On the 28th of June, if we are to follow the turnout of 2000, 54% of Canadians citizens aged 18 and up, will cast a ballot. Let's hope the more intelligent half is the one that is voting.
Many things have changed since the last time we were sent to the polls. First off the Prime Minister walking towards Rideau Hall was named Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien and he was preparing to win a third straight majority and a place in the history books. His Biggest challenge was a reformed Reform Party, the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance, headed by Stockwell 'Doris' Day. Stockwell Day proved an easy target for the Chrétien Liberals as his very social-conservative views and extreme neo-liberalism scared many Canadians, especially in Ontario-East. While many in Eastern Canada would have liked to rid themselves of the Liberals the prospect of Stockwell as Prime Minister stoped them in their tracks.
It obviously didn't help that the New Democratic Party of Alexa McDonough was facing an identity crisis with factions wondering if the NDP should be a blairite Third Way Centrist party or to return to its Labour roots. The NDP of 2000 could only talk of one thing, Health Care, to such a point that Canadians wondered if they had any other ideas.
The Progressive Conservatives had no base except Atlantic Canada, whose Conservatism was dictionary-defined rather than the radical right of the Canadian Alliance. The Harris Ontario PCs were so unpopular in Quebec, that the name plagued the Joe Clark's PC Party and the reform policies plagued the Alliance.
In Quebec, sovereignist support for the Bloc Québécois was on the way down from the 1995 referendum, and their decline continued from the losses in 1997. A decline that continued until recently. Up until the sponsorship scandal, some were wondering if the Bloc would survive the next election.
But things changed.
Stephen Harper is now leader of a united Right party that attempts to unite radical rightist and conservative rightists. Not to mention alienate the conservative centre-rightists. I'm not one to really understand the merger as my view of politics was that there were two reform parties and two conservative parties. The Reform parties were the Alliance, taking the right-wing, and the NDP taking the left-wing, while the conservatives were the PCs and the Liberals. So to me, the parties that made more sense merging were the Grits and Tories.
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