Liberal Party's New Foe
The Liberal Party needs new skates because there’s a new kid on the ice, the Green Party of Canada, led by Annamie Paul.
Old skates, like your old morning slippers are comfortable, familiar, so is voting. That’s why the Conservative Party and Liberal Party have an ongoing table tennis situation in governing Canada.
Voters voted for the Big Two because of family voting patterns from parents and grandparents and economic status. There’s also the immigration factor. Immigrants joined families in Canada who steered them to one of the political parties.
Winds of change forced Conservatives and Liberals to work harder to stay on the ice, when organized labor became so well-organized, it formed the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961 led by Tommy Douglas. It has ruled some provinces in the past but has never put a Prime Minister in Ottawa.
The way things are in the year 2021, is that the Green Party is the new foe of the Big Three but the Liberal Party will be the one adversely affected for one good reason: halfway station.
The vote is secret but traditionally, some people will never vote for Conservatives or the NDP because they are like north and south. They perceive the former as big business, anti-diversity and anti-labour, the NDP as pro-labour, pro new ideas and anti-business.
Liberals therefore represent the halfway station, a belief that things are not exactly night and day, black or white. It is therefore not off the mark to say the 2020 October Toronto Centre by-election results were partly because some Liberal voters felt the halfway station was no longer good enough.
Climate Change as an Election Issue
Annamie Paul got 32.7% of the vote. It’s fashionable to say that by-election was proof that voters were mad at the Liberals for the WE Charity affair. If that’s the case, they should have voted either Conservative or NDP.
There’s also the belief that the Green Party performed so well because Paul is black. That is possible because voters might like what a party stands for, but not the leader. However, Marcie Len who netted 42% of the vote for the Liberals in that by-election is also black.
We are in the second COVID-19 year. We are wearing masks so we can no longer sweep the environment under the carpet. Definitely, that worked for the Green Party whose calling card is the sorry state of the air and rivers.
It is Liberals’ new foe because voters are aware that like the NDP, it might never put a prime minister in Ottawa. There are economic benefits when your party becomes the government of the day. That’s why we donate up to $1,650 annually to political parties.
If voters are willing to leave the halfway station that is the Liberal Party and venture into unknown seas, it means they strongly believe in what the Green Party has to offer.
It happened with the NDP. Nobody knew in 1961, that workers would one day have premiers in provinces like Alberta and Manitoba. However, the Liberal Party’s future cannot be written off because of its minority status.
The Conservative Party was in minority governments in 2006 and 2008. They went on to win big time in 2011, forming a majority government.
This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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