A 70% greater voter turnout than in 2011 at
advanced polls suggests that the downward trend could be reversed next Monday,
encouraged by a competitive race and multiple get-out-the-vote drives. That
however is no guarantee as the last election demonstrated. Additionally, there
are some major developments working in the opposite direction and discouraging
electors this time around – and apathy is not one of them.
The number one reason why people don’t vote is
their disappointment with the party they are inclined to support, or even all
parties in general. And there is plenty of that going on this time around.
Many on the democratic left are obviously
disenchanted with the New Democratic leader Tom Mulcair’s turn towards the
political centre with his denigration of deficit spending in times of economic
stagnation, decision not to raise taxes on the wealthy and end to his outright
opposition to the F-35s, tar-sands and bitumen-carrying pipelines, to name just
a few policy planks he has forsaken.
The unprecedented moves pushed a group of well-known
activists closely associated with the party and led by former Ontario NDP
leader Stephen Lewis to put out a more leftist Leap Manifesto in mid campaign,
contradicting much of the NDP election platform.
How many of them and their supporters will cast
ballots on October 19 for a leader they no longer believe in, if they ever did?
If not, will they instead vote for a Liberal Party that outflanked the New
Democrats on the left and, according to most independent observers, includes in
its platform more of what they should like, even though it surely falls short
of their dream Manifesto?
Or will they imitate 2000 presidential candidate
Ralph Nader in the United-States who shamelessly stated that Democrat Al Gore
and Republican George W. Bush were two of the same, and hence will not vote for
either party, spoil their ballot, or cast one for the Greens or some other
marginalized party? I for one believe that, although by no means perfect, the
world and the planet would have been far better off with Mr. Gore in the White
House.
So far the NDP’s repositioning has helped the
Bloc québécois in Quebec and the Liberals across Canada make important gains at
its expense even before the controversy over the niqab, and the trend may not
be over yet.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the other hand
got caught up in his own contradictions. Seeing opinion polls turn in his and
the Bloc’s favour while going after a single niqab-wearing woman at a
swearing-in ceremony may have blinded him to the damage he was progressively
inflicting on his own base of support.
Extending the ban to the public service sector,
and then dismissing Sikh Conservative candidate Jagdish Grewal for allegedly
writing on how to turn gays and lesbians around, sent a quiver through a number
of fundamentalist communities. With the Quebec Charter of Values and polemic
over a turban-wearing Sikh RCMP officer still fresh in their minds, many
religious minorities could be excused for worrying what other ostentatious religious
garb is next in line.
Moreover, the Conservative Party spent the last
decade convincing conservative faith-based groups in different religious communities
that they shared their opposition to same-sex marriage, to safe legal abortions
and to other rights on their social agenda. Yet at the first sign of trouble,
they dumped a candidate that professed widely held views among these social
conservatives that homosexuality is a choice and a sin, and thus can be
reversed with appropriate encouragement, repentance or therapy.
Not only will some members of the Sikh
community feel betrayed, but so will many other conservative communities of
whatever religious persuasion, not least of which is the Christian right. No
wonder Mr. Harper has abandoned that line of attack in the last week of the
campaign and gone back to propagating his other favoured anxieties and
distortions concerning higher taxation, economic instability, supervised
injection sites and marijuana.
Already disillusioned with Mr. Harper’s muzzling
of social conservative backbenchers, lack of gusto on social issues dear to
their hearts, and abandonment of many former Reform Party policy planks, expect
a good many on the religious right to stay put next Monday.
You can add to the list of potential non voters
quite a number of equally strong conservatives embarrassed by the Senate and
PMO scandals and the PM’s denigration of parliamentary and judiciary
institutions, sovereignists who boycott federal elections out of principle even
with the BQ presence, and the general public’s distaste for unpalatable partisan
politics, and we might end up with a lower turnout on Election Day than we had
the last time around.
The good news, if any, is that it won’t be due
to any generalized apathy. Instead it could lead to major moves within both the
NDP and the CPC by opponents to gain control of their respective parties or, if
unsuccessful, schisms that could lead to the creation of new ones. It may also
lead to wide-scale engagement in the democratic reform process promised by the
Liberals and to improvements that could bring greater participation in all
aspects of our politics in the future.
Robert
M. David teaches at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa
and is a former federal Liberal candidate.
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