John Rapley
UNLIKE THEIR American neighbours, Canadians are unaccustomed to revolving-door elections. Frugal at heart, they consider an excess of politics to be wasteful, and prefer if their political leaders go about their business and return for their consent only occasionally.
So the spectacle of Canadians returning to the polls for the second time in 18 months is one that leaves most of them dismayed. There is a strong malaise in the country's politics just now. The opposition parties wish to exploit it. Yet it is unclear if any of them stand to gain much from the tactic of forcing an election.
THE LIBERALS AND SCANDAL
When he snatched the leadership of the Liberal Party from his Prime minister, Jean Chretien, two years ago, Paul Martin seemed to be on an easy cruise to power. The governing Liberals were riding high in the polls, the economy was purring, and elections were due. All indications were that Mr. Martin would lead his troops to yet another majority government, extending the Liberals' long hold on power.
Then, suddenly, a scandal broke which implicated the governing Liberals in an elaborate kickback scheme. It arose from a federal programme designed to weaken separatist sentiment in the majority-French province of Quebec, but which ended up as an old-fashioned scheme to buy support and siphon government money into party coffers.
Mr. Martin, having just become Prime Minister, rushed into damage-control mode. Denying he knew anything about the scandal, he appointed a commission to investigate it. He then called elections, hoping to secure victory before the scandal had enough time to weaken his popularity.
To some degree, the tactic backfired. While the opposition failed to unseat the Liberals, the Government was returned with only a minority of seats in Parliament. This forced it to move leftwards to win the support of the New Democratic Party. And Mr. Martin promised that as soon as the commission issued its final report, he would let the country determine his fate in fresh elections.
At the start of this month, the commission released an interim report that more or less cleared Mr. Martin of wrongdoing in the corruption scandal. Instead, it placed blame largely on his predecessor, Mr. Chretien. Needless to say, Mr. Chretien has expressed outrage and sworn to clear his name.
The report's findings did not take the heat off Mr. Martin, though. Many Canadians see it as a dubious effort to shift blame from Mr. Martin to someone who - having left politics - is in a weak position to defend himself. And a good many voters still doubt that Mr. Martin knew nothing about the scandal, being that he was minister of finance at the time.
Support for the Liberals dropped. Polls suggested the opposition Conservatives could, by forcing an election, possibly win enough seats to form a minority government. And in Quebec, 'ground zero' of the scandal, the popularity of the separatists surged.
Smelling blood, the opposition wants to force an election. However, a Christmas campaign would be very unpopular. So the opposition has proposed a vote in Parliament that will ask the Government to resign and call an election in early January.
CANADIANS TORN
Now, the governing Liberals have raised the stakes. Since such a vote would be legally non-binding, they are saying that only a vote of non-confidence could bring them down. And such a vote, if tabled in the next couple of weeks, would force an election campaign over the holidays. In the meantime, the Government has rushed to introduce some popular tax-cuts as an opening salvo in the campaign.
Canadians remain largely torn. Few of them want an election right now. Few of them want the Liberals to remain in office. But few of them want the Conservatives - who remain too right-wing for most of their tastes - to come to power either. Only in Quebec, where the separatists stand to make further gains, is there much optimism about an election campaign.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the separatist Bloc Quebecois is standing above the fray, and allowing the Conservatives and New Democrats to fight it out with the Liberals over an election date. Whatever happens, they may be the only clear winners from what is - to most Canadians - an unpleasant political season.
John Rapley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
