SPRING 2024 // Canadian Government Executive / 15 CGE LEADERSHIP SERIES MICHAEL WERNICK: I’ll start with a couple of things and then we can come back to this. We are used to watching the Americans fuss about 6 or 7 swing states in the Electoral College, but we’re not that different. About 200,000 votes one way or the other would have changed the outcome of the last two elections. In most elections the parties are playing for a very small margin of voters in a very limited set of constituencies. Big majorities are the outliers. In honour of Brian Mulroney, I’d go back to the 1988 election. He called the election for a mandate for free trade. He led in the polls when he called the elections, then they swung towards the Turner Liberals mid-campaign. Then they swung back. You can imagine the convulsions this must have the caused for people in trade and economic policy. So, to go back to your question, it’s totally normal and legitimate that governments go back and forth from red to blue and then repeal or change direction. We saw the Martin government build a childcare program that the Harper government reversed and so on. Those are legitimate decisions for voters to make and they will decide which platform they prefer. The fundamental point is that everybody accepts the rules of the game, which is 343 constituency races. What counts is obtaining a majority in the House of Commons. And that brings in issues about coalitions and partnerships. It’s not the party that gets the most votes. It wasn’t in 2021. LORI TURNBULL: It wasn’t in 2019 either. MICHAEL WERNICK: It’s the party that wins the most seats. Now, so far in every previous election, all the parties have accepted these key principles. It is first past the post. It is confidence of the House of Commons that decides who wins and people have accepted outcomes where the party that got the most votes overall didn’t get the most seats. The more interesting outcomes are the 1985 Frank Miller election in Ontario and the British Columbia election in 2017. The party that won the most seats couldn’t form a government because there was a workable coalition of other parties. This is commonplace in Europe, as you know, but we haven’t really stressed tested it in Canada. The acceptance of coalition governments, the dynamic that’s going on today in the Netherlands and in Pakistan is about the legitimacy of combinations of parties to form a government. We’ve never really had that debate in Canada. Some of your readers will remember the dissolution dispute of 2008, the political accord between the Liberals and other opposition parties to bring down the Harper government, which led to a fight about dissolution of Parliament. But the underlying issue was its legitimacy in the eyes of Canadian voters. For the stability of the country, it would be good if one of the teams wins a clear majority and forms of functional government. But there are scenarios that are not completely impossible. LORI TURNBULL: We don’t know that there’s going to be a clear result for anybody, and we could be in a circumstance where the Conservatives come first, but they don’t get a majority of seats. MICHAEL WERNICK: I think for Mr. Poilievre this big lead in the polls cuts both ways. He will be asked by journalists during the campaign if he accepts the basic rules of the game, that whoever commands a majority in the House of Commons is the winner, even if it’s the party that didn’t win the most seats. If he starts to question that during the campaign, then we’re in a whole different space, right? And the other problem is he is now and more and more seen as the government in waiting and has to go through almost 15 months as the government in waiting. He’s going to be held to a much higher standard of explaining his policies and his programs. And what is he going to do? It’s easier to surge from behind with some slogans and generalities than to be the frontrunner. I think he will have the problem of Canadians starting to see him as a government in waiting. He’s going to have to manage that as well, just as the incumbent government does. LORI TURNBULL: I agree. He won’t have the same ability to bob and weave around journalists questions then as he does now, and it will take a whole different tone. MICHAEL WERNICK: But I would point out, Doug Ford won his first election with a fairly detailed policy program. And he won his second election with almost none. I think the need for detailed policy programs has diminished over time. But Canadians can engage the parties over the next year in terms of, “OK, what are you going to do if we give you the rings of power?” I would say there’s a couple of strengths
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