PQ’s Learning Curve: Just What the NDP Needs to Win in 2015?

Editorial

By Keith Edmund White

Ignore reports of slipping NDP support, which the Globe and Mail attributes to the Parti Quebecois's (PQ) narrow victory in Quebec last month.  The PQ may be just what the NDP needs to take Ottawa by storm in 2015. 

OK, first some background for those not hip to the Canadian political scene.  In what has been historically a two-party contest for Canada’s national government, the NDP—for the first time—offered a Canadian third way: crushing the once-dominant Liberal Party, but still failing to stop Canada’s conservative party—and Prime Minister Harper—from turning their minority government into a majority government (i.e. the Conservatives had been the biggest party in Parliament, but didn’t have a majority of votes until 2011).  So, now all three parties are plotting how best to approach Canada’s next election, slated to occur on or before October 19, 2015.

Now, all this Ottawa long-game chess-playing gets delightfully complicated by provincial politics.  Just like the first crack in the Obama 2008 coalition was a Republican winning Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial race, the narrow victory of the Parti Quebecois (PQ)—a pro-Quebec secessionist party—has injected more drama in Canadian politics.  For better or worse, Quebec—owing to history and the ever-present chance another independence referendum—still grabs what some undoubtedly consider a disproportionate share of the nation’s media attention.  So the PQ’s victory has brought headaches—and opportunity—for Canada’s three major national parties.  But, don’t worry, the political pain is being shared, with the PQ already nursing some of their own political missteps.

Why should the PQ running Quebec worry the national Conservatives and NDP?  Well, for the Conservatives, beyond the PQ possibly dragging the country into a constitutional/secessionist crisis (unlikely given their minority government status), the PQ is Quebec’s left-leaning party.  (Note:  The NDP has not built a provincial party in Quebec, even though it owes its ‘government-in-waiting’ status to Quebec voters.)    What’s this mean?  The PQ, according to Paul Wells at Macleans, “is already doing the opposite” of the Harper government on spurring investment, immigration, and energy.  But the big issue here is taxes.  From Wells’s jeremiad-bordering editorial: 

Marois’s new government is already doing the opposite of what Harper laid out at Davos. Systematically. It’s like she’s keeping a checklist.  

“Is it the case that in the developed world,” Harper told the Davos toffs, “too many of us have, in fact, become complacent about our prosperity, taking our wealth as a given, assuming it is somehow the natural order of things, leaving us instead to focus primarily on our services and entitlements?” 

 Marois replies: nope! There’s still plenty of time to take wealth as a given and to focus on entitlements. The university tuition increases that were the object of half a year’s protests are cancelled. But the increased student aid that was supposed to compensate for the tuition hikes remains in place. That’s tens of millions of dollars’ worth of increased burden on universities. “We will continue to make the key investments in science and technology necessary to sustain a modern competitive economy,” Harper said at Davos. Marois is digging a funding hole for universities that will make good science that much harder to afford.

Will this actually cost the Conservative votes?  For now, the overall consensus of the Canadian media elite is that the PQ leftward push is politically foolish and economically wrong-headed.  So, the PQ is doing just what the right-leaning party of Quebec—and the nation—needs to win, right?  Show voters hungry for a change that they should give the reigns to a right leaning, not left leaning party.  Naturally, the Liberals—decimated at the national level, but still strong in Quebec—can play this to their advantage: able to cherry-pick what works for the PQ while bashing what doesn’t, and position themselves as a changed and renewed party that offers the best bet for Quebec voters.

But I suspect the real winners of the PQ in Quebec will be the NDP.  For Conservatives and Liberals to get traction from the PQ, the PQ must fail.  But the NDP can strengthen its next national bid whatever the outcome of the PQ’s minority government.  Yes, the PQ’s victory froze attempts to create a robust, provincial NDP party in Quebec.  But let’s not overlook the obvious advantage the NDP gets in a short-term (the PQ minority government will likely fall well before the next federal election): the chance to learn from every misstep and success of the left-leaning PQ government.

PQ policy subscriptions are—with the exception of succession—pretty close to those of NDP voters.  What’s the NDP missing?  Support of new and current Liberal voters.  How better to see what messages work—and perhaps witness their economic impact—than to have the PQ try push its own independent agenda.  If they succeed, the NDP can make these provincial policies successful national talking points, without the dead-weight of Quebec independence.  And if certain PQ policies crash and burn, the NDP has the time to distance and differentiate their national plans before 2015.  In short, it’s a no-lose for the NPD, barring an NDP debacle of such cataclysmic proportions that Quebec voters become lock-step Harper-ites (unlikely).

So, ignore the polls.  In 2015, the Conservatives will be the classic hangers-on—needing a resurgent economy and new ideas to hold onto Canada’s parliamentary reins for a fourth, yes fourth, time in a row.  The Liberals, well, are in the middle of a leadership contest that could be confused with a nostalgia-heavy spirit quest.  (Yes, I freely double-dip Paul Wells pieces whenever I can; but, do read Gerry Nicholls's compare and contrast piece on Stephen Harper and Liberal upstart/heir-apparent Justin Trudeau.)  And the NDP now has a PQ party too weak to sink their brand in Quebec, but just strong enough to goad Harper, and show the NDP how—or how not—to win in 2015. 

My advice to NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair:  don’t sweat the polls or the PQ.  Focus on using the PQ and Conservatives as foils to create an attractive center-left alternative.  Oh, wait.  He already is.