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Job Name:2176678 Date:15-03-06 PDF Page:2176678pbc.p1.pdf Color: Cyan Magenta Yellow Black CANADA AT THE POLLS CANADA AT THE POLLS The General Election of 1974 Edited by Howard R. Penniman American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Washington, D. C. Distributed to the Trade by National Book Network, 152.00 NBN Way, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 172.14. To order call toll free 1-800-462.-642.0 or 1-717-794-3800. For all other inquiries please contact the AEI Press, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 2.0036 or call 1-800-862.-5801. ISBN 0-8447-3178-1 Foreign Affairs Study 24, October 1975 Second printing, January 1978 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 75-24771 © 1975 by American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D. C. Permission to quote from or reproduce materials in this publication is granted when due acknowledgment is made. Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS PREFACE 1 THE PARTY SYSTEM AND THE 1974 ELECTION John Meisel 1 Fixed Constraints on the Party System 1 Political Constraints on the Party System 4 The Nature of the Party System 11 Evaluation of the Party System 20 Consequences of the 1974 Election 25 2 AN OVERVIEW OF THE 197·4 FEDERAL ELECTION IN CANADA William P. Irvine 29 Minority Government in Canada: The 1972 Parliament 32 The 1974 Election 39 3 PIERRE TRUDEAU AND THE LIBERAL PARTY: THE JOCKEY AND THE HORSE Stephen Clarkson 57 Prime Ministerial Imprints 58 Electoral Foundation for Liberal Dominance 61 Social and Organizational Foundations of the Liberal Party 67 Trudeau's Discovery of the Liberal Party 75 Background to the 1974 Campaign 77 Victory from the Jaws of Defeat: The Expert Amateurs 79 Old Generals for New Wars: Defeat from the Jaws of Victory 89 4 THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN THE ELECTION OF 1974 George Perlin 97 Background 97 The Conservative Party in the 1974 Election 107 Conclusion 118 5 PURISTS AND PRAGMATISTS: CANADIAN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM AT THE CROSSROADS Jo Surich 121 The Historical Background 122 The 1974 Election 135 Purists and Pragmatists: Where to from Here? 144 Postscript 146 6 SOCIAL CREDIT PARTY IN THE CANADIAN GENERAL ELECTION OF 1974 Michael B. Stein 149 Introduction: The Pundits' View of the Social Credit Campaign 149 The Historical Background 150 Social Credit's Campaign in 1974 157 Social Credit's Performance and Prospects 177 7 CAMPAIGN FINANCING IN CANADA AND ITS REFORM Khayyam Z. Paltiel 181 The 'Traditional Pattern 181 Financing the 1974 Election 184 The New Election Expenses Act 200 Conclusion 208 8 THE MEASUREMENT OF PUBLIC OPINION Lawrence LeDuc 209 The Setting 209 Polls and Surveys in Canada 213 The 1974 Election 220 Conclusion 241 9 THE MASS MEDIA IN THE 1974 CANADIAN ELECTION Frederick I. Fletcher 243 The Canadian Mass Media System 245 The 1974 Campaign 253 Some Final Comments 288 APPENDIX 291 CONTRIBUTORS 303 INDEX 305 PREFACE Canada at the Polls: The General Election of 1974 is another in the series of studies of national elections in selected democratic countries published by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). Volumes covering the two 1974 British parliamen tary elections and the French presidential election of the same year have already been published. Studies of the 1974 House of Council lors election in Japan and the national elections in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in 1973 are in progress. On 8 July 1974, Canadian voters gave the Liberal party 141 seats of a possible 264 in the federal House of Commons-the largest number received by any party in the last six national elections. The unanticipated magnitude of the Liberal triumph reduced the repre sentation of each of the remaining parties. The Progressive Con servative party, Canada's second major party, fared badly. The party began the campaign with high hopes of gaining some seats and possibly even becoming the largest party in the House of Commons. Instead, its share of the seats dropped to ninety-five, from 107 in 1972. Party leader Robert Stanfield retained his seat in Parliament, but a month after the election announced plans to give up his party position prior to the next elections. The New Democratic party (NDP) lost fifteen seats, including that of David Lewis, the party leader, who has since been replaced. The Social Credit party's representation (all from Quebec) fell from fifteen to eleven, but the party leadership has remained unchanged. Minority governments, as William P. Irvine notes in his overview of the 1974 election (Chapter 2 of this volume), have been a frequent occurrence during the seventeen years from 1957 to 1974. During this period, Canadian voters have, in five of eight elections, failed to give any party an absolute majority of the seats in the House of Commons. During the same years third party and independent candi dates have won between 20 and 28 percent of the votes in every