The Decline of the Liberal Party of Canada

This is the fourth post in my continuing series about issues pointed out by the election held on October 14. In this entry, I will deal with the decline of the Liberal Party of Canada, and where it goes from here.

"Whither the Liberals" is a common question these days, being asked by everyone from the columnists of the Globe and Mail, though notably not the Liberal mouthpieces at the Toronto Star, to average Canadian political junkies. And this question is asked with good reason. What was once the Big Red Machine, that won three Consecutive majority governments for Jean Chretien, a feat equalled only by William Lyon Mackenzie King, Sir Wilfred Laurier and Sir John A. Macdonald. From this height of political dominance, the Liberals have fallen to their worst ever percentage of the vote, and their second worst number of seats ever (exceeded only by the meltdown of the Liberal Party under John Turner in 1984).

The Liberals as recently as the 2000 elections ran the table in Ontario, won most of Atlantic Canada, and won sizable percentages of the seats in Quebec and British Columbia. Now, by contrast, the Liberals are reduced to a rump in Western and Northern Canada, having only one seat in Manitoba, one seat in Saskatchewan, the Yukon and five seats in B.C. In central Canada, the Liberals have been reduced to an urban rump, taking only one non-urban seat in Central Canada (Nipising-Timiskaming) and otherwise being confined to Greater Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Kingston, Guelph and London. Only in Atlantic Canada did the Liberals do decently, netting a loss of only two seats.

The question that seems to be all around these days is whether the Liberals can come back from this. There seems to have been a marked shift in Canada. In the Liberals former power-base of Ontario, which is still the source of their single largest chunk of seats, the province is now divided into the three - the north where the NDP is strong, rural and some urban parts of eastern, central and south-western Ontario where the Conservatives are strong, and urban Ontario, where the Liberals have their remaining base, but are also challenged by the NDP. In Quebec, with the exception of Hull-Aylmer, the Liberals are confined to Montreal. In BC, the Liberal vote is concentrated in the west side of Vancouver, winning three seats there and two seats outside of the actual city of Vancouver, while the NDP and Conservatives challenge them within Vancouver, while the NDP and Conservatives take the seats across the lower mainland, and the Conservatives, with two notable exceptions, dominate the north and the interior. The prairies are largely a write off for the Liberals.

It is difficult to see how the Liberals rebound from this defeat and reverse these trends. For the last three elections, Liberal support has been trending down and has become increasingly concentrated into the areas I have catalogued. This pattern was, of course, exacerbated by Adscam, and by Dion's hideously bad leadership. The next leader of the Liberals will have to do something, and something drastic, to turn this around.

The Liberal Party of Canada will have two options. 1) Elect a leader from the left wing of their party and try to go after the NDP's votes. 2) Elect a leader from the right wing of the party and try to go after Conservative votes.

The first option is a route that will likely yield short-term gains, as the Liberals may be able to claim back seats lost to the NDP, such as Welland, Ottawa Centre, Trinity-Spadina, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, Hamilton-Mountain and the seats in Northern Ontario. However, in the long term this is a losing strategy for the Liberals. There are simply not enough NDP seats they could win and votes to pull to take them back into minority government territory, never mind opposition.

The second option features primarily Ignatieff, Manley or Mackenna. A right-leaning leader would be able to draw back Liberal-Conservative swing voters, and this puts many more seats into play. Probably 30 seats in Ontario would come into play, as would seats in and around Winnipeg, and seats on the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. This is the strategy that will possibly yield a renewed and governing Liberal Party. As a corollory to this, the Liberals need to once again focus on winning the votes of immigrant populations. These groups are important in the 905 and in the Lower Mainland. Essentially, what the Liberals need to do is rebuild their centre-centre-right governing coalition, that fell apart over the last eight years.

However, the Liberal Party of Canada has devoted itself almost pathalogically to trying to take down the NDP. The Liberals seem to regard the NDP as being a theif of votes that "rightfully" belong to the Liberals. If this obsession continues to possess the Liberals, they will pick a left-leaning leader and go after the NDP. Given that there are a number of seats where the NDP competes with the Conservatives in the west and wins by relatively narrow margins, an attack on the NDP as the plan for a Liberal recovery would have some major unintended consequences. If the Liberals suck away NDP votes in the west, that will tip seats to the Conservatives, and make it harder for the Liberals to overtake the CPC. Picking a right-leaning leader however, could tip a number of BC races that are between the CPC and NDP to the NDP, and thus reduce the number of seats that the Liberals must gain in order to overtake the Conservatives for government.

The Liberals must pick carefully when they choose a new leader in May. Going for the easy, short-term gains will be attractive, but ultimately counter-productive. The only road back to power for the Liberals runs through the newly gained Conservative seats in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba and New Brunswick. Taking the wrong road could ultimately plough the Liberals into the ground permanently.

I will continue this series by discussing the NDP's outcome from the election in my next entry.

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