The Liberal Party of Canada - Essay Example

THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA TOPIC: C) Select a major political party in Canada (Liberals) and examine its organization, base of support and its political ideology. Discuss to what extent the Partys ideology has changed over time. Why is (or isnt) the party successful in winning power in federal elections. (Ch. 2,9) The Liberal Party of Canada is one of the two major political parties in the country, the second one being the Conservative party. Organization The Organization of the Liberal Party could be considered as central to the Canadian Political spectrum, with an amalgamation of liberal social policy and corresponding modern economic policies. Back in the formative years of the Liberal party of Canada, the political parties during those times were largely scattered and unstable as compared to the modern political parties of today’s times and coalesced into a cohesive organization only as late as the 1880s. on the one hand was the governing coalition of Liberal – Conservatives under the leadership of Sir John A. McDonald in Canada West and his French – Canadian counterpart, George – Etienne Cartier in Canada East. This disparate organization encompassed a number of distinct groups, many of which had potentially conflicting interests – Catholic and Protestants, English and French, Urban and Rural (Stephen Brooks, page 282) “The Liberal Party of Canada is always located somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum and often finds itself divided between a progressive wing and a conservative wing” (Patrick Malcolmson, Richard Myers, page 178) Base of Support The main support group for the classical liberals consisted of Industrialists, merchants and property owning- individuals while the chief supporters for the contemporary Liberal party includes several middle of the road advocacy groups within the feminist, environmental and multicultural movements, public – sector workers, middle – class intellectuals in the universities and the media, the national Liberal Party and the Bloc Quebecois; think – tanks including Canadian Policy Research Networks, the institute for Research on Public Policy and the Canada West Foundation. ( Stephen Brooks, page 40 - 41) According to the views propagated by R. B. McCullum, the Liberal Party was the “party of the middle class, with the support of the industrial workers” (Robert Kelly, page 43) Political Ideology One way of categorizing political ideas – perhaps the most popular way – is to describe them as being left wing/ right wing or centrist/ moderate. These labels are used to signify the broader ideological premises believed to lie behind an action, opinion, or statement (Stephen Brooks Page 33). “The Liberal Party had always occupied the middle ground of Canadian political ideology and as a consequence it had to appeal to people fairly widely dispersed across the centre of the spectrum” (Penny Bryden, Page 60) Right and left are shorthand labels for conflicting belief systems. These beliefs include basic notions about how society, the economy, and politics operate, as well as ideas about how these matters should be arranged. Generally speaking to be on the right in Anglo – American societies mean that one subscribes to an individualistic belief system. Such a person is likely to believe that what one achieves in life is due principally to his or her own efforts – that the welfare of the society is best promoted by allowing individuals to pursue their own interests and that modern government is too expensive and too intrusive. To be on the left, however, is to prefer a set of beliefs that may be described as collectivist. A leftist is likely to attribute greater weight to social and economic circumstances as determinants of ones opportunities and achievements than does someone on the right. Moreover those on the left have greater doubts about the economic efficiency and social fairness of free markets and have greater faith in the ability of government to intervene in ways that promote the common good (Stephen Brooks, page 34). The importance of these ideologies in defining the contours of political life is suggested by the fact that major and minor political parties in many Western democracies continue to use the names liberal, conservative, and socialist. Changes in the Party’s political Ideology over a period of time – History In Canada the two parties that have dominated national politics for most of the country’s history are the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party (the conservative party was renamed the Progressive Conservative Party in 1942, since December 2003, when it merged with the Canadian Alliance, it is once again known as the Conservative Party of Canada). They have their roots in the ideological divisions of the nineteenth century. Over time, however, the labels have lost much if not all of their informative value. Today, the ideological distance between a Liberal and a Conservative is likely to be small. Indeed, at the beginning of the twentieth century the astute French observer Andre Siegfried had already remarked that the Liberal and Conservative parties were virtually indistinguishable in terms of their ideological principles. They and their supporters shared in the dominant Liberal tradition that pervaded Canada and the United States. (Stephen Brooks, page 35) At the heart of this tradition was the primacy of individual freedom. Classical liberalism – liberalism as understood until the middle of this century – was associated with freedom of religious choice and practice, free enterprise and free trade in the realm of economics, and freedom of expression and association in politics. These liberal values constituted a sort of national ethos in the