Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Another thing to note about the ONDP: I've been working on the phone for a Liberal nomination campaign recently (so take my insights with a grain of salt, most people I speak to are former or current Liberals from our calling list).

I've heard complaints about Horwath from my calls though. A lot of people find her style abrasive and uncalled for, and don't really believe that the NDP would do much better. This isn't really my opinion but a lot of these people voted NDP in 2018 and aren't impressed with Horwath now, which leaves "coming home" to the Liberals as the logical option for many of these politically minded left-leaners.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Devastating poll for the CPC if true, but the methodology is horrendous. Only Ontario is within an acceptable MoE, the rest is way too high and SK/MB are over 20% in MoE!

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Another thing to note about the ONDP: I've been working on the phone for a Liberal nomination campaign recently (so take my insights with a grain of salt, most people I speak to are former or current Liberals from our calling list).

I've heard complaints about Horwath from my calls though. A lot of people find her style abrasive and uncalled for, and don't really believe that the NDP would do much better. This isn't really my opinion but a lot of these people voted NDP in 2018 and aren't impressed with Horwath now, which leaves "coming home" to the Liberals as the logical option for many of these politically minded left-leaners.

A female politician is seen as being abrasive? Where have I heard that before... You'd think those Liberals would've learned a thing or two after the treatment Wynne got. Anyway, Liberals will make any excuse possible to not vote NDP, so *shrugs shoulders*

I know, I don't think it's a fair criticism either because Horwath handles herself pretty professionally as an opposition leader. Interestingly this kind of stuff seems to come mainly from older women, but I know that being a woman doesn't bar you from having unrealistic standards for female politicians. Regardless, the fact that this seems to be a fairly common critique across several ridings is a problem for Horwath. Like it or not, a path to NDP victory in Ontario requires winning over Liberal leaners.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I think the centre-left in Canada got lucky that this leftward transition took place when the Liberals were in power. Governments can do a lot more than the opposition when it comes to shifting the scope of policy discussion, and the Liberals caught onto this global leftward swing and adapted government policy and comms accordingly, leaving the opposition parties in a difficult position. Whereas a lot of other global centre-left parties (in my very basic observation, I'm not all that familiar) either failed to ditch the Third Way stuff or overshot it and moved way too far to the left.

It's the exact opposite in the UK (compared to Canada). The 2010-present Tory era started out very much on the economic right, but Johnson caught onto the trend and shifted the Tories to a more situationally appropriate style. Hell, even the GOP could have capitalized on this trend, and a more economically populist form of conservatism has grown in recent years. Unfortunately for the GOP, and luckily for the Democrats, Trump turned out to be an incompetent oaf who just couldn't help himself from being awful.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

There is a market for some cultural conservatism in Canada. Most immigrants come from social environments that are deeply, deeply conservative by western standards. It's the kind that Jason "Curry in a Hurry" Kenney pandered to a decade ago. The Fords also won big. Harper destroyed Kenney's work in 2015, and Doug Ford is just a failure.

My local constituency both has Canada's highest average house price and the highest proportion of Muslims. The Liberal MP is openly gay, and he likes to say that what protects his freedom to live his lifestyle also protects Muslims' freedom to live theirs. The subtext, of course, is that cultural conservatism is wedded to xenophobia, and that damages attempts to build a multiracial conservative coalition.

Don Valley West?

But yeah the whole "culturally conservative immigrants will move Canada to the right" hypothesis doesn't seem to be panning out. Even the 2011 performance is misunderstood by many. Ipsos did a huge online exit poll for the 2011 federal election, and while it suggests that the CPC won the immigrant vote at-large and did disproportionately well with this group, recent immigrants (less than 10 years in Canada) were won by the NDP. Similarly, visible minorities also voted NDP and the Liberals also overperformed with this group, with the CPC underperforming noticeably (31% from visible minorities vs 40% generally). Muslims in particular had little interest in Harperism - they voted 46% LPC and 38% NDP, with a measly 12% for the CPC. And if social/cultural conservatism was driving immigrants to vote Tory, you'd think more than one-in-eight Muslims would vote for them.

