Frankly Canadian

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Dissecting the Liberals decline

After that dismal loss I think for my own purposes I need to rationalize what happened to the political party that I liked and supported and thought actually had a chance. First of all the Liberals have been bleeding supporters since the days of Trudeau mania and before. The first segment of the Canadian voter to leave was the western vote, and of course the "National Energy Program" introduced in 1980 didn't help. We then have the departure of the Unions to the NDP and big business to the Conservatives, this was all around about the same time period. In the 1980's it was the the French Canadian vote where in 1980 the Liberals held 74 seats in Quebec and in 1984 they only held 17seats there. all along their was a steady decline in the religious vote to the right wing Conservative, probably alot of that was through the acquisition of votes from the Social Credit party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Party. Now in this election the Liberals have seem to have lost the new Canadians or ethnic vote, largely impart to the steady hard work of the Conservatives to secure these votes. What I find interesting is that the Liberals haven't had much if any success in Alberta since the days of Wilfrid Laurier back in 1908. Another thing to note is that up until the 1980's Quebec had always had a Liberal majority, all the way through Canada's history. Anyways I think that it is extremely important to know exactly where you came from in order to get yourself out of what your in, and for the Liberals that is a fall from the greatest national party that seem to be the natural governing party throughout Canada's rich history.
1911 election results
1926 election results
1968 Trudeau mania election results
1980 election results
1984 election results
2004 election results
2011 election results

Election Disappointments

Well its been almost a week since the Tuesday night election results of 2011, and wow what a huge disappointment. The Liberal party has finished the worst they ever have in their parties history. The NDP surge that started in Quebec continued into many other parts of Canada as well. The Conservatives and Stephen Harper have just gotten their covented majority they have working so hard to achieve. I was surprised by those results because we still have sixty percent of Canadians who still don't like Stephen Harper, but yet he won and with a majority. The reason was largely due to the vote splitting between NDP and Liberals in many riding's especially in Ontario, where the Conservatives completely cleaned up. Vote splitting coupled with the large efforts Harper made to gain seats in that province, Harper didn't need any seats in the vote rich province of Quebec to obtain his majority.
Anyways the Liberals were reduced to 48 seats when John Diefenbaker won his majority with 208 seats in the 1958 election. The Liberals were also taken down to 40 seats in 1980 when Brian Mulrony won his majority with 211 seats. What I see it is that Harpers majority is much weaker then the other Conservative majorities. What is also a good thing to mention is that when the Liberals got back into power in 1993 the Conservatives were obliterated to a measly 2 seats, however the Reform party did have 52 seats.
I guess whats important to me is that Canada continues to be the world leader in peace, prosperity, and equality. I hope we here in Canada don't continue to see a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and that we don't see a rise in control that corporations have in governing and law making. I hope that health care will be there for everybody when and where they need it. I hope our military continues to act in a peace keeping roll. I hope Canada begins to take measures to combat climate change, and i hope we can reduce the impact the tar sands are having on our planet. I hope we protect our oceans and we prevent any off shore catastrophe's like the one that happened in the Gulf of Mexico with B.P. I would also like to see the Artic preserved as a world park and that no oil exploration by any country take place, however I don't see that one by Harper and his cronies.
In short I will always love my country whoever is in power, I just think the Liberal party had more in common with what is important to me than any other party including the NDP and especially the Conservatives. In the next few blogs I will try to dissect what actually happened to the Liberal Party of Canada.