After less than three years as Prime Minister, Stephen Harper can point to a laundry list of accomplishments.
Mr. Harper took a discredited, broken and bitterly divided Canadian Alliance Party, merged it with the Progressive Conservatives, won the subsequent leadership contest, fought the Liberals to a minority government, forged a new platform and displayed admirable discipline in opposition. He won a minority government of his own, changed the course of the nation on assistance to children, the military and taxes and, this month, earned re-election.
But Mr. Harper's long-term goal is to end the hegemony of the Liberals in the Canadian electoral system and replace it with a dominant Conservative Party. That requires him to overcome the fundamental reality of the party system, and the bedevilment of every Conservative leader since John A. Macdonald allowed the execution of Louis Riel. And that will require boldness that will make Mr. Harper's many accomplishments to date seem like a warm-up act.
How bold? In his presidential address to the Canadian Political Science Association earlier this year, Richard Johnston gave some idea.
The Liberals' dominance, Prof. Johnston argued, has resulted from their ability to dominate the centre. In most jurisdictions, two or more parties bracket the middle as they compete for independent voters. But in Canada, one major party commands the centre, forcing the opposition to be bilateral - "coming from both ends of an ideological or policy spectrum," as Prof. Johnston put it. The centre itself is lost to the opposition parties.
For as long as that's the case, the remaining option for the Conservatives if they wish to hold majority government is an "ends-against-the-middle" play, building a team out of opposites against the behemoth in the centre. A coalition with the NDP, their ideological mirror, is impossible because local activists would quickly discover they had nothing in common. But Conservatives can join opposites from different regions, emphasizing that which unites and nuancing that which divides.
The Conservative record shows the modest success of this strategy. From Bennett to Diefenbaker to Mulroney, Conservative majority governments have been built on shaky coalitions between right-of-centre English Canadians and Quebec nationalists.
However, as Prof.. Johnston noted, "the resulting incoherence accounts for the short life and commonly dire fate of Conservative majority governments. The fall of Conservative government is often the midwife of anti-system parties, with the Bloc and Reform as only the most recent examples. Conservative bust and boom is the source of the episodic volatility in Canadian elections, and is in fact the complement of Liberal longevity."
But what is the key to the Liberals' survival, even dominance, in the face of no comparable centrist success in any other jurisdiction? Prof. Johnston points to the National Question.
"It is commonplace to observe that the Liberals have been historically better than others at managing that question," he said. "But their survival as a dominant player requires that they control a pole on at least one major dimension of choice."
The Liberals are centrists on economic and social policy questions, and control neither end of the debate there. But they do have a strong position on the question of Quebec's place in the federation.
Liberals in fact control opposite ends of the question in different regions: pro-Quebec outside Quebec; pro-Canada inside Quebec. On questions of national character — the Constitution, the Charter, bilingualism — this gives the Liberal coalition coherence by arguing for a strong national government, minority rights and a central place for Quebec in Confederation. Meanwhile, it leaves the Conservatives competing for marginal space in Quebec, and with a shaky coalition built around decentralization, provincial jurisdiction and hedging on the place of Quebec in Confederation.
