Blame it On Trudeau

With the two main parties locked in a statistical tie, the Liberals try to overcome a dead man and the Conservatives try to convince someone, anyone to come to their party.

If the Liberals are going to win the next election, they’re going to have to overcome one man, writes Bob Plamondon in the Ottawa Citizen. The man so threatening to Liberal chances? Pierre Trudeau. Plamondon argues that the party has never recovered from the damage Trudeau’s National Energy Program did to their popularity in the Prairies, or the effect the Constitution had on their fortunes in Québec. “In the post-Trudeau era, Liberals have won four of the last eight elections, including three majorities, but over that time have taken little more than 20 per cent of the votes in Western Canada,” he writes. And although “a Quebecer has led the Liberal party into six of the last eight elections, they have won only 26 per cent of Quebec's seats.” Plamondon’s correct of course that Trudeau did his party no favours in those two regions, but to lay all the blame at his feet is overstating the case. It’s been 30 years since Trudeau left office, and surely Jean Chretien bears some responsibility for not crafting Prairie-friendly policies during his three terms, and in Québec the more recent sponsorship scandal is the primary source of current Liberal tsuris.

While the Liberals will have trouble making gains outside of Ontario and the Maritimes, the Conservatives will have trouble making gains outside of their own party. According to Sun Media’s David Akin, the Tories’ greatest success, building the strongest party brand in Canada, is also their greatest limitation. He writes that the Tory brand is “a double-edged sword” for the Conservatives “who, on the one hand, can count on a fiercely loyal army of supporters at election time but, on the other, have a steep challenge in finding enough new votes among the hostile ‘non-Conservatives’ in Canada to form a majority government.” Akin doesn’t go into it, but this is a problem Harper is acutely aware of, and he’s devised a strategy to tackle it. By focusing on wedge issues like the gun registry and crime he’s hoping he can pick off Liberal and NDP voters in key ridings and take a majority. So far, however, the most recent polls say no such luck.