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Backgrounder: Elections and political parties in Canada compared with the Netherlands
Paul Lucardie
On 23 January 2006 Canadians elected a new House of Commons. The House has roughly the same powers and functions as the Dutch Tweede Kamer. It contains 308 seats, about twice as many as the Tweede Kamer – in accordance with the population of Canada, about twice as large as the population of the Netherlands.
First Past The Post
Impression of the wintery campaign for the 2006 election. Source: Wikipedia
The seats are allocated rather differently in The Netherlands and Canada. In the Netherlands, all valid votes in the whole country are added up and divided by 150, i.e. the number of seats of the Tweede Kamer. Every party that presented a list of candidates obtains a number of seats proportional to the number of votes it won in the whole country. Quite appropriately, the electoral system is called Proportional Representation (PR). At the most recent parliamentary elections the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) won almost 29 per cent of the vote and obtained 44 seats, the social-liberal Democrats 66 (D66) won 4 per cent and gained 6 seats, the Christian Union 2 per cent and 3 seats, and so on.
Canada is divided into 308 electoral districts or ridings (as they are usually called). Votes are added up and seats allocated within each riding. The candidate who wins most votes – not necessarily an absolute majority – obtains the seat. Small differences can be decisive. For example in 2004 the Conservative candidate won the seat of Oshawa with 33.2 per cent of the votes, while the social-democratic candidate got 32.2 per cent – but no seat, of course. This electoral system is called Single Member Plurality System or ‘First Past The Post’ (FPTP), in analogy with a race which is won by the participant who is the first to pass the post or finish.
The Parties
An advantage of the FPTP is that voters in Canada often know their Member of Parliament by name, if not personally, and can approach him or her more easily than voters in the Netherlands – who after all do not have a Member of Parliament representing their particular area or riding. In theory, a locally well-known person could win a seat in the House of Commons without being member of a party. In practice, however, this happens rarely. In 2006 (and in 2004) only one out of the 308 Members of Parliament was elected as an independent. Apparently, candidates need the support of a party apparatus – with its professional strategists, pollsters, spin doctors, contacts with the media and funding – in order to gain a seat.
In fact, most seats are usually won by candidates of the two largest parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives (occasionally called Tories, as in Britain). The Liberal Party is often considered the natural party of government, somewhat like the CDA in the Netherlands. It is a centrist party, maybe ideologically closer to D66 than to the more rightwing VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie). Like the VVD, the Conservative Party is considered rightwing, even if it has shifted more towards the centre over the last two years. With respect to socio-economic issues it is more liberal than the Liberals, favouring tax cuts and criticizing the welfare state constructed (mainly) by the Liberals. An important issue at the recent election was child care. Whereas the Liberals wanted to subsidize professional day care centres, the Conservatives preferred to give a tax cut to parents – thus stimulating parents also to stay at home for the children and fostering family life. This chimed in with Conservative ideas about family and tradition. The Tories criticized the gay marriage and abortion legalized by the Liberals, even if opinions vary also within both parties.
The 2006 Elections
Map of the Results of the 2006 elections by province and territory (Click image to enlarge). Source: Wikipedia
Neither Conservatives nor Liberals could win an absolute majority in 2006 or in 2004. From 2004 to 2006 the Liberals governed, depending on support from other parties like the New Democratic Party (NDP) – social democrats, somewhat like the Dutch PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid). Occasionally the Liberal minority government was supported also by the Bloc Québécois (BQ), though the Liberals favour a strong federal state whereas the BQ calls for a sovereign Québec, only loosely associated with the rest of Canada in an economic union.
In 2006, the Conservatives managed to beat the Liberals, the former winning 124 and the latter 103 seats. Polls suggest that most voters felt it was time for a change, as the Liberal Party had been in power too long (13 years!), though they cherished some doubts about the Conservatives. The Tory leader, Steven Harper (picture), had played an important role in a more rightwing party that had merged with the Conservatives in 2004 and even if he claimed to have ‘evolved’ towards more moderate opinions, not everyone was convinced he really meant it. At any rate, he could form a minority government – Canadians don’t like coalitions very much, unlike the Dutch. Harper might get some support from the Bloc Québécois, which won 51 seats – with only 10 per cent of the votes. The NDP obtained 29 seats, though it won 17 per cent of the votes. With almost 5 per cent, the Green Party ended up again without any seats.
Some Canadians are unhappy about this uneven balance between votes and seats. Several provinces are discussing other, more proportional electoral systems. However, at the federal level the electoral system will probably remain the same at least until the next elections – which may come again soon, given the minority position of the Conservative government.
About the author: Paul Lucardie is attached to the Documentation Centre Dutch Political Parties at the University of Groningen and the Canadian Studies Centre at the same university.