op-ed election 2011 g&m may20'11 (1)

8/6/2019 Op-ed Election 2011 G&M May20'11 (1)

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Election 2011: The Big Picture

by Preston Manning*

Globe and Mail May 20, 2011

By now most Canadians are familiar with the immediate consequences of the 2011

federal election; a majority government for the Conservatives with 167 seats in the

next parliament, Official Opposition status for the NDP with 103 seats (59 of them

in Quebec), the collapse of the Liberals to third-party status with 34 seats; the near

obliteration of the Bloc Quebecois (reduced to four seats), and a foothold for the

Elizabeth May and the Green Party with one seat.

But these immediate results also represent changes in the political foundations and

landscape of Canada with much larger and longer term consequences. Let me

elaborate on three of them.

A Shift in the Geo-Political Centre of Canada

From the very beginnings of Canadian Confederation, the Laurentian Region,

Quebec and Ontario together, has dominated Canadian federal politics. But on May

2, 2011, that political centre of gravity shifted westward, the new and dominant

alliance becoming that of Ontario and the West together.

Ontario and the West now control almost two-thirds of the seats in the House of

Commons, 145of those held by the Conservatives and allowing them to form a

majority government despite losing all but six of their seats in Quebec.

This shift in the geo-political centre of gravity of the country lags, but now mirrors,

the westward shift of the centre of gravity of the Canadian economy as the

resource sector workhorses play an ever-increasing role in pulling the Canadian

economic wagon.

Lest we forget, however, Westerners especially should know what it is like to be

out of the federal power block, and should make special efforts to ensure that

Eastern alienation (in Quebec and parts of Atlantic Canada) does not become a

permanent and debilitating national affliction.

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The NDP Dilemma

Jack Layton and the NDP are to be thanked for obliterating the Bloc Quebecois (at

least temporarily) and replacing separatist MPs in the House of Commons with

what the rest of the country hopes are (and will remain) federalist MPs.

But here is the great danger for the federal NDP. In the past, both of the two major

federal parties, the Liberals and the old Progressive Conservatives, bent over

backwards in various ways to accommodate Quebec demands. In doing so they

increasingly alienated major segments of the electorate in the rest of the country.

And then in the end, their Quebec supporters turned against them. It happened to

Pierre Trudeau, it happened to Brian Mulroney, and it could happen to Jack Layton

even more quickly and dramatically.

What should be increasingly apparent is that if new and stronger bridges are to be

built between Quebec and the rest of Canada, they will have to be primarilyconstructed not by federal politicians on constitutional grounds but by private-

sector decision makers and provincial leaders on the grounds of economic and

inter-provincial relations. National unity will thus depend increasingly on such

measures as increased Quebec-Ontario trade and increased cooperation between

the energy sectors of Quebec and the West, and on greater inter-provincial

cooperation as discussed recently in a Montreal Economic Institute report calling

for a new QuebecAlberta dialogue.

The Liberal Lesson

There is an important lesson for all political parties, including the governing

Conservatives, in the collapse of the Liberal Party of Canada. Parties long in office

use up their intellectual capital and depend largely on the expropriation of ideas

from others, including the civil service, to replenish it. Parties long in office

increasingly attract their human resources not on the basis of vision or principles

but on what they can offer in terms of positions, pay, pensions, and patronage.

Parties long in office become accustomed to having all the communications tools

and resources of a government to transmit their messages and to drown out those

of their opponents.

But then, as invariably happens in a democracy, when a long-time governing party

is removed from office, it finds itself intellectually bankrupt, its human resources

weak and depleted, and its political voice reduced from a roar to a whimper. This,

sadly for Liberals, is the political legacy of the Chrtien years.

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The Manning Centre for Building Democracy identifies as democratic

infrastructure institutions and programs for developing political intellectual

capital, the knowledge and skills of political activists, and expanded political

communications capacity. If the parties are unable to develop and maintain such

infrastructure because of their preoccupation with fighting elections or governing,

then it is the responsibility of the movements which surround and support them

in our case the conservative movement to do so. Failure to do so can lead to the

eventual collapse of the party, even a governing party. Look and learn from the

Liberal Party of Canada.

*Preston Manning is the President and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building

Democracy (www.manningcentre.ca).

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op-ed election 2011 g&m may20'11 (1)

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