I couldn't find the original Ipsos exit poll, the link I posted is from Vancouver Sun and only shows some highlights. If someone has the right source, please drop it here and I'll love you forever. How I wish actual exit polls were a thing in Canada.

So even when Mr. Curry in a Hurry was running around the GTA barnstorming every mosque, gurdwara, and ethnic strip mall he could find, recent/non-white immigrants still preferred the centre-left. Doesn't mean this so-con immigrant vote will never exist, but it seems like Tories just keep setting themselves up for disappointment with this narrative.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Most likely but will be interesting to see how close.  I do think there is an outside chance Liberals pull off an upset, but unlikely.

Very, very unlikely, but you're right, the margins may be the most interesting part. Of course, there could just be a general election by the time the byelection is set to happen.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

For people's thoughts on direction of country wondering what people think on following below:

1.  Notley wins in Alberta even against a united right.
2.  Liberals in 2025 under Freeland make a big breakthrough in Alberta (she is originally from there)
3.  NDP beats Tories in votes in next election.
4.  Tories get under 25% of the popular vote
5.  Liberals remain in government continuously past 2030

Any thoughts on these?  I think each has a reasonable chance at happening although #1 probably most likely, others more questionable but still possible.

1. Good chance of this happening. I think the UCP will lose loads of seats in Calgary, and as goes Calgary, so goes Alberta. If they dump Kenney though, maybe they can pull off a "see the bad man is gone!" move.

2. I doubt her Alberta connection will have that much of an effect. She'll be less hated than Trudeau, and that's about it. A "breakthrough" in Alberta is likely to happen in Edmonton and parts of Calgary, where the population is heavily made up of newer arrivals with little connection to 'Berta.

3. Nope. The only way this happens is if the fringe right-wing parties become not so fringe anymore. If the NDP reaches beyond 20% it will be because something big hurts the Liberals' popularity. But that situation will also help the CPC.

4. See #3. There have been some bad polls recently, but I think the CPC will rally come election time and reach around 30%.

5. History suggests this is unlikely. The last time one party was consecutively in power for that long were the 1963-1979 Pearson-Trudeau governments, and this was back when the Liberals could count on winning the vast majority of Quebec seats every year. Of course there's a possibility that we have Conservatives winning minorities and the NDP propping up the Grits. But let's not forget, Saint-Jack-de-la-Vague-Orange once brought down a Liberal government and gave way to Harper. The NDP won't play second fiddle forever.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

On the Senate, I find it very odd to have a House of Commons and a Senate. The latter just seems so republican...
What Trudeau did seems sensible - much better than Tony Blair's idea of electing the Lords.

What are the NDP pushing for?

"Senate" is a bit of a misnomer for what Canada has, it's basically a less aristocratic House of Lords (no life hereditary peers). The Queen's Representative appoints Senators based on the Prime Minister's advice, who serve until they turn 75. Senate seats are allocated by province, but it's not equal. The Senate apportionment formula is actually ridiculous and horribly outdated.

Historically the Senate was basically used for partisan patronage, but in recent years Prime Ministers have caught on that this is frowned upon, and focused on appointing "esteemed Canadians." Harper actually wanted very substantive senate reforms including senate elections, but the Supreme Court ruled that this could not be done without a constitutional amendment, and that was the end of that. The Senate issue didn't end up looking so good for Harper by the end of his premiership, however...

Trudeau's reforms were smaller than what Harper wanted, but he actually achieved something. For one, there is a "Senate Appointment Committee" (or something to that effect) that advises the PM on who to appoint. Ultimately it's his choice and I'm sure there's some quasi-patronage that goes on, but at least there's an independent process to select candidates, instead of just giving the job to the PM's drinking buddies.

