In March, the Liberals and Conservatives gathered for what ended up being inconsequential policy conventions. In the first week of April, the country was reeling from the incendiary testimony of former Groupaction advertising executive Jean Brault at the Gomery commission into the sponsorship scandal, with its allegations of kickbacks, fraud, and a chain of command leading from the Prime Minister’s Office to Montreal-based advertising agencies. Suddenly, everyone was talking election—according to certain political quarters, one that the country needed, but that most of its citizens, having just been through the exercise, did not want.
On cue and for media consumption, the leaderships and delegates emerged from both conventions declaring great success and expecting a bounce in the polls. Party conventions, now held irregularly and for political rather than policy purposes, are supposed to allow members to debate future agendas. Regrettably, in both instances, potentially raucous and engaging deliberations were pre-empted. The Liberals avoided divisions by announcing before the convention that Canada would not participate in the United States Missile Defense System. With that issue safely out of the way and party unity assured, the Liberals drove home their message with Orwellian chants of “Promise Made, Promise Kept.” Outside the convention hall, few were buying.
The one clan with a clear agenda, the Bloc Québécois, did not have to gather to discuss its smug position as a separatist party holding the balance of power in the federal parliament. In the wake of the Gomery inquiry testimony, it threatened, prodded, and hit all its newly indignant buttons. So did the Conservatives and the New Democratic Party, both playing to their constituencies, both hoping for a bounce in the polls. Early on, they got their wishes: the Conservatives by launching a vitriolic attack against Liberal corruption, the ndp by saying essentially nothing. And maybe this is just the point. In this political climate, attacking is safe, while saying or doing something unequivocal and substantial is highly risky. Follow the trail . . . .
The big news coming out of the conventions concerned policies not adopted, illustrating a victory of political pragmatism over principled public policy. The faint and brief discussions of issues that will actually shape the country’s future—e.g., continentalism, the offshore oil deals with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, charges of fiscal imbalance between Ottawa and the provinces—were quickly overshadowed by Jean Brault’s testimony before Judge Gomery. The lack of clear policy direction from the conventions, followed almost immediately by “adscam”—with headlines screaming “smoking gun” and articles evoking images of envelopes stuffed with cash for big-cufflinked admen who made financial contributions to the Liberal Party of Canada—added to the prevailing view that politicians are inept, corrupt, and that the system is “fixed.”
Brault’s allegations were followed, predictably, by a torrent of media polls suggesting voter outrage and showing a steep decline in Liberal fortunes. With government malfeasance, voter cynicism, and polling results neatly aligned, the nuance of subsequent testimony before Judge Gomery was lost to rampant media speculation over the timing of an election. Once again, the pollsters hijacked the news and seemed to direct the actions of our elected political leaders, while the substance of the matter, and solutions that needed to be discussed, were relegated to the back pages.
Since the shockingly low voter turnout in the June 2004 federal election—at 60 percent, the lowest in Canada’s history and a drop of 15 percent since the November 1988 election—many have lamented the decline in civic engagement with the political process. Indeed, even in the charged atmosphere of this past March and April, one constant emerged from the polls: Canadians did not want an election. The fact that a mere eight months had passed since the last call to vote doesn’t fully explain the apparent apathy. In 1980, nearly 70 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the election that ousted Joe Clark’s minority government after only nine months in office.
Recalling this and considering the events of this spring has left me with a sinking feeling. What if the many laments bemoaning civic disengagement—my own included—have completely missed the point? What if this trend comes not from a disaffected and cynical electorate, but is instead a rational response to a political process that has run out of ideas? Could it be that most Canadians have been persuaded that politics isn’t worth the bother because they see no integrity, and precious few inspirational initiatives, emanating from the political process?
In the view of many Canadians, political parties—the “grand aggregators” according to the parliamentary theorist Walter Bagehot, and the “crucibles of consensus” as the former Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield so eloquently described them—seem to have devolved from dynamic entities spawning innovations like medicare, deux nations, and the Just Society, into politically paralyzed stewards of the status quo. Polling, my chosen profession, now strikes me as a primary cause of the decline. Hence, the sinking feeling.
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