Rosemary Barton, a journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, recently boasted on Twitter about Canada being a boring country in response to President Trump's recent press conference during last week's UN General Assembly.
But in the space of the past week, Canada has witnessed two provincial elections which demonstrate otherwise. Significantly both elections took place in provinces with significant Francophone populations - New Brunswick and Quebec.
Actually, things have been interesting in New Brunswick for most of this decade. In most provinces, a party rules for two or more terms before the electorate gets tired. But last week's vote could prove to be the fourth straight election in which there has been a change in government. In the 2006 provincial election, the Liberals led by Shawn Graham ousted the two term incumbent Tory government led by Bernard Lord. In the 2010 election, Graham's Liberals were ousted by the Tories who were led by David Alward. In the 2014 election, Alward's Tories were tossed in favor of the Liberals who were led by Brian Gallant. There's a good chance that Gallant will face the same fate as Graham and Alward as the Tories now led by Blaine Higgs won the most the seats in the New Brunswick legislature, but not enough for a majority.
Holding the balance of power are two smaller parties - the Greens led by David Coon and the right-wing populist People's Alliance led by Kris Austin. Both the Greens and the Populist Alliance each won three seats in the New Brunswick legislature. Both the Liberals and Tories are courting the Greens who may enjoy the kind of influence they currently have across the country in British Columbia. In the 2017 election while the NDP won fewer seats than the incumbent Liberals the NDP was able to end 16 years of Liberal rule with the help of the Greens who agreed to support the NDP for the duration of their four year term although they do not hold any cabinet posts as coalition governments in Canada are rare.
The wild card here is the People's Alliance. The Liberals have explicitly ruled out any agreement with the People's Alliance because of their stance against bilingualism. The People's Alliance has pledged its support to the Tories but Higgs is keeping his distance from them for now and see if he can make a deal with the Greens. In any case, I think the Tories have the upper hand at the moment and will likely prevail. But even if they do they will have to govern an electorate every bit as volatile as one can find in this country.
Then came last night in Quebec. A new political party, Coalition Avenir Quebec won a majority government ousting the Liberals who endured their worst election results in the province in more than 150 years. Coalition Avenir Quebec becomes the first conservative party to govern Quebec since the Union Nationale was ousted from power in 1970. They are led by a multi-millionaire named Francois Legault. Could he be Quebec's Donald Trump? Not quite. Legault was actually a former Parti Quebecois cabinet minister in the late 1990's and early 2000's. His old party which nearly a quarter century ago realized its dream of an independent Quebec was reduced to 9 seats and supplanted by the far left Quebec Solidaire.
While the CAQ is nationalist, they vow to never hold another Quebec referendum. Unlike the Union Nationale who under the iron fist of Maurice Duplessis emphasized its ties with the Catholic Church, the CAQ emphasizes secularism and opposes Muslims who wear the hijab and favors limiting immigration. Last night's election was Quebec's most significant since Rene Levesque and the PQ came to power in 1976. The common denominator in both elections is that there was a man named Trudeau living at 24 Sussex Drive.
Canadian politics are anything but boring.
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