In 2003, when the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party finally merged, they completed a process that everyone knew was the obvious and inevitable outcome of the right wing split in Canadian politics. Now, in 2013, it seems that Canadians will once again sit on the sidelines and wonder how long it will take Canada's more left wing parties to figure out that unless they merge they will likely continue to be in opposition for a long time.
Without doubt Canada's electoral system is not designed to have multiple parties whose policies are fairly similar. I understand that the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party are ideologically different but they both still present policies inclined to social justice with a heavy reliance on the state to pursue "public goods." State funded health, education, welfare, environmental protection, and other social justice policies are all public goods that both the Liberals and the NDP (and we could also include the Green Party) consider essential to the framework of a healthy democracy. The Conservatives support a less state driven economy accompanied by a philosophy of individual responsibility for the choices we make in terms of education, health and welfare. This fundamental difference in philosophy and approach to public policy marks the difference between the right and left wing.
For sure there are other real differences between the NDP and the Liberals. They have different constituencies in the sense that "labour" has a strong tie to the NDP. Yet over the years even labour movement leaders have understood the facts about Canadian politics and have urged their members to vote Liberal if it meant avoiding vote splitting and would lead to a Conservative defeat.
Just a reminder that our electoral processes is a single member plurality. You do not need to win the majority of votes in a riding. You just need to win the most votes. So if you have a candidate for each party and the votes turn out to be: Conservative 39 percent, NDP 31 percent, Liberal 22 percent, and Green 8 percent, the Conservative would win the constituency seat despite the fact that the more centre and left leaning parties received 61 percent of the vote.
So why not merge? After all politics is about gaining the reins of power. There is nothing better for the Conservatives than for the NDP and the Liberals to stay stuck believing that they can win an election on their own.
The problem, of course, is that power is so compelling it makes the obvious solution to a problem seem impossible. The NDP have waited a long time to be the Official Opposition. Of course they could try to take the lead and compel the Liberals to let Thomas Mulcair be the leader but that pesky desire for power keeps getting in the way and the Liberals may not be able to bring their members along to the more left leaning party with the more left leaning leader.
My last statement assumes that the Liberals do have a core of voters that are willing to move where the party moves. In 2009, a group of researchers looked at the "Autonomy of a Liberal Defeat" and concluded that the traditional Liberal core support was in decline. Among the reasons for this was the problem of leadership. Without doubt the very protracted process of trying to find a leader for the Liberal Party has hurt their fortunes. I am somewhat skeptical about the rise of Justin Trudeau. If he does win the leadership it would be hard to imagine him running any party other than the Liberal Party. One wonders if a merger would be at all possible. Thus his task would be to revitalize the Liberal core. It is argued that he could draw in the youth vote but unless he can bring in youth who have never voted before he is likely to be drawing from the same group of voters who vote Green and NDP. And, as I just said, shifting around the votes among the left of centre parties will simply mean more vote splitting. I am sure that the Conservatives are hoping that this is exactly the way things turn out.
