Keeble McFarlane

Vox populi, vox dei goes the hoary old proverb: The Voice of the People is the Voice of God. You hear that quoted all the time by people trying to put the best light on an undesired, or downright lousy outcome of an election, referendum, plebiscite or straw poll. But there is something magical, almost supernatural, in the simple act of a citizen stepping away from the gaze of fellow citizens, be it behind a sheet of cloth in a corner of the room, a flimsy contraption of folded cardboard, or a sturdy box, to decide who should control the ship of state.

The chemistry which occurs between a citizen with a pencil and a slip of paper with some names on it and spaces to indicate a choice is, to my mind, the finest demonstration of mankind's pursuit of civilisation. For too long, most of the earth's occupants had never heard of, let alone had the chance, to sample this magic. Fortunately, that has changed, and the trend seems irreversible.

These thoughts occurred to me on Monday night as I watched the results come in after almost 15 million Canadians had cast their ballots in a national election - for the second time in a year and a half.

This election was, in several ways, a repeat of the one in June 2004, but the outcome was the reverse. At that time, Canada had a new prime minister, Paul Martin, just half a year in office, even though his party had been in power for a decade before that. Martin, as finance minister under Jean Chrétien, had wrestled into submission the huge deficits the previous government had racked up year after year, converting them into sizeable surpluses. When his party came to power a dozen years ago, Canada's national debt was 66.5 per cent of the gross national product, now it's 38.7 per cent. Martin slashed taxes, and saw inflation sink to levels not seen for some 40 years. Unemployment in Canada is now around 6.5 per cent - a bit more than half what it was back then. Mortgages ran under nine per cent then. Now they are below six.

Just as Martin took over, the auditor-general had come out with a report slamming the Chrétien government for a scheme to push federalism in the province of Quebec, where separatist sympathies ran high. Millions of dollars in government money had been diverted through a variety of schemes, some of it making its way into the hands of local party groups and individuals. So the voters put Martin and his Liberal party on notice to clean up their act and get on with business. But Martin had committed himself to a public airing of that subject, and it soon became a soap opera, with testimony by Martin and Chrétien, and days of hearings about briefcases full of money changing hands in classy restaurants.

In contrast with his single-minded attack on the deficit, Martin as prime minister was all over the place, micro-managing every initiative, second-guessing every decision and dawdling over pressing issues. He had promised to repair the corrosion in relations with the United States that had occurred under his predecessor's tenure, but succeeded only in antagonising the current occupant of the White House.

He avoided collapse of his government last spring by agreeing to some policies pushed by the small, leftist, New Democratic Party, which bailed him out with the help of the separatist Bloc Québecois. But as the year wore on that support eroded, and early in December the NDP presented a motion in Parliament demanding that Martin call an election. He refused, and all three Opposition parties ganged up to torpedo his government.

The campaign, which ran for a bone-wearying 56 days, saw a new Conservative Party, led by a disciplined, toned-down Stephen Harper - in contrast to the sour-faced off-putting manner he presented the last time round. Right out of the starting block he put forward cohesive, credible policies, and he stuck to his message, while restraining all the zealous right-wing cohorts left over from his party's roots in a protest movement called the Reform Party. And he continuously hammered home the scandal message, linking the Liberals with corruption and an attitude of entitlement.

In contrast, Martin ran an undisciplined, helter-skelter, hugely negative campaign, trying once again to conjure up an image of Harper and his Conservatives as devils ready to turn the country back to the age of cave-dwellers.

Well, the electorate bought very little of it, and instead read their situation very carefully, and calibrated their vote accordingly. The message came through clearly on Monday - the Conservatives went from 99 to 124 seats, not enough to govern outright in a house of 308 members. The Liberals dropped to a still-respectable 103, while the New Democrats picked up 10 seats to total 29, and the separatist Bloc dropped from 54 to 51. One fellow - a talk-radio host from Quebec City and hugely popular for his outrageous statements and pranks on the air, sailed to victory as an independent.

The Conservatives took seats away from the Liberals in many places, notably in Quebec, but failed to gain a single one in any of the three biggest cities - Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver - totalling 53 members. But the Tories took all of Calgary's eight seats, and all 20 in the province of Alberta, which for generations has been chafing over the seemingly intractable dominance of the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa power axis. Unlike the Bloc in Quebec, the attitude of the conservative-minded folks of the western provinces has been, "The West Wants In". Well, it is now in - after a fashion.

What the electorate has done is to send the Liberals to the sidelines to mull over their behaviour and how to clean up their act, at the same time allowing the Conservatives a test drive to see what governing is like after lying fallow for more than a dozen years. And unlike the last time, when voter turnout had dropped to a historic low of 60 per cent, this time it had crept back up almost five percentage points.

Political watchers hope this is the start of a welcome new trend in which the people speak with an even more powerful (perhaps Godly?) voice.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca

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