Literally any Canadian citizen can apply to be a Senator now when there's a vacancy, the committee looks at applications and makes a list to recommend to the PM, and he picks who gets to sit in the chamber.

Trudeau also abolished the Senate Liberal Party to make it less partisan and less tied to the House, but this is more of an internal reform within the Liberal Party and the Senate Conservatives still exist.

The NDP wants to abolish the Senate entirely (or at least they did in 2015, it's not a very relevant issue these days). I get where they're coming from considering how useless and scandal-prone our Senators have been, but I prefer Trudeau's approach of making the Senate a more effective and meritocratic institution instead of just abolishing it entirely.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Interesting - the Tories taking a more 'progressive' if you will approach to constitutional issues. This is the sort of area where I could imagine Trudeau - from my admittedly limited understanding - taking quite a 'progressive,' Blairite stance; but what he has done seems like a good solution. (Does the formula favour small provinces like Yukon, Prince Edward Island etc.?)

Here's the wacky thing about Canada-UK political partisan comparisons: ideologically, Tories=Tories, Liberals=LibDem/Soft Left Labour. But when it comes to constitutional issues and insider culture, our Liberals are your Tories, and our Tories are your Labour. The LPC is more institutional, more centralist, and associated with the "establishment", while the CPC is more decentralist, populist, and associated with the "hinterlands". As such, the CPC takes a more Labour-esque stance on constitutional issues, while the LPC takes a more Tory-ish one.

The Senate allocation formula is a mess. I've never met an honest, non-hackish CanPoli observer who doesn't think so. But Tory supporters mostly come from the underrepresented west and so the party cares more about it, and Liberal supporters mostly come from Central and Eastern Canada where this is a non-issue so the party doesn't bother.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Interesting - the Tories taking a more 'progressive' if you will approach to constitutional issues. This is the sort of area where I could imagine Trudeau - from my admittedly limited understanding - taking quite a 'progressive,' Blairite stance; but what he has done seems like a good solution. (Does the formula favour small provinces like Yukon, Prince Edward Island etc.?)

Liberals=LibDem/Soft Left Labour. But when it comes to constitutional issues and insider culture, our Liberals are your Tories

Sounds excellent! Is this at all what the Progressive Conservatives were like?

By the way, soft left in relation to Labour actually means the left of the Labour Party, but not the hardliners (this dates from the 1981 deputy leadership); the soft left isn't the Blairite/right wing of the party (I think).

My knowledge of UK politics is pretty rudimentary so I might be using the wrong terms, although I wouldn't say the Liberals are that Blairite these days. Under Chretien and Martin they were definitely more in line with the Blair/Clinton consensus (minus the war), but under Justin Trudeau they've moved more to the left.

It's hard to compare because political terms are used so differently in the two countries. "Social democrat" refers to moderates within the Labour party, but here in Canada, that's a term used by the NDP which is much more Corbynite. The Liberals are not and have never been a workers' party so their rhetoric is certainly more "bourgeois", and they're more business-oriented. But when it comes to social welfare spending and things of that nature, I don't really see much of a difference between Justin Trudeau and a median Labour politician like Miliband or Starmer (my examples might be wrong, but you know what I mean - left of Blair, right of Corbyn)

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Interesting - the Tories taking a more 'progressive' if you will approach to constitutional issues. This is the sort of area where I could imagine Trudeau - from my admittedly limited understanding - taking quite a 'progressive,' Blairite stance; but what he has done seems like a good solution. (Does the formula favour small provinces like Yukon, Prince Edward Island etc.?)

Liberals=LibDem/Soft Left Labour. But when it comes to constitutional issues and insider culture, our Liberals are your Tories

Sounds excellent! Is this at all what the Progressive Conservatives were like?


By the way, soft left in relation to Labour actually means the left of the Labour Party, but not the hardliners (this dates from the 1981 deputy leadership); the soft left isn't the Blairite/right wing of the party (I think).

