And what if this had happened instead of that?

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

Following the 1993 federal election, the spectre of the Liberal Party remaining in power forever was not a totally far-fetched idea. That was because of how, by the 1980s, conservative-minded individuals in Western Canada had come to feel alienated from the rest of Canada, and viewed the Progressive Conservative Party as serving the interests of Bay Street at the expense of defending true conservative values. But, feeling more betrayed by the Liberals and their introduction of the National Energy Program in 1980 and lacking a viable right-wing alternative, they continued to vote for the Conservatives. Secessionist groups rose but never managed to gain significant traction, but then emerged the Reform Party of Canada late in that decade. Sixteen years after its founding, its offspring — the Canadian Con­ser­vative Reform Alliance — would cannibalize the PCs and morph into the Conservative Party of Canada that we know today.

The schism within the Conservative family, as well as the arrival of the Bloc Québécois, which seemed to remove Quebec from any equation leading to a return to power of some kind of conservative-minded party, caused much ink to flow, and led to many analyses to understand how this seg­men­ta­tion of the vote benefited the Liberal Party, until its defeat at the polls ultimately in 2006. This subsection of PoliCan examines how the outcome of a few selected elections might have been different if they had occurred under very different circumstances.

Canada
 

18th Parliament — 1935 Schism

The Depression of the 1930s was not only hard on the people but on governments as well. All were booted out of office during those years except, arguably, in Manitoba, where the Progressives had absorbed the Liberals at the eve of the 1932 election and thus provided a continuity, and Québec, where the Liberal Party had been in power for so many decades that a change was perhaps inevitable. However, federally, the Liberal-Conservative Party, which had been elected in 1930, lasted only five years. In 1934, a long-time conser­vative, Henry Stevens, left the party when it didn't agree with his argument for drastic economic reform and government intervention in the economy, and formed the Reconstruction Party for the 1935 election. Although he was the only Reconstructionist to be elected, how many seats, if any, did the Liberal Party win due to vote splitting between his rebel party and the Liberal-Conservatives?
 

35th to 37th Parliaments — The Big Schism on the Right

Without a doubt, more than the 1984 Mulroney landslide, the 1993 election marked the beginning of the drifting of Canada's overall political spectrum to the right compared to where it was positioned since the 1960s. However, while it seems unlikely that the "conservatives" would have won this election after the nine years of Mulroney, how much closer would they have been to forming government had they still been a single united party? And just how much was the decade of disunity on the right profitable for the Liberals?
 

41st Parliament — 2011 Orange Crush

Some pundits wondered if the remarkable rise of the NDP in 2011 under Jack Layton was a case of history repeating itself, except this time on the left, between the NDP and the Liberals. However, given how the NDP had been contesting elections since 1961, combining the votes of both parties as could be done for the right from 1993 to 2000 would be too simplistic. Fortunately, the electoral map in 2008 and 2011 was the same. There­fore, after setting aside the ridings where the Conservatives won with a clear majority, this analysis begins by calculating the NDP's percentage increase in the remaining ridings, and then reassigns that difference to the party from which it was taken, as if the Orange Crush hadn't occurred. This elucidates the handful of ridings that would not have gone to the Conservatives and would have kept them in minority status for a third time in a row.
 

43rd and 44th Parliaments — 2019–24 Schism?

A year after coming second in the 2017 Conservative leadership race, Maxime Bernier formed the People's Party of Canada. Some wondered if we were witnessing a 1935-style schism in the conservative family, but when he lost his seat of Beauce and his party only managed to garner 1.62% of the votes nationally in the 2019 election, most people set aside that idea. False alarm: History wasn't repeating itself. But then, after many months of restrictions due to the COVID pandemic, the PPC tapped into the vocal opponents of those measures during the 2021 election. Bernier failed to regain his seat, but this time, while the PPC again didn't win a seat, it garnered almost 5% of the votes and came in second place in seven ridings, although distantly behind the CPC candidate each time. So, has the PPC been gaining significant traction at the detriment of the CPC? This analysis shows that it has... more than most media analysts have been saying.
 

Alberta
 

29th Assembly — A left-wing government... in Alberta?!

Always be careful saying always and never say never, but Alberta has always been conservative and never would its citizens vote for a left-wing government. Granted, it could be argued that the three governments formed by the United Farmers of Alberta between 1921 and 1935 were on the left, but since then, Albertans have reliably been voting centre right to hard right. That was until the Nötley Crüe came along in 2015, except that it owes the majority government it formed to voter apathy.
 

New Brunswick
 

52nd and 53rd Assemblies — 1990s split over bilingualism

After forming four consecutive majority governments, the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick, which had had a rapprochement with the Acadian community, was banished from the legislature in 1987. Social conservatives tried to steer the right further to the right, with bilingualism being the wedge issue. This brought the ephemeral Confederation of Region Party to form the official opposition in 1991, but it lapsed into obscurity after it failed to win a seat in the 1995 general election, and the PCs returned to occupying exclusively the centre right of the province's political spectrum.
 

58th to 60th Assemblies — 21st century split over bilingualism

The platform of the People's Alliance of New Brunswick has been described as "a mixture of economic conservatism, rural populism, and oppo­si­tion to some aspects of official bilingualism and duality." As such, some view it as a lighter version of the Confederation of Region Party of the 1990s, while others view it as a reincarnation of CoRe with a more populist bent. Either way, while the Alliance has neither enjoyed as much elec­toral success as CoRe, nor has it caused as much vote splitting or achieved official party status in the legislature, it has had a more significant and lasting impact on the province's political landscape.
 

Ontario
 

4th Assembly — 1879 Enigma

How can it be that, with 2 more votes province-wide, the Liberals ended up with 26 more seats than the Conservatives? The first-past-the-post electoral system is known for often leading to ridiculous final results, but is there a clue in the numbers as to what went so wrong?
 

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© 2019, 2024 :: PoliCan.ca (Maurice Y. Michaud)
Pub.: 20 May 2023 18:07
Rev.:  2 Dec 2023 10:24