Out of the blows they suffered by their stronger imperialist competitors to the south—largely over trade, especially in lumber and beef—the Canadian rulers emerged weakened, which was registered in the elections.

At the same time, the crisis of the ruling class did not translate into a strengthening of the labor movement, which has been in decline for some time. The employers and their government—from the federal to the provincial levels—have remained on the offensive against working people.

On June 28, a minority Liberal government was elected in Canada after a short five-week campaign.

As the Toronto Globe and Mail put it three days before the election, Canada’s ruling rich came out of what they had initially anticipated as a Liberal landslide with “a deeply fractured Parliament” along regional and national lines—a further step in a process initiated more than a decade ago under the impact of the world capitalist crisis, which has accelerated recently under the blows of Washington.

With 36.7 percent of the votes cast, the incumbent Liberal Party headed by Paul Martin won 135 of the 308 seats in the federal parliament—more than half of them in Ontario.

The Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper got 99 deputies and 29.6 percent of the vote, most of them in the western provinces. The party retained its status as official opposition in Ottawa.

The Bloc Quebecois won 54 seats in parliament, all in Quebec. While the Bloc received only 12.4 percent of the vote across Canada, it scooped up nearly 50 percent of the ballots cast in Quebec.

Quebecois constitute an oppressed nationality in Canada based on their language, French. The sharp rise of votes for the Bloc coincides with the highest support for Quebec independence since the 1995 referendum on sovereignty for the province. According to two recent polls, about 50 percent of Quebecois back independence now.

The social-democratic New Democratic Party headed by Jack Layton got 19 seats in the federal parliament, and 15.7 percent of the vote nationwide, a 7 percent increase.

Polls had anticipated the election of a minority government from the beginning of the campaign, with a several-week neck-and-neck race between the Liberals and the Conservatives. In the final days before the election, there was a shift in Ontario toward the Liberals. This was the result of a successful effort by the governing party to exploit statements by Conservative candidates against abortion rights and gay rights, and for bringing back the death penalty.

In fact, the Conservative Party got a smaller portion of the vote in these elections than the combined total of its two predecessors in the 2000 election, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party. This was further confirmation of a conjunctural shift to the left in bourgeois politics.

The election campaign was characterized by demagogic pledges from all parties, including the Conservatives, to inject millions of dollars into the health care and education systems that they themselves had decimated; a high level of patriotic Canadian and anti-American nationalism; and a coarsening of bourgeois politics and increased Quebec-bashing.

One feature of the election was the level of abstention—nearly 40 percent—the highest in any federal election since the establishment of Canada in 1867 and the continuation of a decades-long trend.

Strikingly, none of the main parties running for office addressed the real question at the heart of the rulers’ crisis—their political and economic conflict with their main imperialist rival and partner to the south, Washington.

In fact, there was a convergence during the election campaign among all parties toward supporting the Liberal government’s decision to not send troops to Iraq last year. In the case of the Conservatives, this was a marked shift from their stance at the time of the war.

There was no working-class voice in these elections. The officialdom of the Canadian Labor Congress quietly called on its members to vote NDP.

A “socialist” imperialist party, the NDP led a campaign to put pressure on the Liberals from the left of the bourgeois political spectrum, centered on the perspective of joining a coalition government with the Liberals. This dream of the NDP leaders was not realized, since the party won fewer seats in federal parliament than they were anticipating.  
 
 
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