Ehh, kinda. Canadian politics (esp. before the 21st century) was nothing if not big tent. Both the Liberals and PCs were institutional Tory-ish parties, but the PCs had a populist wing out west that eventually took over.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

My understanding is that the Reform Party took the western base?

That's basically it.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

My understanding is that the Reform Party took the western base?

That's basically it.

So what were the PCs like?

Depends on the era. Roughly, I'd break it down as such:

1867-1942: High Tory Era. This was before the "Progressive" label. Predominantly high tories, lots of connections to the Orange Order and other such groups, identified more strongly with Britain than North America, and were skeptical of federalism and decentralization. Economically they believed in classical economics like most non-socialist parties of the time. They were the party of big business interests and generally favoured high tarrifs and minimal government intervention except on things like infrastructure.

1942-1983: Red Tory Era. By now, Canadians were much more North American and there was less loyalty to the empire (of which Canada stopped being a part in 1931). Being the party of big business also hurt their popularity during the economic crises of 1920s-30s. In 1942, the Tories made a dramatic shift to the left and started appealing more to farmers/western provinces. "Prairie populist" Diefenbaker finally led them to power, and while the PCs had limited success in the era, they managed to bring the west into the fold by adopting a more populist version of conservatism.

1983-1993: The Blue Tory Era. The business wing (blue tories) of the party had been growing since the 1970s, and in 1983, Quebec lawyer/businessman Brian Mulroney became leader. He was elected with a landslide in 1984 on a promise of supply side economics to counter stagflation and public debt, and constitutional reform to satisfy Quebec and the West where Pierre Trudeau's 1982 constitution was unpopular. His PC coalition included the majority of seats in every province, and he brought his normally-Liberal home province into the PC fold. But then he completely flopped as PM and left before the 1993 to avoid humiliation at the polls. His successor (and first and only woman PM) Kim Campbell was the sacrificial lamb who did even worse than expected, stooping so low as to put out this attack ad, to which Chretien responded like the absolute king he is.

1993-2003: The Dead Tory Era. 1993 was a humiliation, winning only two seats. They had a bit of a dead cat bounce in 1997, but it was clear that the writing was on the wall. In 2003, a young Nova Scotian named Peter MacKay became the PC leader on a promise of NOT merging with the Canadian Alliance (Reform Party rebrand), a promise he promptly broke. And like that, the Progressive Party of Canada was dead.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

When I say Mulroney flopped I don't mean he was inconsequential. Like Frank said his government actually got quite a bit done. But he never got anything done on reducing the deficit, a promise he ran on and most Tories wanted. More substantively, he spent much of his premiership trying to reform the Pierre Trudeau constitution, and failed repeatedly.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

2004-present: Ideological Tory era.  Since then Tories have a strong base largely rooted in West but also strong in rural Ontario and generally have a hard floor of 30%.  But unlike old PCs, have far fewer who have them as second choice meaning while stronger base ability to win means pretty much winning over every person open to voting Tory which is not easy.  Also unlike past era much more ideological although party careful not to go too right, but more because of fear of electoral consequences not principles like old PCs.  More than anything membership is very much from Reform side and is more interested in ideological purity than winning.

Good catch. I didn't include the 2004-present CPC because they're not officially PCs, and they have little in common with the likes of Stanfield.

I would call 2004-present the "Harper Tory Era", because the modern CPC is very much a spawn of the Harperite fusion of Reform populism with traditional Conservative priorities

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

West Vancouver-Sea to Sky is a weird choice for someone of Avi Lewis' profile to run in. AFAIK he doesn't have any particular connection to that area, so if he's getting parachuted, why not somewhere the NDP actually has a shot? Challenging the Green Party for third place seems like a waste of time.

