The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Canada's Liberal party as centrist.
If this is true, then their collapse can be explained by a splintering of the electorate, so fewer Canadians identify with the centre, or by an increase in political competition. Now other parties, such as the Greens, compete for the centrist vote.
While both these stories may contain elements of truth, let me propose an alternative explanation: Canada's Liberal party is a centralist party, and centralism doesn't work in a heterogeneous society.
A centralist party concentrates decision-making in the centre – in the federal government, in Ottawa. Decentralizers, by contrast, delegate decision-making to provinces, municipalities, or individual Canadians.
Many of the policies that define the Liberal approach to government are centralist. For example:
– The Canada Health Act sets parameters for provincial health insurance plans. In order to receive federal funding, provincial plans must to satisfy key criteria, such as universal, comprehensive coverage.
– the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has empowered the Supreme Court of Canada, increasing the scope of judicial review.
– the Canada Child Tax Benefit replaced a patchwork of provincial social welfare programs with a national income guarantee for children.
In the most recent election campaign, the Liberal's centralist approach was exemplified by a promise of universal child care. Yet universal child care also illustrates the challenges centralists face in a heterogeneous society.
Canadian families come in all shapes and sizes. Some parents are employed full-time, some part-time, some not at all. Some work days, some nights, some weekends. Some want the language of care to be English, some prefer French, others prefer other languages. Some prefer licensed, qualified, regulated care; others prefer care provided by a friend or family member. No single model of care works for all types of families. And this may be one reason why the Liberal party's universal child care proposal failed to gain traction with voters. (Another possible explanation is that an aging electorate isn't interested in paying taxes for other people's children).
There is an old theory called the Tiebout hypothesis, which observes that, if we all have the same tastes and want the same things, then we'll all agree on how governments should spend their money. But if we're different – e.g. one group wants money spent on lawn bowling, another group wants money spent on playgrounds – conflicts arise.
Tiebout's theory suggests that decentralization is a way of resolving conflicts over spending. If people can sort themselves into homogeneous communities – the lawn bowlers in one community, the playground goers in another community – and each community is free to choose their own level of public goods, then public goods can be provided efficiently and everyone can be happy.
Reality is more complicated than this simple story. But there have been a number of studies of the impact of ethnic diversity on the level of government spending, perhaps because this is a measurable form of heterogeneity. One frequently cited study has found that societies with more ethnic fractionalization tend to be more de-centralized. Others have found that ethnic fragmentation tends to be associated with lower levels of government provision of public goods such as education or roads, suggesting that heterogeneity makes it hard to build consensus around government spending.
Other forms of heterogeneity have an impact on spending, although their impact is more debated. Some argue that more income inequality increases the desired level of government spending, others that spending will decrease – the empirical evidence is not clear. Population aging is also pulling up Canada's population pyramid, spreading out the age distribution. Changing media could alter people's values – if Canadians are watching and reading a thousand different forms of media, they will be exposed to a thousand different viewpoints and opinions, which could lead to a greater range of views.
Back in 2005, David Frum offered this description of the Liberal party:
Unlike their supposed analogues, the Democrats in the United States or Great Britain's Labor Party, Canada's Liberals are not a party built around certain policies and principles. They are instead what political scientists call a brokerage party, similar to the old Italian Christian Democrats or India's Congress Party: a political entity without fixed principles or policies that exploits the power of the central state to bribe or bully incompatible constituencies to join together to share the spoils of government.
A bit harsh, but it raises an interesting question:
If the power of the central state declines for fundamental demographic, economic or technological reasons, where does that leave the Liberal party?
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
A similarly cynical description of the Liberal party from one of its supporters:
The Liberals are hosed. They alienated QC with the sponsorship scandal, they long ago alienated the West with NEP (it’s still the major reason why Albertans absolutely refuse to vote for them), and the demographics of Ontario are strongly against them. I suspect that it’s the demographics that’ll really kill them. People become more conservative and curmudgeonly as they age. I see it in family friends and relatives who are my parents age (mid to late 60’s). Where once their views on social issues where quite liberal, they are now shockingly keen on using the power of the state to stick-it to people of whom they disapprove. And they are increasingly unwilling to pay taxes, yet they insist that they are entitled to all the benefits of publicly provided goods and services. And an alarming number of them seem to have developed a fetish for the gold standard.
