canada being on the verge of electing a....well, they're not really a socialist party. but they're a third party. this is a pretty big deal. we're a left-leaning country. our liberal party has swung about as far left as you can without embracing socialism. for example, we nationalized the oil industry in the 70s - under a liberal government. and the party poised to win isn't likely to do anything like that. but, it's still a big deal in the landscape of the political system.

the liberal party of canada is often called the most successful political party of the 20th century. in terms of electoral victories, it is a true statement. they won long mandates and governed for long periods. they wrote the bulk of our existing constitution. in a three party system, no party is ever completely safe from losing party status. to see the party collapse would be to lose a little piece of the country's history and culture.

but, it's looking increasingly necessary.

it's not completely unprecedented. the liberals were in this position once before, in the mid-80s. canada was the last to embrace thatcherism and did so with the least amount of zeal. in the end, the banks forced a lot of the policies that we did half-adopt on to us. even our conservatives are really liberals, and they just didn't fall for any of that 80s economic mumbo jumbo. it's largely politics rather than economics, but we were flirting with a junk status credit rating for a while - because our conservative party wouldn't make the cuts being pushed, because they knew it didn't actually make sense to get to the the end demanded of them. this is a bit of a stand that canada took against the imf that i wish was more thoroughly covered. and, it was our conservative party that took it. they privatized a few things - like the oil industry: a disastrous decision that is now politically out of bounds to discuss. but, instead of rolling off health care and other services, they took the bold policy decision of raising taxes. it destroyed the party. but it may have saved the nature of the country.

when the conservatives won in 1984 under the tide of thatcherism, it was a convincing win. mulroney got over 50% of the vote. they won, fair and square. no excuses. the liberals and the then third place party (the quasi-socialist ndp) were really at a roughly equal footing for the next couple of years. there was a lot of talk of the ndp overtaking the liberals. but, that didn't happen. rather, the liberals won a very large majority in 1993 and held on to it until 2004.

why was it different then?

a lot of analysts have focused on the fact that the ndp had a female leader over much of this period. it's not something for anybody to be proud of, but it may have had a small effect. i don't think this is the dominant factor.

i think the dominant factor is the liberals' record in government in the preceding periods, combined with their following policy proposals.

standing in 1993, one would look back at the trudeau government as a pretty progressive one. it was a liberal capitalist government, so all that criticism applies. but, it moved about as far out of that rubric as it possibly could. it created universal healthcare. it nationalized oil. it wrote a very forward-thinking constitution. i could go on for a while, but it's pointless. so, when chretien showed up and said he was going to renegotiate nafta and reorganize the gst as a luxury tax, left-leaning voters had every reason to believe him - the party had a record of it. they campaigned on the left, with a history of left-leaning policies and won based on that strength.

but, the 90s were different. canada had the imf breathing over it's shoulder and had to make some deep cuts. there's two subtleties that the left misses in this debate. the first is that the cuts were meant to be temporary, until various structural adjustments asserted themselves; the harper government has all but demolished this plan, but it was very real and did result in large funding restorations in the early 00s. the second is that the imf was pushing hard for "market liberalization", and threatening consequences; temporary funding cuts hurt people, but they were better than full privatization, which was the only other option. canada could not have continued on the path it was on and accept junk credit rating status. a hefty level of criticism should be levelled at these international bodies for their interference, but the world is as it is.

that's not the easiest debate to articulate, let alone win. looking at the liberals' 90s record today does not have the same pull to left-leaning voters as it's 70s record did to left-leaning voters in the 90s. it's a combination of fiscal conservatism and mixed market economics, pastiched together under a desire to squirm out of heavy international pressure to conform to the washington consensus amidst heavy domestic opposition to it. as a collection of policies, it's not going to appeal to anybody at all. it's only in understanding the context that it appears to even make sense, and that's beyond the realm of the average voter. educated voters don't even tend to really realize exactly what was happening.

so, they can't campaign to the left on a record of leftist policies because they haven't had leftist policies in decades.

and, the electorate's shift is consequently entirely rational. this is different.