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The Canadian Federal Election of 2008

The Canadian Federal Election of 2008

Edited by
Jon H. Pammett
& Christopher Dornan

Copyright Jon H. Pammett and Christopher Dornan, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Copy Editor: Jennifer Gallant
Designer: Courtney Horner
Printer: Marquis

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

The Canadian federal election of 2008 / edited by Jon H. Pammett and Christopher Dornan.

ISBN 978-1-55488-407-0

1. Canada. Parliament--Elections, 2008. 2. Canada--Politics and government--2006-. 3. Elections--Canada--History--21st century. 4. Voting--Canada. I. Pammett, Jon H., 1944- II. Dornan, Christopher

JL193.C358 2009 324.971073 C2009-900297-3

1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
The Outcome in Retrospect

by Christopher Dornan

CHAPTER ONE
Stephen Harper and the Conservatives Campaign on Their Record

by Faron Ellis and Peter Woolstencroft

CHAPTER TWO
Missed Opportunity: The Invisible Liberals

by Brooke Jeffrey

CHAPTER THREE
Modernization, Incremental Progress, and the Challenge of Relevance: The NDPS 2008 Campaign

by Lynda Erickson and David Laycock

CHAPTER FOUR
The Bloc Qubcois: Victory by Default

by ric Blanger and Richard Nadeau

CHAPTER FIVE
The Promise of May: The Green Party of Canadas Campaign 2008

by Susan Harada

CHAPTER SIX
Election Campaigns under Canadas Party Finance Laws

by Tom Flanagan and Harold J. Jansen

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Campaign in the Media 2008

by Christopher Waddell

CHAPTER EIGHT
None of the Above: Voters in the 2008 Federal Election

by Harold D. Clarke, Allan Kornberg, and Thomas J. Scotto

CHAPTER NINE
The 2008 Election: Long-Term and Short-Term Assessments

by Lawrence LeDuc and Jon H. Pammett

Appendix A:
Results of the 40th Federal Election by Percentage of Votes and Number of Seats Each Party Received

Appendix B:
Percentage of Votes Received by Constituency

INTRODUCTION

The Outcome in Retrospect

Christopher Dornan

T he 2008 Canadian election will be remembered not for its outcome but for its aftermath. It was an election that no one won. Every party fell short of what it had hoped for. The Conservatives failed to win a majority. The NDP failed to make the breakthrough it thought was within its grasp. The Greens failed to win a single seat. The Bloc failed to hold the fortress of Quebec, and indeed lost three seats. And the Liberals just failed in almost every respect.

And yet every party, even the Liberals, could count some measure of victory. The Conservatives retained power with more seats. The Greens were included in the leaders debates and raised their national profile. The NDP won seats across the country. In Quebec, the Bloc remained the predominant party. And the Liberals held on to enough seats to deny the Conservatives their majority. Or perhaps we should say that the Conservatives denied themselves their majority. Quebec alone could not prevent the Conservatives from winning a sufficient number of seats to form a plurality, but Quebec alone could deny the necessary number of seats to form a majority.

The aftermath of the 2008 election was such a piece of political theatre that the election itself almost immediately receded in memory and significance. If an election is a contest over how a country will be governed and by whom, the aftermath of the 2008 election was an even more riveting contest with, ultimately, only one voter: the governor general. In the run-up to Election Day in the United States, the movie Swing Vote was released, starring Kevin Costner as an ordinary Joe on whose single vote the outcome of the presidential election would turn. A fanciful, Capra-esque conceit in the United States a feel-good plea to the population that every vote counts in Canada this became a regal reality in which only one vote counted, the government of the day being determined over tea at Rideau Hall. How did this happen?

Thoroughly scorched in the election, Stphane Dion had chosen not to resign immediately and announced that he would stay at the helm of the smoking hulk that was the Liberal ship until May 2009, so as to buy time for the party to go into dry dock. A more chivalrous opponent might have let the Liberals limp away, secure that they were no longer a threat, and gone on to govern. Had that happened, the Liberals could have been counted on to chew up time, money, and themselves in the selection of a new leader. But party politics can be total war, and the Conservatives think of the Liberal Party the way the Royal Navy thought of the Bismarck: Do not let it repair itself; sink it when given the chance.

So, on November 27, six weeks after the vote and in a moment of sharp public anxiety over the prospect of global economic collapse, the newly installed minority Conservative government issued an economic update in the House not a budget, but an indication of a budget. Far from signalling willingness to compromise with the other parties or to work together with them, it was an avowedly partisan declaration of renewed war.

The update contained no economic stimulus spending to match what was being called for by the opposition parties and was already being considered in capitals around the world. Instead, the party line insisted that the sound management of the Canadian economy by the Conservative government made such emergency measures unnecessary. As a nation, we would project calm while others panicked.

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