Canadian Minority

It’s been over a week since Canada’s largely disappointing election concluded. The Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called an election because, presumably, he thought he could win enough seats in Parliament to become a majority P.M. rather than a minority P.M. Alas, he now has the dubious distinction of being only the second minority P.M. to be elected twice. Didn’t like him that much two years ago, don’t like him much better now. Nevertheless, he is more or less on top of a pretty flat hill with about 40% of the vote and about 40% of the seats in Parliament. The voter turnout was low, around 60%.

The Liberals got about half as many seats as the Conservatives, and the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP, and the Greens have the rest. What it means is that the Conservatives don’t have enough support to do what they want (be more like George W. Bush, unfortunately: apparently Conservatives up here haven’t heard that the rest of the world has thoroughly disabused themselves of the notion that George W. Bush has any mojo). This moderate passion for the Conservatives is puzzling because 77% of Canadians have developed a negative view of the U.S. since Bush was elected. It’s hard for me to understand exactly how it is that they don’t see the Bush in Harper, but I guess they don’t.

So nothing much will happen in Canadian politics for a few more years until another election is called. The Liberal leader has promised to quit in May, so that party can spend the next half year fighting about who is to replace Dion. Small potatoes, I suspect.

It’s a little difficult to understand how Canadian politics works because the parties are not all that clearly delineated to me in terms of philosophy. While poking around on the net trying to find somebody who would explain this more fully, I came upon an excellent site, Political Compass, that not only showed me where Canadian parties are philosophically, but showed me where I am. And you can take a little test (about 50 questions) to find out where you are, too.

The test involves about 50 questions which are not entirely easy to answer because, sometimes, they pose either/or questions when you might be more likely to answer both/and. But on the whole, they are interesting questions because they push you to clarify your philosophical orientation in order to answer them. You answer them on a 4-point scale (strong agree, agree, disagree, strong disagree). The object is to clarify your position on two distinct scales, one economic, the other social. Authoritarian-Libertarian tracks the social dimension, while Left/Right (with communism at the extreme left and neo-liberalism/libertarianism on the extreme right) tracks the economic dimension. So your answers place you somewhere within four boxes described by those two axes. I ended up close to Ghandi, which is nice, although I have been much less effective in my political life than he was, but on the other hand I am currently much more alive.

In addition, the site shows how various countries’ political parties and election candidates rank on this scale. They do this by determining how the parties’ or the candidates’ statements suggest they would answer the questions. When I looked at the Canadian parties’ scale, I was surprised to see that mostly they are in the upper right box: Authoritarian/Right. By contrast, the U.S. election primary campaign candidates were even more all in the upper right hand box, suggesting not so much contrast as I would have thought Well, there Ghandi and I are down in the Left/Libertarian, lower left box, with Canada’s NDP and Bloc Quebecois as well as Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich barely in there with us. No wonder I feel so isolated from the U.S. process so much of the time.

So, my advice is go to the site, take the test, look at your results and see whether you might feel more at home in New Zealand or the E.U. or are nicely in line with wherever you are.