Patrick: “People become more conservative and curmudgeonly as they age.”
This is definitely the popular perception, and anecdotally it seems true. But academic studies, for example, here and here don’t appear to support this view. I don’t think this is just me cherry-picking studies, as I have a friend who specializes in studying conservative political movements, and he told me the same thing. I don’t know what’s going on here. I’d like to see if there are differential gender effects (my guess is that there are), but finding years of social survey data and tracking cohorts over time is far too much like hard work.
@Patrick: Interesting anecdote.
Frum makes pragmatism sound so sinister. Yet the Conservatives are coasting on the stable society created by two generations of Canadian Liberal pragmatism. The principle of liberalism is precisely that no principle is more important than any other; that the job of promoting a stable and prosperous society is all about compromise among competing interests, that each issue is sui generis, that the state exists in service of the nation and not the other way around.
One problem I think is that Liberals have trouble uniting around new 21st century pan Canadian institutions such as creating a national securities regulator or the HST without creating enormous divisions within their party. At the same time economic and technological forces are making many of the 20th century institutions Liberals united around less and less important. The two main railroads are still hugely important to the Canadian economy but once people stopped taking passenger trains the average person had little direct connection to them. In other areas of transportation I suspect the Liberals would like to minimize their historic involvement with Air Canada. The CBC is being made obsolete by internet and satellite communications.
Look at someone such as Carole Taylor who was supposed to be one of the most powerful Federal Liberals in BC and was a former executive at the CBC. When she was BC Finance Minister she opposed the HST opposed a National Securities Regulator and now her protege Christy Clark wants the federal government to cede all authority to do environmental assessments to the provinces(ala Prosperity Mine).
It think Patrick is right on the money. It fits very well with what I’ve observed. One thing: the older curmudgeon vote seems to split along gender lines. The base of Conservative support is old white MEN. They don’t fare so well with women, and I don’t see to many older women going cranky (in more than one sense) in the same way. It’s particularly weird to see boomers, and possible ex-hippies, now transforming into crazy “get-off-my-lawn!” old men in Ontario.
Tim: “One problem I think is that Liberals have trouble uniting around new 21st century pan Canadian institutions such as creating a national securities regulator or the HST without creating enormous divisions within their party.”
Why is that?
Frances: Interesting. Perhaps my family are just nasty, mean people!
I don’t have access to the papers, but based on the abstracts it look like they were looking at survey data. I wonder to what extent there is a difference between what people say in response to a survey, and what they actually do when there’s money on the table. No doubt the researchers were very careful, but I can’t help but be reminded of a Yes Minister episode:
Sir Humphrey: “You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don’t want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Do you think they respond to a challenge?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?”
Bernard Woolley: “Oh…well, I suppose I might be.”
Sir Humphrey: “Yes or no?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can’t say no to that. So they don’t mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.”
Bernard Woolley: “Is that really what they do?”
Sir Humphrey: “Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren’t many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result.”
Bernard Woolley: “How?”
Sir Humphrey: “Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Are you worried about the growth of armaments?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?”
Bernard Woolley: “Yes”
Sir Humphrey: “There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample.”
Mtobis: “The principle of liberalism is precisely that no principle is more important than any other; that the job of promoting a stable and prosperous society is all about compromise among competing interests, that each issue is sui generis, that the state exists in service of the nation and not the other way around.”
I’m not sure that that is a principal of liberalism (which, after all is a distinct – and in the view of its believers, superior – political ideology than its competitor), though it might be a fair description of Liberalism (capital L). Even then, I doubt very much that any Liberals in Canada would agree with the proposition that “no principle is more important than any other” although if they do, that might explain why they’ve lost so heavily in recent years.
Frances:
Why is a good question. I think in BC for example for many decades the party has had really no identity. They tend to get to focused on provincial politics and aligning themselves with basically what are still socreds to keep the NDP out of power provincially. The problem is they don’t seem to have any identity other than being the Socreds junior partner in governing provincially. There is also a deep nationalist anti Ottawa sentiment on both the left and the right in BC that the Liberals have really never taken head on in BC. Now going back to Carole Taylor and Christy Clark if a Joyce Murray or Hedy Fry were out there disaggreeing with Taylor and Clark on their stances that would be one thing on the otherhand I tend to hear very little about anything from Murray or Fry.
