John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about the recent elections held in Canada. Canada as a nation has a lot in common with Australia. We are both Commonwealth countries, we are both physically large countries with relatively small populations and we are both nations comprised primarily of immigrants. However, one area where we have differed over the last decade is that Australia has been governed by a centre-right government whereas Canada has been governed by the centre-left Liberal Party.

The twenty-third of January 2006 saw Canadians elect a minority Conservative government for the first time in 13 years. This is especially remarkable when you consider that, in the 1993 elections, the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to two seats in a 295-seat legislature. One thing to note immediately here is the volatility displayed by the Canadian electorate. I believe this massive swing highlights one of the differences between the Australian and Canadian electorates. I do not believe Australia would ever dump a government quite so harshly, and likewise neither would a party recover so quickly from such a rejection. Electorate volatility is nevertheless still an issue for Australia and is certainly one of the lessons to be learned from Canada.

The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and new Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is an economist who has spent most of his life in politics. At 47, he will be one of the youngest Prime Ministers Canada has ever had. I would like to make some comments tonight about his political career and make a few observations about Canadian politics in general.

Stephen Harper was born in 1959 in Toronto. He moved to Alberta in Western Canada, and he received his BA in Economics from the University of Calgary in 1985. He then received his MA in 1991. Elected as the Member for Calgary West in 1993, Mr Harper has been involved with centre-right parties for his entire political career. He started his career as an MP with the Reform Party of Canada but left the party in 1997, when he declined to stand for re-election.

In 2002 he was elected as the Member for Calgary Southwest, as the leader of the Canadian Alliance Party. He oversaw the merger of the Canadian Alliance Party with the Progressive Conservatives in 2003 to form the Conservative Party of Canada. This merger ameliorated the vote-splitting effects of having two major centre-right parties. In the 2004 general election the Conservatives increased their percentage of the vote by nearly 10 per cent.

The year 2005 saw the Martin Liberal government finally undone by the Adscam corruption scandal. The Canadian federal government ran a ‘sponsorship program’ from 1996 to 2004 in the province of Quebec, ostensibly to promote Canadian patriotism to counter Quebecois separatism. Advertising companies that secured government contracts paid kickbacks to the Liberal Party in Canada. This disgrace that came to light in early 2004. The scandal, however, was not enough to convince voters to dump the Liberals in the 2004 general elections. In fact, the Liberals ran an effective scare campaign against the Conservatives’ so-called hidden agenda, insisting that Mr Harper would transform Canada into ‘North Texas’.

The 2004 election saw the Conservatives make some gains and cost the Liberals majority government. They were able to form minority government but continued to be dogged by the sponsorship scandal and internal unity issues. On 28 November 2005, the House of Commons passed a vote of no confidence in the Liberal government of Paul Martin. All three opposition parties—the Conservatives, the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party—voted for the motion.

Before I speak about the 2006 election, let me speak for a moment about Canada’s main political parties. The Conservatives and the Liberals make up the traditional centre-right/centre-left pairing common to most liberal democracies. The New Democratic Party, or NDP, holds a third-party role equivalent to somewhere between the Australian Democrats and the Australian Greens. They are certainly to the left of the Liberals, differing mainly on fiscal policy. The Bloc Quebecois’s main platform is the secession of Quebec from Canada. They are essentially a one-platform party, but formed Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the years after 1993 when the Conservatives held only a handful of seats. Generally centre-left on social and fiscal policy, they consistently gain just shy of 50 per cent of the vote in the province of Quebec.

As I mentioned earlier, the 2006 general election saw the Conservatives win minority government. Specifically, the Conservatives won 124 seats, with 36.3 per cent of the vote; the Liberals, 103 seats; the Bloc, 51; and the NDP, 29; with one independent rounding out the tally. This result, whilst giving the Conservatives government, puts Mr Harper in a tricky position. He has no natural allies in parliament, so any legislation that passes will have to be amended to meet with the approval of at least one of the opposition parties. Mr Harper has announced to parliament his intentions for the new government, which include combating the aforementioned government corruption, tax cuts, toughening up the criminal justice system and working more closely with the provinces.

What is perhaps most interesting for Australians about this election are the comparisons between Mr Harper and our own Prime Minister. Followers of Canadian politics are calling for Mr Harper to emulate John Howard—not Ronald Reagan, not Margaret Thatcher, not George W Bush and not David Cameron but John Howard. Howardism, they say, combines self-confidence and awareness with a keen understanding of the politically possible. It will be interesting to see how Mr Harper and the Conservatives do in government and how they tackle the many challenges ahead. I wish them well and look forward to following Canada’s progress.