Canada Votes - Conservatives vs. Socialists

As we enter the first full week of campaigning for the Election Nobody Wanted© , the first real buzz-worthy topic has emerged.


And to the dismay of the Liberals and NDP, it has nothing to do with alleged Tory 'scandals' or the 'untrustworthiness' of P.M. Stephen Harper.



P.M. Stephen Harper



The question on everyone's mind, from the media to the voters is, is there an opposition coalition?



The original agreement, made just after the 2008 election, was snuffed out after a groundswell of opposition to the idea occurred from average Canadians.

But the agreement is still in effect, and doesn't technically expire until June of this year.  Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and his party's talking heads have rapidly denied any such intent this time around, and have found themselves spending the first few days of the campaign publicly disregarding any plans for a coalition at every turn.

But as blogger Steven C. Britton points out, we've heard all of this before.  Ignatieff's denials are not succeeding in extinguishing the threat or possibility of a coalition in the minds of voters.
 Canadians just don't buy the spin.  Politically, the game has long been one of 'us' vs 'them'. No matter how many left-of-centre parties there are, the flavour of federal politics for many years has been a choice between conservatism and socialism.  This time it's no different and the people know that.  That's why the concept of a leftwing coalition isn't so hard for the average voter to believe.


Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff



It would make it simpler - not to mention more honest - if the entities on the left stopped pretending they held vast ideological differences with each other, ended the roundabout coalition games, threw away the pretense and just formed a single party.  Essentially, that's what we have now.

The Liberals, depending on the leader of the moment, can be found anywhere from slightly left of centre to full-on leftwing; the New Democrats are an unabashed mix of labor and special-rights socialists who will never achieve enough national support to come close to holding the reigns of power; the Bloc Quebecois represents nothing more than a glaring flaw in our parliamentary system, a separatist, single-province Marxist party whose purpose is the end of Canada; and the national Green Party is, ideologically speaking, little more than the enviroNazi wing of the NDP.

Put them all together, and you have a clear decision to make in May: the Conservative party vs. the Socialist party.

No matter how strong the denials, regardless the attempts at deflection, that is the choice Canadians will face at the ballot box.