Now in Ontario on the otherhand Dalton McGuinty’s views on HST and national securities regulation are much more aligned with those of a traditional Federal Liberal the problem is most Ontario Liberal MPs aren’t backing up Dalton because they are trying to keep peace with the Murray’s and Fry’s in BC who are trying to keep peace with their Socred/Conversative partners in governing BC provincially.
The ethnic fractionation of Canadian society has been lamented since the ’60s, if not longer. It has never really materialized in a major way save a few minority religious groups (and not exclusive to visible minorities). When doing business in a diverse economy, it is hard to believe one can maximize wealth by turning inwards within a minority community instead of adapting to capture the remainder of the market.
Is anyone old enough to remember politicians catering to the Italian and German immigrant vote in the ’60s and ’70s?
Patrick – since your family sounds much like my family, I don’t dispute your anecdote – or the wisdom of Sir Humphrey. I’m partly playing devil’s advocate here because I would really like to find some solid evidence for or against the population aging implies conservative voting hypothesis, but there doesn’t seem to be anything out there.
The only way that it’s really possible to test the increasing-conservativism-with-age theory is to ask the same questions to the same cohort of people at different points of time, e.g. when they’re 30 and then again when they’re 50. That’s what the second of the two studies that I cited in the comment above does – the General Social Survey asks the same questions on a regular cycle. Now it could be that these studies don’t find anything because the change in values doesn’t kick in until people hit 60, as you suggest. Or that changes in values are caused by other factors, e.g. presence of children in the home, that just happens to be correlated with age.
But if it’s population aging, how does that explain the fact that Alberta, which is about the youngest province, is a one-party Conservative state, or the fact that 905, again one of the younger parts of Canada, pushed the CPC into majority territory?
Jesse – I agree about the dangers of blaming things on ethnic diversity, but heterogeneity doesn’t have to be driven by ethnicity. When I was growing up everybody in my household read the same newspaper. Now everyone in my household sits around with their laptop and reads whatever newspaper they feel like reading that day – the Ottawa Citizen or cracked.com or Slate or… To take another example, the extended family had a very tense discussion over income splitting – pitting one v. two earner families, young v. old – around the dinner table the other day. So it could be economic or cultural diversity.
Tim – what you say of BC has been true as far as I can remember. But one thing that arguably has changed is that BC is more important, relatively speaking, both population wise and economically, than it used to be. That’s the kind of increasing heterogeneity of Canadian politics that I’m talking about.
I don’t know if this is solid evidence but this is all I can think of http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-parliament-would-look-if-only-youth-voted/article1747999/
KV – isn’t there a story that explains Honda and Toyota’s success by saying that they got people to buy a Honda/Toyota as their first car some time around 1970, and then just rode the wave, selling those same people more and more cars. And gradually the people who had been loyal to the American auto makers have aged out of the market/faded away? There’s similar stories with politics – a generation will adopt a brand in its youth, and then stick with it. Or maybe not – but it’s dangerous to infer too much about tomorrow’s old by looking at today’s old.
Mr. Woolley,
I think the association of conservatism with the old may have more to do with changes in what is considered conservative, rather than changes in what any particular individual believes. Views on social issues that would have been considered quite progressive in, say, 1960, would today be considered almost reactionary.
I don’t accept the correlation between aging and increased conservatism (which I interpret as drifting rightward, not resisting change). As we age, we hang on to our preferences but our status quo bias becomes stronger. If we really became more conservative as we aged, then in about 20 years we could expect to live in a country free of corporate welfare and farm subsidies, which I think is unlikely. I suspect we simply adopt an increasingly traditional version of our core values and political brand preferences, like my mother, who would vote for the Liberals even if the leader was an ex-con in a gorilla suit.
It wasn’t that long ago–up to the mid 90s–that the energetic backbone of the federal NDP was the big post-war labor crowd: big on unions and government megaprojects, but cool to hostile on immigrants, gays, and women in leadership. Obviously that has changed, but those guys are still there and voting for their old team. I don’t think they’re holding their noses either: the ones I know still see it as the Canadian version of Neil Kinnock’s Labor party.
