for the federal NDP not a liability.