The Case for a Continuing People's Party of Canada

Andrew Coyne, who may be the brightest person in Canada, argues counter to the common fear of a second right-wing party splitting the vote, keeping the Liberals permanently in power.

There are, after all, Coyne points out, four parties on the left—and yet the Liberals are the one party most often in power. How does that work?

How is it, for that matter, that the Canadian public seems generally to the left of our next-door neighbour, the US, in politics generally?

Isn’t it precisely because we have smaller parties on the left?

These force the left’s issues onto the national consciousness; the population repeatedly hears the left-wing point of view advocated. By comparison, the one right-wing party, always seeking the centre, will most often not even bring right-wing issues up. The job of a centre-left or centre-right party is always to follow the polls, and move where they think the voters are moving. The job of an ideological party on the left or right is to advance ideas. With three leftist ideological parties, and no rightist ones, only leftist ideas are advanced.

This moves what is called the “Overton window,” of what people consider acceptable solutions and acceptable discussions, ever further left.

Something like the People’s Party of Canada, an “NDP of the right,” might, Coyne suggests, be exactly what we need to keep our politics healthy. It could do the job of presenting a the right-wing view, leaving the Conservatives, like the Liberals, to tack to the centre for power.

People fear this because of the example of the Reform Party, whose rivalry with the PCs seemingly sustained Chretien’s Liberals in power for a generation.

But the reason that was a problem is that Reform was not an ideological right-wing party. Preston Manning never identified it as either left or right. It was a party of Western regional alienation. As it grew in success, it challenged the PCs for the centre-right. And so the anti-government vote was indeed split until one or the other party could establish dominance. Because of the splintering, at one point during the transition, the Bloc Quebecois was actually the Official Opposition.

The PPC, if it survives, seems well-positioned to fill this need for a non-regional ideological party of the right. Although Coyne does not like it.