Frances- BC is actually a kind of weird situation as it is becoming demographically more importatant but economically it is kind of stagnant. I think I heard Jack Mintz once say that either 70 or 75 percent of all corporate tax revenues come from either AB, ON, or QC whease BC generates only 7 percent of CIT revenue. There is actually some evidence that increasingly people of working age population are moving to AB from BC and retirees are going from AB to BC. I actually we are more likely to see national unity divide not on English/French or ON/QC but AB/BC in the future.
Now to my next point Alberta is some ways is even harder to understand than BC. First Alberta walked out on the Liberals first going all the way back to the 1930s. However since the late 1960s Alberta has had its own “natural governing” party that is provincial Progressive Conservatives which unbenowst to many outside of AB on many occassions has been quite “centrist” and “progressive” or dare I say “Big L Liberal” in its policies. As such it has had to carefully balance the interests of rural vs urban, Calgary vs Edmonton, agriculture vs Oil and gas as all centralist parties have to. If you look closely at provincial or even federal conservative caucuses from Alberta you will find many people like Allison Redford, Lindsay Blackett, or Lee Richardson who would not be at all out of place as rural or suburban Ontario Liberals.
One of the more interesting factoids of Canadian political history is that Bill Vander Zalm and Ralph Klein were once both self indentified Federal Liberals. However, in Klein’s case other than disliking Trudeau immensly I am not quite sure he ever stopped being a Liberal privately. Remember there were quite a few similarities between Jean Chretien and Ralph Klein in style.
The Liberals, like the Indian Congress, were indeed a completely amoral brokerage party. Exactly what you need in an ethnically diverse country with barely a common agenda, united mostly by the hatred they felt for TO and the contempt in which TO held them.
You bribe everyone with everyone else’s money and everybody feels they got something in exchange for what they paid. Mackenzie King, St-Laurent and Pearson were Jedi masters of the craft.
MK ( or at least his dog’s spirit ) went so far as to remodel the Armed Forces. For decades the Air Force was larger than the Army. Official reason : large land mass with a small population concentrated at the edges. And yet Australia and Brazil, facing the same problem didn’t go that way. Real reason : the Air Force needs skilled volunteers. No conscription! And even then the Air Force was asked in 1940 to train the British. No one dying in Europe!
In the 60’s Pearson got his universal pension plan : CPP in the ROC, QPP in Québec. Who cares? Whatever works works. Extreme pragmatism. Radical middle. Chinese buffet for everyone!
It came crashing with the absurd choice of PET in 68. Extreme in his distaste of compromise, safe in his self-proclaimed genius, certain that « Québec should be put in its place ». (For all MK ,St-L and P. cared, QC or BC might have been on Mars as long as they voted Lib).
From then on, father knew best. #6 with extra rice for the whole family including the baby. And if you didn’t like that, you were backward tribalists, provincialist or xenophobe , whatever insults could be hurled. Negociation and compromise , the very essence of civilized collective living was now an immoral capitulation to « little people of blackmailers » and so on.
Bob Stanfield understood the madness but the old Wasp crowd in TO saw an occasion of regaining the upper hand. Enough people drank the Kool-Aid. We are still suffering the hangover.
Patrick: Of all the logical fallacies, “Proof by ‘Yes Minister'” surely takes the cake. Congratulations!
By the way… I come from a family of radical liberal pacifists. They all seemed to become most extreme in their old age. Doesn’t prove anything either. I’ll go with Frances survey literature.
Frances: Good question re AB. I don’t really know why.
The Liberals will never be popular in Alberta thanks to the NEP. Apart from that… I dunno why it’s a one party state. It’s been that way basically all it’s history. UFA was in power from ’21 to 35. Then the Soc Creds from ’35 to ’71. And the PC’s since then. I suppose, at least historically, things just changed very slowly in AB so there was no reason to change the gov’t. Farmers and ranchers tend to be stoic, patient people (you have to be when you’re so subject to the whims of nature). Since the Gov’t doesn’t control the weather, or the price of beef, or set oil prices, I guess people found it hard to get too excited about changing the governing party – it wasn’t going to change much. So along as an AB provincial gov’t sorta minds its Ps and Qs and doesn’t totally screw-up, then people will stick with it. Better the devil you know, I guess.