He looks like a good fit for left-wing, activist-y urban areas like Parkdale-High Park or Ottawa Centre, but places like that seem pretty locked in for the Liberals for now. Maybe somewhere like Halifax he could eat into the Green/left-Liberal vote and challenge Fillmore. But surely, surely he can find a better place than WestVan-Sea-to-Sky

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Plus the rural vote is less monolithically right-wing than in the US or Australia.   Atlantic Canada and rural Quebec don't vote like the Prairies or rural Ontario. 

Rural areas tend to be more conservative, but once you get remote, the pendulum tends to swing back. If you take a look at remote communities in Canada, it's clear why "small government" rhetoric doesn't have much appeal. In many of these remote communities the local Canada Post office is their lifeblood, for example. The private sector largely neglects these places, so the public service runs loss-making offices to provide essential services. It's exactly the opposite in, say, rural Southwestern Ontario, where local farmers are probably annoyed that they pay taxes to fund transit projects in Toronto that they will never interact with. Their livelihoods are mostly sustained by the private sector, and they interact with private contractors, supply chain managers, and agri-food companies way more than they ever would with the government.

When you break it down into rural and remote, it becomes clear that Canada is less rural than countries like the US and the UK, and more remote.

Atlantic Canada is another factor, it's Canada's "celtic fringe" like Scotland/Wales/Cornwall in the UK. Atlantic Canada isn't strictly "left wing", however. The Liberals out east are quite a bit more right-wing than the LPC, and the their PCs are quite a bit more left-wing than the CPC. On balance, Atlantic Canadians are centrists who prefer the Liberals federally who are more likely to pour money into their struggling communities.

Finally, there's Quebec. It's very rare to have a subnational jurisdiction as large as Quebec where the right-wing party(ies) rarely cross 20% of the vote. Sure they have a CAQ government right now and the PLQ leans right as well, but both parties' rhetoric on economics, social programs, and social issues (minus identity/immigration) are pretty centrist. Since the Quiet Revolution, "conservative" has been an almost universally negatively-perceived label in Quebec (and even before that they didn't vote Conservative for cultural reasons).

Quebec alone provides a huge boost to the left-leaning parties in Canada. For example, Harper's CPC in 2011 got over 45% of the popular vote if you ignore Quebec. However this election probably wouldn't even have happened, because a Quebec-less Canada would have given Harper a majority in 2008 (133 Tories, 63 Grits, 36 Dippers, and 1 Bill Casey). Similarly the 2019 election would have returned 122 Grits, 111 Tories, 23 Dippers, 3 Greens, and 1 Jody Wilson-Raybould - a much closer call than IRL.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I think what's most likely to happen federally in Alberta is just a sharp drop in turnout, which could hand 1-5 seats to the LPC, but I think a drop in turnout will be a much bigger factor than vote-switching. Kenney has alienated centrists by being a wingnut, the hard right by not being enough of a wingnut, and O'Toole's carbon tax stuff isn't going down well. But the Liberals are still Liberals and Trudeau is still Trudeau, and even urban Alberta doesn't like the Liberals. It took immense Trudeaumania and Harper fatigue for the LPC to win four seats in urban Alberta, all of which had sub-10% margins and three of them were sub-5%. The federal NDP is not the provincial NDP. And the Maverick Party/PPC will probably pick up votes on the right, but they're still fringe parties. There are plenty of anti-carbon tax voters who don't believe in Wexit or that COVID is a hoax. I think these voters will just refuse to turn out.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

https://twitter.com/MumilaaqQaqqaq/status/1395474408433618944?s=19
Surprised, I'm not sure I quite understand why she's not reoffering. Obviously not the best news for the NDP. It must be so difficult to represent a riding like Nunavut, not just due to its size but because of the sheer challenge of it.

