NDP's Patry Bloc Bolt: Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain?

By Keith Edmund White

Editor-in-Chief

Keith Edmund White on why the pundits are wrong on Patry's Bloc bolt, with some help from recent U.S. party-switching history.  And how the loss of one seat my just hand the NDP Parliament in 2015.

My google-news feed is filled with takes on Quebec NDP MP Claude Patry's switch to, in the National Post's words, the "moribund but still kicking" Bloc Quebecois.  

The BQ now boasts a whopping 5 members in Canada's 308-member Parliament.

But the NDP, Canada's Official Opposition Party, has one less seat.

So does Patry's Bloc party signal closing time for the NDP?

Canadian Parliament Talks Zombie Apocalypse

So this happened.

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.

Canada's Parliament Returns From Summer Break: Previewing the 2012 Fall Session

CUSLINexus rounds up assessments of Canada's upcoming fall 2012 parliamentary session.

5 Issues That Will Dominate the Fall Session of Parliament, Kieron Lang, CTV News. CTV News outlines and even offers a video segment on the key issues of Canada’s Fall Parliamentary Session. In short:

(1) Trade. EU and Trans-Pacific Partnership deals will get high priority, along with the government's review of a state-owned Chinese company bid to buy Canadian energy producer Nexen).

(2) Quebec. Will the PQ’s return to power in Quebec prompt another referendum. If so, they’ll be headaches in Quebec City and Ottawa.

(3) Government Contracts. There’s been criticism of how the government is handling non-competitive government contracts its administrating.

(4) Courts.  As many as 4 Canadian Supreme Court justices may step down before Harper’s term is up—talk about legacy-making stuff.

(5) NDP.  Last year, the NDP wowed the Canadian political world with a 2nd-place finish. Then, tragically, its leader—Jack Layton died of prostate cancer. Now the NDP’s new leader, Thomas Mulcair has to define himself and the party that needs to show the Canadian public it can take the reigns of Canada’s government.

 
Hoping for a Changed Tone in Parliament? Don’t Hope Your Breath,  Michael Den Tandt, Times Colonist and The Province. Writing for two leading Vancouver publications, Den Tandt previews the fall session—finding it will be much like the last—and again emphasizes trade and Quebec, but highlights the critical role Ontarian voters will play in the 2015 election:

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair has as yet shown no inclination to back away from his “Dutch disease” theme, which holds that the high Canadian dollar, driven by booming resource revenue, is harming Canadian manufacturing, to the benefit mainly of Alberta and the detriment mainly of the rest of Canada.

That ensures the critical political battleground this fall, and likely for the next three years until election 2015, will be economic, with the NDP and Conservatives vying primarily for hearts and minds in Ontario, in particular in the industrial heartland of the southwest, where most Ontarians live and where the economy still rests on automobile manufacturing.

The Conservatives and New Democrats will co-operate, to the extent that both will seek to sideline the third-place Liberals. The Grits will seek to capitalize on their leadership race, which concludes next spring, to maintain visibility. To that end, look for a Liberal leadership candidate or candidates to emerge with a platform that is aggressively conservative economically and just as aggressively progressive on social issues. All eyes now are on MPs Justin Trudeau and Marc Garneau, who are expected to run but have not yet publicly announced their intentions.

Canada’s MPs Set to Return, More Polarized than Ever, Mark Kennedy, Calgary Herald, seconds the polarization while suspecting the Conservatives will push hard to deliver on their platform:

Moreover, emboldened by the majority power they secured in the May 2011 election, the Tories are intent on using that clout for the remaining three years of their mandate to press ahead with an agenda that includes billions of dollars in government cuts, diminished federal environmental oversight on private-sector energy projects, and cuts to the public pension system for future generations of seniors. All have sparked controversy.

But Harper is not backing down, even as public opinion polls showing the Tories’ popularity has dropped, leaving them in a tie with the NDP.

“We’re putting our foot on the gas,” the prime minister said in early July, explaining that he was sticking with the same cabinet ministers because he wants them to continue with the Tory agenda this autumn.

“I’ve told officials in Ottawa the majority is not time to rest.’’

“I think that one step at a time, I think we’re moving the country in the right direction,’’ said Harper.

A Rough Guide to the Fall Sitting, Aaron Wherry, Macleans, gives us a concise, tongue-in-cheek run-down. One aspect worth mentioning, some other debates that will be gripping Parliament:

Stephen Woodworth’s motion on the legal definition of a human being is due to be debated this month. Conservative MP Rob Clarke wants to overhaul the Indian Act. Conservative MP Russ Hiebert wants to change the rules for financial disclosure by unions. And Pierre Poilievre has mused of making it possible to opt out of paying union dues.

Fallout From Cuts Follow MPs Back to Parliament, Jennifer Ditchburn, Chronicle Herald. This Halifax-based publication focuses on the local--emphasizing constituent concerns over Conservative budget cuts:

The Conservative caucus meets for the first time Monday since Parliament packed up for the summer, but the catching-up chatter won’t all be about cottages and barbecues.

Many MPs have had to cope all season with the fallout from last spring’s budget cuts, some of which hit local services in areas such as train travel, the coast guard and interior waterways.

The lobbying has been going on hard in some cases to try and mitigate the impact of the decisions on constituents.