K: Please tell me you’re not really that humorless.
You missed one thing about the Liberals and the child care programme. They have been promising it for decades and never actually doing anything about it. I think a big part of what happened was the Liberals simply destroyed their own credibility.
The social democratic shift from the Bloc to the NDP in Quebec pushed the NDP over the hump with respect to the Liberals.
Why the Liberals chose to flog child care when pharmacare would have bribed more voters is beyond me. Or both, for a more complete vote purchaser, er, social safety net as the two programs have different client profiles.
The Liberals dilemma is that their two vote approaches, ethnic minority immigrants in English Canada and French Canadians are no longer theirs. The others have copied their schtick. The Conservatives have elevated courting ethnic minorities in the 905 into a high art. The NDP found out that just being yourself in French was enough when you’re a social democrat.
The Liberals have lost people to broker because the Tories learned there were more voters than just WASPs and the NDP learned to speak French.
“The Liberals have lost people to broker because the Tories learned there were more voters than just WASPs and the NDP learned to speak French.”
So now we have three brokerage parties?
I’d an appreciate an end to WASP references on this blog. I’m not sure what this term is supposed to mean.
As a way of describing people of British descent, it’s inaccurate. Lots of Bitons are Roman Catholic. Lots are Celtic or Norman or from somewhere else again.
Next time you feel the urge to use the word “wasp”, substitute instead a word like, say, “frog” and imagine how you’d feel.
I think that the choice of Michael Ignatieff as leader has a lot to do with the Liberal collapse. Things really seemed to change after the debates, particularly when his lack of attendance in parliament was pointed out. I think if they had stuck with Stephan Dion they would have had a leader with the experience and intelligence to craft positions that spoke to Canadians at large. I voted NDP, but it was really an anyone-but-Harper vote and I don’t see this idealistic party forming a government until it convinces people that it can manage finances.
And “Yes Minister” rocks!
Exactly, all three national parties have transformed themselves into brokerage parties. Though the answers resulting from that brokerage differ. In this climate it’s easier to be the NDP or Tories and have some ideological justification for why your results are the way they are. For the Liberals the result will be a squeeze on both sides.
The problem for the Liberals is that they are an ideology free zone and that doesn’t cut it anymore.
There as an article in Maclean’s after Harper’s first win detailing the art of the party solicitation letter: “Have you ever seen a typical party fundraising letter? It is the most hackneyed, predictable piece of s**t you are ever likely to see. And it raises millions.”
That’s where ideology comes in. That is the Liberal problem.
When asked on the CBC why he thought that the new Canadian vote shifted to the conservatives this time around, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said he felt that the Conservatives had more of a presence in these communities in recent years. He claimed that at a lot of events he goes to Liberal MPs from the Toronto area were invited and did not attend. I think the lesson is in politics you have to show up and you cannot take your supporters for granted.
Frances, in response to your reference to Toyota and generations: Once when I asked my dad (a baby boomer) why he thought that American automakers were struggling so much he told me that he buys a car once a decade. So if a company does something to turn him off as a customer they have lost him for at least 20 years, if not forever. It is not like buying a brand of milk. I think that from my experience, GM in particular, turned off a lot of people with poor service. I think politics may be similar. Once you have turned a voter off your brand it may take a lot of effort to win them back.
And not everyone leaves the party at once. It takes time. So anyone who wants to blame Ignatieff for this should look again. The Liberals have lost my vote since the sponsorship scandal and won’t get it back until I am convinced they have done some serious soul searching.
@Rachel
From Budget deficits and surpluses in the Canadian provinces: a pooled analysis
and
So the expected result of an NDP win federally is a lower deficit.
Determinant: I think you’re right. All three parties are, or trying to be, brokerage parties. The people who give money to the NDP, and particularly the Conservatives haven’t realised this yet. They still think their money is buying a place for their ideology in the halls of power. They get a few crumbs here and there, but mostly on issues of little to no consequence. I suppose traditional Liberals–non-ideological/dogmatic centrists are the real winners. Their party is toast but they still get policies they’re relatively pleased with. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like to be a conservative when the left holds power and vice versa. Our federal governments have been pretty cozy centre-right governments for over 25 years, once you strip away the packaging and the marketing.
