The Politics of Boredom

Alright, so perhaps not quite the posting that we would envision for the above title, and we promise we'll give it a much better go next time around. However, politics and boredom do seem to go hand in hand these days. Despite all of the excitement generated over the provincial elections in Quebec, we at The Daily Wenzel were not surprised in the least to find the Liberals ekeing out a narrow margin. This is perfectly in keeping with the way Canadian politics works. Separatist governments in Quebec only seem to thrive when the Liberals hold power in Ottawa. This is in part because Quebec, like most of Canada, is fundamentally Liberal, and having Liberals in office federally means that we agree on some many major issues that smaller issues can take a bigger stage. People only seem to want to debate separatism after health-care, social services, free trade, etc., have all been taken care of, issues that the Liberals seem to be much better at generating consensus around.

When the Conservatives are in power however, there are so many other issues that the electorate tend to disagree with, that the conversations rarely get to separatism. There is a weird idea floating here that an argument could be made that a Liberal government is bad for national unity, simply by being a victim of their own success.

Federally however, the success of the Liberals in Quebec does not necessarily mean an election is out of the question. The issue with the election is result is to see who made the biggest gains. In the last federal election, the Liberals lost significant ground, allowing the Conservatives to take the rest of Canada. The recent results most likely signifies that the Liberals would be triumphant in Quebec once more, causing Harper and Co. to have to wait for the Ontario numbers before calling an election.