Like most moderately reasonable people with enough free time to waste on following the twists and turns of a federal election, I quickly got bored of it. (There was nothing on TV last night except "Close to Home" and the leadership debate — which would you choose?) Allow me to be cynical: there really is no significant difference between the parties, thus the election merits little attention. I specifically say ‘significant’ for the reason that with the likely hood of a minority government, the differences between the parties are such that they will quickly converge on a single unpalatable position. (This, of course, is not a vote in favour of majority government.) It may change from bill to bill, debate to debate, issue to issue, and so on, but the minor variation is mostly meaningless. The two conservative parties: the Reform Party and the Liberal Party will win most of the seats, but as a fraction of the same political class, they are — to borrow from star candidate Michael Ignatieff — going to be sidetracked from what is essentially the same position over the ‘narcissim of minor differences’. In other words, differences that do not matter will become differences that do matter. (‘Matter’ being defined from the position of that political class and not from mine!) Thus, what is essentially an agreement on principle — change the tax structure, especially the corporate tax structure while reducing and privatizing public services and increasing the size of the military — becomes an issue of means: ‘reduce the GST by 2% points’ or ‘reduce personal income taxes by the same absolute amount’.
Meanwhile, the fringe parties, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois, remain unable to push either of their agendas due to what is essential an issue of perception: the Bloc are, obviously, seperatists and the NDP, equally obviously, are communists. Problem is, neither perception is true. (Mind you, if you squint just the right way while looking at Layton, he’ll turn into Lenin.) Both are, at the core, center-left parties with a sense of ‘the social’ approaching the question from, respectively, the perspective of Quebec and the perspective of Canada. (As the most progressive province in Canada, the country could learn a lot from Quebec, thus I don’t see the perspectives as mutually exclusive. This is a great feat by the Quebecois given that they are a dominated minority contained to a single region.)
The best one could hope for — and there are a few reasons one might hope for this — is that the NDP and the Bloc would form a coalition government. Substantively, they agree on almost social and economic issues. The only point of difference is ‘Canada first’ versus ‘Quebec first’. But, as a region of Canada, it isn’t always clear how they are necessarily exclusive positions. I’m in a minority of about a handful in English Canada who does not particularly care if the Bloc votes on the basis of what is good for Quebec. In general, what appears to be good for Quebec — protection of minority rights, integration and training of immigrants, cultural projects, etc — is also good for Canada.
But this is all beside the point. The real reason to ensure a coalition government is that we could, for the first time, have Co-Prime Ministers. It would be quite funny, "The Co-Prime Ministers of Canada, Jack and Gilles". (To those who don’t speak French, ‘Gilles’ sounds a lot like ‘Jills’ with a softer initial consonant.) That’s right: Jack and Jill. Hilarious! Would destroy the symbolic structure of the country.
(Gilles Duceppe, by the way, was the only marginally interesting participant in the ‘debate’ last night. His facial expressions are priceless. On some idiotic question, "Would you allow a free vote on gay marriage?" he looked very shocked and confused and said, "We already did." We certainly did.)
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