John Ibbotson had a great editorial in today’s Globe that Harper’s likely real agenda will be a federal government that keeps you safe (crime legislation), protects your job (stimulus, tax cuts, we can even throw in Foreign Investment review here) and protects your income (the only good direction for taxes is down. The rate at which they decline is subject to the economy).
The Death Penalty won’t even reach the floor of the Commons. Other than that it would demonstrate embarrassing splits in his caucus, in Canada the historic practice was that provinces held the condemned in provincial jails and conducted the hanging. That’s their constitutional “law enforcement” power. A Death Penalty debate would certainly anger Quebec and likely Ontario for no real result or electoral gain.
If you’re like me and want national pharmacare, then it’s the NDP from now on. I’m fine with that.
The main point I made above was that historically the Liberals were the kings of identity politics. They held a lock on recent immigrants and were seen as the only national party that could win in Quebec. Neither is true anymore.
The thing with money, and this would be a great topic for future posts, is that we drastically changed the rules in the early 2000’s. We have a completely, totally different fundraising system then the US. We have a complete ban on corporate and union donations. The personal contribution limit is $1,100/person/year. The rich donor in a backroom doesn’t exist anymore in Canada. That sort of thing is gone, it’s illegal. It’s not even worth being rich in politics anymore, your money won’t do you any good. Retail fundraising is the only kind allowed anymore and the sales approach needed to make it work hinges on ideology, self-definition and demonization of the other party.
Determinant: Google “United States v. Burns and Rafay”. A return to the pre-1962 regime would require recourse to Section 33. And like the CPC, we too should let sleeping dogs lie…
The limits on fund-raising may have a perverse effect. Rich donors are no longer subject to the blackmail of paying for access. Lobbyists may now get in free…Makes life simple.
Most Canadians realise the value of brokering, some more than the rest. But some less. And brokering means there must be gravy for everyone. What do AB gets for having an Ontario ( oups National) Securities Commission? Laxer emission standards on tar-sand plants? Then what is the candy for BC Greens and Québec clean-hydro consumers? What do you do with the Alberta MP who asked for the cancellation of the short form census. He was quickly rebuffed, but given that he has a long backbench non-career in front of him, at some point he might get tempted to be the Diane Ablonczy of Federal Wilrose.
Yes “Burns and Rafay” prevents extradition to death penalty countries but we now have a policy of non-intervention in death-penalty cases involving Canadians abroad except where the prisonner is in a non-democratic country ( nice way to start your negociation, if your heart is even in it). These two doctrines are contradictory but the dilemna can be resolved.Slowly nominate enough judges and they will do the work for you. Unlike the Republicans, S.H. always indicated he was for change in the long run. He has no wish to ruin things by going too fast.
Pharmacare? You might get it from the PCC. Only in the U.S are rightists against social measures. Whatever our regional-linguistic-ethnic squabbles, they don’t reach the level of the U.S. White-Black divide. There is nobody in Canada willing to deprive himself and his family of a juicy life-stabilisation policy just to deprive somebody else of it. In 1947, Truman couldn’t get his health-insurance plan because the South objected to Blacks having care. Imagine a guy in BC refusing free medications because NB would get it. The neurons don’t even connect long enough to form that thought. And his Granma would gouge his eyes out anyway.
That’s why , for all its defect, I’ll never leave to move to the U.S. I value the very useful sanity of this place…
“We have a complete ban on corporate and union donations..”
But there have been some attempts (I believe one of those attempts was lead by a certain Mr Harper when he ran the NCC) to open things up for third-party orgs to get more involved in election campaigns. If the Conservatives pushed that forward, that could effectively bring in a great deal of corporate dollars into campaigns. The orgs might be nominally non-partisan, but……….
Third part orgs are regulated just like other parties. The rules are quite strict.
“The rules are quite strict.”
But are they enforced? See link below:
Democracy Deficit on Vancouver Island
Given his past, I’d hazard a guess that Mr Harper will want to weaken those restraints, such as they are.