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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Canadian Elections: Class and National Conflicts - Article﻿</title>﻿
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﻿<b﻿>﻿Canadian Elections: 
﻿<br﻿>﻿Class and National Conflicts

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by David McNally﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, July - August 1997﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
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The re-election of the federal Liberal Party on June 3rd was no ringing endorsement of its record. 
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With most regions of Canada voting against it, the Liberals limped home with the barest of majorities and now face the prospect of trying to govern an increasingly fractured political scene. 
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Yet, the left cannot take much consolation from the results either. Despite persistent high-level unemployment and major attacks on social programs, most anti-Liberal votes did not go to the NDP, the traditional party of unions and social movements. Unlike the elections in France, therefore, the left did not attract the protest vote against the governing party. As a result, the political scene remains dominated by right-wing parties.
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So, while the election marked a swing away from the Liberals, it did not mark a swing to the left. How is this to be explained?
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More than anything else, it was the resurgence of hostility to Québec that blocked the sort of class questions that dominated the elections in France from moving to the fore. While the French campaign revolved around issues like job creation, defense of social services, raising the minimum wage and reducing the work week, the Québec question took over once Preston Manning and the Reform Party decided to revive a faltering campaign by pushing the anti-Québec button.
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With his party stalled in the polls, Manning gambled that he could whip up sentiment against his main rivals by depicting them as Québec politicians who couldn't be trusted to defend the interests of voters in the rest of Canada. Reform launched television ads attacking Liberal leader Jean Chrétien, Bloc Québecois head Gilles Duceppe, and Tory chief Jean Charest as Québec politicians who pander to that province. At the same time, Manning revived his party"s attack on recognizing Québec as a "distinct society" within Canada.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
With Québec and the constitutional question dominating the headlines, social and economic issues like jobs and healthcare simply disappeared. The partial exception to this was in Atlantic Canada where protests against cuts to unemployment insurance helped fuel campaigns to elect a number of NDP Members of Parliament. 
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But in western Canada, the anti-Québec vote swept Reform into official opposition. In Québec most voters rallied behind the Bloc Québecois as the only party that appears determined to defend Québec"s national rights. And in Ontario, most voters stayed in the Liberal fold as a way of preserving the status quo on constitutional issues (i.e. no new rights for Québec, but also no major attacks that might lead to a new upsurge of Québec separatism).
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Once again, then, the inability of Canada's rulers to resolve the issue of Québec's oppression (and the nationalist response of most francophones in Québec to that oppression) worked to create a logjam in which issues like jobs and social services could not break through. The result was a fracturing of the political scene around constitutional issues
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None of this bodes well for the capacity of the labour and social movements to fight the Liberal government in the coming period. Rather than being united around a social and economic agenda, working class people in English-speaking Canada and Québec are seriously divided around national issues.
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And anyone who imagines that an NDP "breakthrough" in the elections is cause for hope is kidding themselves. While the NDP"s rise to 11 per cent of the popular vote is an improvement over the disastrous seven per cent recorded in 1993, it still represents a terrible decline from the 20 per cent achieved in 1988. Moreover, the NDP did not trail the Reform Party only in western Canada; it did so in much of working class Ontario too.
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No, if the left is to generate momentum in the aftermath of the elections, it will not be by counting on the NDP. Instead, it will be by building grassroots struggles like the protests against UI cuts in Atlantic Canada and the days of action against the Harris government in Ontario. And it will be by reaching out to and involving our sisters and brothers in Québec in the process. Only that solidarity and mass action offers hope for revitalizing the left and progressive movements in the aftermath of June 3rd. 
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