United States, where they were enshrined in the Declaration of independence and in the American Bill of Rights. In the colonies of British North America, which would become Canada in the late nineteenth century, liberalism’s democracy dominance was somewhat more tentative than in the United States. “Modern liberalism has always claimed that it dilutes and dissolves ideology in the name of the progress of cybernetics as rationality. In fact it is itself a powerful ideology, and one that speaks against the survival of nation states such as Canada.” (James Laxer, Robert Laxer, page 11) The classical ideologies were formed and evolved in response to one another as well as the social and economic conditions in which they were rooted. Today, Canadians, Americans and Europeans live in affluent, middle - class societies that bear little resemblance to those of the 19th century, when Europe was a tilting ground for the rivalries between conservatism, liberalism and socialism. As the character of Western societies has changed, so too have the ideologies that slug it out in their politics. (Stephen Brooks, page 37) Modern liberalism has also become associated with support for multiculturalism and openness towards non traditional lifestyles and social institutions. (Stephen Brooks, page 36) Reasons for its success in the Federal Elections With the accession of Pierre Trudeau to the party leadership in 1968, the Liberals became identified in the minds of most Canadian voters with a strong central state (hence the ongoing battles between Ottawa and the provinces over control of natural resource revenues), with economic nationalism (Petro- Canada , the National Energy Program, the Foreign Investment Revenue Agency [FIRA]), and with ‘French Power’ (Stephen Brooks, 286). In the 1993 elections the Liberals won with a solid majority, taking 177 of the 295 seats in the House of Commons and 41.3% of the popular vote. Only the Liberals succeeded in practicing the old brokerage style politics. It emerged from the 1993 elections as the only truly national party, electing members from every province and territory and receiving no less than one – quarter of the votes cast in any province. (Stephen Brooks, pg 291) The 1997 general elections was a replay of the 1993 in several important respects. The Liberals swept all but one of Ontario’s 103 seats. (Stephen Brooks, 294). Most significant were the election results in the Atlantic province. The loss of several Liberal seats and the ascendance of the Conservatives and the NDP in the region were almost certainly due to voters’ unhappiness with federal spending cuts, particularly in transfers to provincial governments, which were felt more deeply in their region than in more affluent parts of Canada. The message of fiscal conservatism that the Liberals preached particularly after the 1995 federal budget, was an unnerving one in provinces whose job markets and public services, have long been sustained by a life support system of federal assistance. (Stephen Brooks, page 296) The fact that the Liberal Party has been in the office for so much of the twentieth century and particularly since World War II it is often assumed that it has enjoyed overwhelming support of the Canadians. (Howard Rae Penniman, page 2) In the 2000 election, the Liberals were re-elected with a larger majority than they held before the election. The 2003 merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party dismissed all notions of a permanent Liberal government in Canada. With the right now united the prospect of making inroads into the Liberal stronghold Ontario, seemed well within reach. The opposition parties’ hopes increased at the onset of the 2004 election, when the federal Auditor General expressed concern over the shady and almost unlawful misallocation of public funds by the Liberals on advertising in Quebec. The money was traced to individuals and ad companies who had nothing to offer against the money allocated. This popularly came to be known as the Adscam scandal and ruined the chances of the Liberal’s fairly effortless march to another majority government. However, halfway through the campaign when public support was on a decline in the English Canada, the Liberals unleashed an onslaught of negative campaigns against the Conservatives and their strategy worked as the Conservatives were again overthrown by the Liberals. The scenario continued well into the year 2006 and placing the Liberals well ahead of the Conservatives in the polls. (Stephen Brooks, page 299). REFERENCES Stephen Brooks, Canadian Democracy, 5th edition, 2005. Howard Rae Penniman, Canada at the Polls, 1984 General Elections, Duke University Press, 1988 Penny Bryden, Planners and Politicians: Liberal Politics and Social Policy, 1957 – 1968, McGill Queen’s Press, 1997. James Laxer, Robert Laxer, The Liberal Idea of Canada, Pierre Trudeau and the Question of Canada’s Survival, James Lorimer & Company,1977 Patrick Malcolmson, Richard Myers, The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada, Broadview Press, 2005 Robert Kelly,The Transatlantic Pursuasion : The Liberal – Democratic Mind in the Age, Transaction Publishers, 1989. Liberal Party: The Canadian Encyclopedia, June 6, 2008. Available from: < http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0004670> BIBILOGRAPHY Raymond Benjamin Blake, Canada at Last, University of Toronto Press, 1994 John Hoffman, Paul Graham, An Introduction to Political Theory: Concepts and Ideologies, Longman Publications, 2006 Paul R Magocsi, Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, University of Toronto Press, 1999 Earle F Zeigler, Through the eyes of a Concerned Liberal, Trafford Publishing, 2004. http://www.thehilltimes.ca/ http://www.politicswatch.com/index2.html Read More