Reading the entrails of recent by-elections

The federal by-elections of last week are more interesting for what they don’t tell us than what they do. Sure, the Liberal Dream Team players - Bob Rae and Martha Hall Findlay - did well, the former with the help, it appears, of MP Scott Brison, even if he’s playing on the second line these days.

But do Bob and Martha’s victories mean the Dream Team is ready to strap on its skates for a serious engagement of what they take to be the forces of darkness? Well, not so much, really, if you listen to Stéphane Dion.

We’re ready for the big game, he says, we’re just not sure that we’re willing. We’re happy just waiting and wanting.

As I’ve argued for some months now, this is good strategy, what Bob Rae is of late calling “strategic patience”. But it’s boring as heck and it leaves the two-thirds of Canadians who can’t warm to the New Conservatives having to listen to them display what they take to be their insight on national and international issues, with the vainglory of folks who just don’t get it, day after day after day.

Turnout a troubling surprise

While we wait, of course, it makes sense to draw what we can from this experience, even if it’s more conjecture and speculation than good political science.

The first, and to my mind the most telling, point about the March 17 by-elections in Toronto, Northern Saskatchewan and Vancouver, was the low voter turnout: from roughly 25 per cent in Saskatchewan and Bob Rae’s downtown Toronto riding, to 28 per cent in Vancouver and 34 per cent in Martha Hall Finlay’s Toronto riding. This tells us volumes about how eager Canadians are to go to the polls this spring, about the general and apparently growing aloofness of citizens from party politics, and about the ability of the parties to get out their vote, albeit with the Conservative showing their growing organizational strength.

But it doesn’t tell us nearly enough about how the vote would split if we were to go to more historical rates of participation during a general election.

So it’s very difficult to draw any certain conclusions about what Canadians were really saying in these ridings. Perhaps what other columnists have asserted is true: that the four outcomes show that the NDP is in more trouble than their national polling would indicate.

Jack may be in real trouble

One of the more interesting moments of the campaign was the claim by the Conservative candidate from Vancouver Quadra, Deborah Meredith, that those in her riding who were upset with the Liberal capitulation on Afghanistan (to extend the mission for two more years) were being encouraged to vote Green to express their upset. And they were, she heard, being encouraged to do so by Liberals!

If this is so - that those upset with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are moving to the Greens - then Jack Layton may be in real trouble and Elizabeth May will be clicking her heels in jubilation, even if she doesn’t send Peter MacKay packing.

The second general point is that none of the current leaders, with the exception of Elizabeth May, motivate us. Perhaps this is the Obama factor; that when we see what democratic leadership can look like, it’s tough feeling good about our own.

Stephen Harper, while in Vancouver, apparently chose not to campaign for Meredith in Quadra, a riding she lost by only 151 votes. What does that tell you?

And Stéphane’s victory speech, standing in front of Bob Rae, was, well … let’s just say awkward. Is this the sort of public address that’s going to get those of us already tired of the Conservatives off our couches? I doubt it.

Jack Layton looked, the day after the election, like a car salesman who had just sold a vehicle that wasn’t performing all that well. And he’s insisting steadfastly that his, and apparently our, real enemies are the Liberals. Sure, Jack. Whatever….

But the major conclusion of the outcome, I think, is the deepening and intensifying divide between the West and the rest of Canada. This division could, of course, mean minority government after minority government.

As one who prefers minority government, I’m untroubled by this. But such divisions, when reinforced by party competition and by worsening economic conditions, are arguably not so good for the body politic.