election except the one in 1958, when the Progressive Conservatives won 54 percent of the popular votes and 208 seats in Parliament. The five minority governments, dependent upon the support of two parties to remain in power, have generally been short-lived-remain ing in office an average of only two years, far less than the full term of five years allowed under the constitution. Canadian parties are "disciplined," that is, all members of each party in Parliament are expected to vote as a unit. This makes it virtually impossible for two parties to satisfy the varied demands and interests of more than 22 million Canadians spread across a huge continent, with differing and sometimes conflicting economic inter ests, who speak two official languages, and who are divided by a federal system into ten provinces with independently elected govern ments whose powers are increasing. Because those who support third parties have often been concentrated in the western provinces, they have gained a respectable number of seats for their relatively small vote. Their situation, then, has been comparable to the national parties of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales in recent elections and very different from the plight of the British Liberal party, which won nearly 20 percent of the votes in both 1974 elections but only 2 percent of the membership of the House of Commons. Fterhaps because it has happened more frequently in Canada, voters there seem less disturbed by the possibility of electing a minority government than do the voters of Britain. Whatever the fears of some, it may be expected that as many as a fourth of the voters in both countries will frequently vote for candidates named by third parties. At a time when traditional modes of financing party campaigns are increasingly under fire in many democracies, readers may find Khayyam Z.Paltiel's examination (Chapter 7) of developments in Canadian campaign regulation of special interest. Paltiel describes the rather minimal controls that have long characterized Canadian campaign financing. He notes that in 1974 only 75 percent of the candidates filed legally required reports of monies received and ex pended during the campaign. As in previous years, no one was prosecuted for his failure to file, and the reports that were filed were not audited. In 1974, however, Parliament enacted legislation which went into effect in August (after the election) that may sharply change this situation.l "The new law aims to reduce spending by parties and 1 Initially the law was to go into effect 1 July 1974, but that date fell in the middle of the campaigns, so the effective date was moved back one month. candidates by setting limits to certain expenditures, imposing overall spending ceilings, and transferring some costs to the state.... [It] requires full disclosure of donors, contributions, and costs higher than a specified minimum, and provides mechanisms for reporting, checking, and publicizing the declarations made by parties and candi dates." The impact of these drastically changed rules on the financing of campaigns will be of interest to all concerned with the problem. In addition to the essays contributed by Irvine and Paltiel, John Meisel discusses the nature and development of the Canadian party system and the "civic culture" within which the parties operate; Stephen Clarkson, George Perlin, Jo Surich, and Michael B. Stein separately contribute chapters on the campaigns of the Liberal, Pro gressive Conservative, NDP, and Social Credit parties; Lawrence LeDuc describes Canadian opinion polls and the results of the polling during the campaign; and Frederick J. Fletcher discusses the role of the media in Canadian elections. The electoral data in the appendix were provided by Richard M. Scammon. Howard R. Penniman 1 THE PARTY SYSTEM AND THE 1974 ELECTION John Meisel Party systems in complex societies provide the key to an under standing of how the demands of the population are converted into governmental outputs. This is not to say that interest groups, bureaucracies, and nonpartisan territorial or ethnic configurations may not exercise mighty influences on public decisions; but the interaction among the various power centers is orchestrated by the party system. To evaluate an election, therefore, it is necessary to study its conse quences not only for the legislative period immediately following, but also for the long-run interaction among political parties and between the respective parties and their publics. Although they are in part shaped by a series of specific election outcomes, party systems reflect and respond to a broad spectrum of influences which transcend elections and go to the very roots of society. This discussion of Canada's party system at the time of the country's thirtieth general election, therefore, begins by noting the more or less fixed, nonpolitical constraints within which the parties have been shaped and within which they breathe; from here it moves to more narrowly political but largely nonpartisan influences.