New party dynamics

Editorial

Canada will have a degree of political stability for the next several years, as a result of the majority government attained Monday by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party, but instability will reign on the opposition side of the House.

The Liberal party, once notoriously Canada’s “natural governing party” fell to third place and potential irrelevance. But we should not forget that the Conservative party was reduced to just two seats in 1993 and, in the culmination of a decades-long comeback on Monday, won a third term as government.

The obliteration of the Bloc Quebecois is a hopeful sign, not just for Canadian unity, but for a healthier, diversified politics. For the first time in many years, we have two healthy genuinely national parties: the Conservatives have representation in every province but Newfoundland and Labrador and the New Democrats have seats in every province but Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan.

The election of Green party leader Elizabeth May in British Columbia will bring a new voice to a crowded field on the centre-left. As the NDP try to prove they are worthy of being considered as a replacement to the government, the Liberals will attempt to fight their way back to significance – though the fighting will be mostly internal. Whether they attempt to move right to counter the growth of the Conservative party, or left to counter the NDP, or whether they find some alternative ground on which to base a comeback, the path ahead for the Liberals is long and unmapped.

With the Conservative majority, of course, the ethical foreign policy that saw Canada become Israel’s best friend in the diplomatic world is certainly solidified for a few years. In a world without Osama bin Laden, and where Hamas and Fatah, which were probably never as far apart as the commentators contended, reunite to oppress Palestinians more efficiently, Canada’s voice in the world seems likely to remain one of reason.

But what of the other side?

Down with the Liberal ship went some of Parliament’s strongest voices for Israel, like Anita Neville and Joe Volpe, as well as Mario Silva, who chaired the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism. Will the loss of these perspectives leave the weakened Liberal party open to being overly influenced by anti-Israel radicals, as happened when the NDP was at its weakest point?

And what about the NDP’s foreign policy? Essentially an isolationist party (under the banner of “peace”), the NDP wants to abandon the people of Afghanistan and has been a welcoming home to the most extreme anti-Israel politicians, including Libby Davies, who was massively reelected Monday in Vancouver-East.

The only thing that is known about most of the new NDP caucus is that it isn’t your parents’ NDP. The party that is descended from the CCF, which didn’t officially have a French translation for its name, has rarely had a single francophone – or even a half dozen MPs who speak the language with any fluency – in the caucus. Now well more than half of their 102 MPs are French-speaking Quebeckers. In a couple of hours Monday night, the NDP went from the country’s most embarrassingly unilingual English party to by far the most Quebecois and French of any national party.

As Brian Mulroney learned in 1984, an unexpected tide can bring with it much flotsam, perhaps especially in Quebec. Of the 58 new NDP MPs from Quebec, only three or four probably thought they might get elected when they agreed to run. They were likely not vetted as well as candidates in more probable ridings and, in fact, they seem a motley mix of unionists and activists who may tilt the party further left. And will the NDP still be a federalist party? Jack Layton will certainly say yes; some of his new MPs may have a different perspective.

The new NDP is the most unpredictable outcome of the election. When a party sees an expansion as this one has, the new caucus will redefine what the party means. If the NDP genuinely seeks to be seen as a reasonable entity worth considering as a potential future government, they must review the weakest links in their platform, including the madness of their foreign policy, an ideology of appeasement long abandoned by most European parties of the left.

The litmus test will be this: if the NDP seeks to be a true potential government, it must not react to Conservative foreign policy with an equal and opposite reaction. The NDP must realize – all parties must – that support for democracies, defence of the Jewish state and promoting abroad the same progressive values we claim to support at home is not a political issue, nor an issue of right and left. It is an issue of right and wrong.

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