rabble.ca Canadian federal election blog

Learning from the lowest turnout ever

by Blair Redlin

Turns out low voter turnout helps tell the tale of the 2008 federal. At 59%, the turnout yesterday was the lowest yet.

For all the arcane and complicated discussion about strategic voting, the record low turnout may explain more. Certainly the turnout offers important lessons for next time.

With megabucks in their party coffers and a focused message, the Conservatives were able to hold and grow their base in many parts of the country, particularly suburban and rural Ontario and B.C.

Meanwhile, Liberal support collapsed everywhere after an inept and confused effort by Dion and his campaign planners. Internal power struggles may explain why it seemed at the start of the campaign as if the election had come as a big surprise to Liberal headquarters. After supporting the Conservatives 43 times in votes of the last parliament, Dion lacked credibility from the get go in rallying anti-Conservative support. It remains a mystery why so many on the left still label the Liberals “progressive” despite strong Liberal support for the war in Afghanistan, big corporate tax cuts and the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

Social movements need to reflect seriously about the low turnout. Few issues fired the public imagination or encouraged voters to get to the polls. Critical issues like the war, global warming, homelessness and trade agreements need to somehow be recast so potential electors and politicians feel motivated and pay closer attention. Greater unity and cooperation among civil society organizations and less byzantine “insider baseball” about so-called “vote splitting” will help.

The campaign to protect arts funding was probably the most successful social movement effort of the campaign. Creativity and an ability to generate attention from the mainstream media were key to making culture a vote determining issue, particularly in Quebec.

Those of us in the rest of the country can be grateful for the strong showing in Quebec by the Bloc, which was key to preventing a Conservative majority.

After an energetic and focused campaign N.D.P. support grew, particularly in northern Ontario. Especially encouraging was the N.D.P. victory of environmental lawyer Linda Duncan in Edmonton Strathcona. Duncan will be a strong voice against tar sands expansion from Alberta’s capital city.

The Obama Democrats in the U.S. have made it a big priority this year to try to boost voter registration and turnout. After the hard lessons of the last many years, they understand how important it is to motivate supporters. We need to make turnout a similar priority here. If turnout keeps slipping in Canada, particularly amongst younger voters, only the Conservatives will benefit. As a start, the new stringent voter identification rules need to be eased. Dru Oja Jay of The Dominion is right on in describing how the requirements for picture i.d. disenfranchised many people yesterday.

A Billion is a Thousand Million

by Blair Redlin

Is it just me, or are the size of these dollar figures starting to make your head spin? $700 billion to a trillion dollars for the U.S. banks. $50 billion in corporate tax cuts here at home. A billion here, a billion there.

Ever wondered what a billion is? It’s a lot really. A billion is a thousand million. Like - nine zeros in a billion. 12 zeros in a trillion.

But in the alternate political universe we’ve entered into, all those zeros are reasonable so long as the dollars are headed to corporate coffers.

Here’s a good one. At $1.5 trillion, the revenue of the top five U.S. oil companies last year was larger than the entire G.D.P. of Canada.

Of course, that’s peanuts compared to the $3 trillion cost of the Iraq war calculated by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes.

All those bucks for corporations and war have been getting me to thinking about the grinding poverty of the billions who live in the global south. Didn’t Canada join other developed countries decades ago in making a promise to spend 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid? Wasn’t that reiterated at the U.N. Millenium Summit? How’s that going anyways?

The 2008 federal Conservative Budget promised to double current spending on foreign aid to $5 billion a year by 2010-11. Even if the government reaches that target, Canada will still be spending only 0.3% of our gross national income on foreign aid. In other words, not even halfway towards the 0.7% promise that’s been out there for decades.

There’s a good election issue. A $13 billion surplus from last year’s budget. A $2.9 billion surplus in the first four months of this year. $50 billion in tax cuts. Still only 0.3% of national income for foreign aid and development.

Sure is a lot of zeros.

Big Stakes

by Blair Redlin

The 2008 federal election began with a flurry of frames, themes and spin. Party leaders rolled out communications messaging which has been focus group tested in advance. Mainstream media dutifully repeated the themes.

They said the election is about “strong leadership,” “change,” “ideological agendas” and “the choice between uncertainty and risk.” Judging from Tory TV ads, the election may even be about who cares most for their family!

A top question on the minds of many voters was spun by Stephen Harper when, despite the polls, he predicted the next parliament will “in all likelihood be a minority.” Harper also made a point to explain that each elector gets only one vote and “voters can’t vote for a majority or a minority.”

Conservatives want to downplay speculation about a Harper majority so as not to spook those that find that alarming. But of course we should be alarmed.

Messaging and slogans aside, what would a Harper majority mean for a range of crucial issues and policies? Policies of importance to local communities, social movements and the planet.

Issues like:

• the eco-disaster of out-of-control tar sands expansion. While tar sands projects began and expanded under the federal Liberals, the Harper government strongly supports the Security and Prosperity Partnership goal of a further five-fold increase of tar sands production. The Alberta tar sands are already Canada’s fastest growing and single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, so what would a five-fold expansion contribute to the crisis of melting permafrost and Arctic sea ice? Five times more tar sands production will devastate the Cree first nations in and near Fort Chipewyan who are already dying in alarming numbers from unusual cancers and auto-immune disorders likely caused by poisoned drinking water. To their credit, the New Democrats highlighted the tar sands problem in their first campaign TV ads. Jack Layton will also focus on the tar sands on day two of the campaign;

• Canada’s military adventure in the quagmire of Afghanistan. A recent Environics poll found 56% of Canadians oppose Canada’s participation in that war. Nonetheless, the Liberals and Conservatives joined together in the last parliament to extend Canada’s participation until 2011. If Harper gets a majority, he will be prime minister until at least 2012. What new fronts of the U.S. “war on terror” will Harper get us into if he has a blank political cheque for the next four or five years?;

• the fate of U.S. resisters to the illegal war on Iraq. Despite a majority vote in the last parliament calling on the government to give refuge to war resisters, the Harper government has been mean and aggressive in starting to return war resisters to jails in the U.S. The War Resisters Campaign enjoys the support of two-thirds of Canadians, but will have to struggle hard if Harper gets the green light of majority government;

• harm reduction policies for drug addiction. Health Minister Tony Clement’s widely condemned attack on doctors and Vancouver’s supervised injection site Insite at the recent Canadian Medical Association convention, following his embarassing performance at the XVII International AIDS conference in Mexico City mean common sense harm reduction policies will be a thing of the past if Harper gets the majority he’s close to.

The list of crucial issues like those is long. Growing homelessness and increasing poverty; the potential renegotiation of NAFTA; failed promises on foreign aid; the collapse of manufacturing; privatization of public infrastructure; and the entrenchment of investor rights in internal trade agreements are just a few of the issues which need to be front and centre over the next month. But the only way those issues will make it through the media fog machine will be if social movements and citizens insist that matters of importance be heard.

This election is about way more than framing, scandal or spin. It’s about whether Canada’s about to get harsher, meaner and more militaristic.

This is the big time. This one has big stakes.