Qaqqaq has taken multiple leaves of absence and has voiced her displeasure with parliament. She also caused a mini-controversy when she questioned Liberal Labrador MP Yvonne Jones' Inuit heritage. I don't know anything about the NunatuKavut Inuit/Métis debate or how actual Inuit feel about this, but making incendiary comments about "racial purity" is a bad look.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Atlantic Canada is another factor, it's Canada's "celtic fringe" like Scotland/Wales/Cornwall in the UK. Atlantic Canada isn't strictly "left wing", however. The Liberals out east are quite a bit more right-wing than the LPC, and the their PCs are quite a bit more left-wing than the CPC. On balance, Atlantic Canadians are centrists who prefer the Liberals federally who are more likely to pour money into their struggling communities.

O'Toole seems like a good fit for Atlantic Canada (populist economics, defense of Anglo-Canadian "traditions", military background etc.) but doesn't seem to be catching on. 

True, but Trudeau hasn't given them a reason to stop voting Liberal. Parties get voted out, not in.

Besides, O'Toole hasn't gotten much air time yet, a lot of people still haven't heard of him or know what he stands for. Perhaps he would be a good fit for Atlantic Canada, but Trudeau and the Liberal government are quite popular out there, so it's a tough task.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Fun fact about that referendum: Gilles Duceppe spoiled his ballot. Instead of voting yes or no he wrote about the need for Quebecers to focus on the real enemy: Capitalism.

Yep, he was a Maoist into his 30s. A Maoist.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Fun fact about that referendum: Gilles Duceppe spoiled his ballot. Instead of voting yes or no he wrote about the need for Quebecers to focus on the real enemy: Capitalism.

Yep, he was a Maoist into his 30s. A Maoist.

Well, that's really no worse than being a Randian, and that's mainstream in some circles.

Sure, but Maoism was never a popular form of communism in developed western countries. I wouldn't be surprised if he was a Trot or a Marxist-Leninist, but Maoism always struck me as a more postcolonial, third-world thing.

Then again many 60s era Quebec nationalists would consider themselves victims of colonialism and reasonably comparable to enslaved African-Americans, so what do I know

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Surprised nobody's brought up Quebec's unilateral amendment of the constitution.

I'm not surprised Trudeau supported this decision, he needs Legault voters in the next election. But he may just have opened up a can of worms.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Surprised nobody's brought up Quebec's unilateral amendment of the constitution.

I'm not surprised Trudeau supported this decision, he needs Legault voters in the next election. But he may just have opened up a can of worms.

I could see a right wing party, especially Jason Kenney in Alberta, seeking to declare their province with English as the only official language and getting a unilateral amendment to the constitution to get it declared as such.  

We'll see if there is a large desire to still remove French from cereal boxes, but even more, we'll see if the federal Liberals and the other national parties show a double standard in the treatment of Quebec and the English speaking provinces.

One other possibility is a new English rights federal party starting up in Quebec.  That could threaten at least 5 to maybe 10 Liberal seats in Montreal.

Well Alberta and all provinces but Quebec and NB don't have French as official languages already so they wouldn't need to use this precedent to do anything.

There isn't a consensus among legal scholars though, even if Quebec's move is legitimate it's unprecedented. If nothing, this move creates ambiguity and that's the thing I worry about most because the last few years have made me lose faith in premiers, who too often play with the mechanisms of confederation to get their way on petty political wins.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I had earlier suggested Liberals being in power past 2030 and I actually think its more likely than many think for simple reason for Tories it is now majority or bust.  There is no way the NDP will in a minority ever prop up Tories even if they win more seats than Liberals.  They are well aware what has happened to similar parties like SPD in Germany, Dutch Labour, Irish Labour, and PASOK in Greece who all propped up right of centre governments and each party took a big hit after.  They even now have a term for that, called PASOK'd and NDP knows if they propped up Tories it would obliterate party.   In past we were much less polarized so a left wing party supporting a right wing as long as they made concessions was more acceptable than today.

So the issue becomes how do Tories win a majority.  Tories winning most seats is likely to happen before 2030, but winning majority becomes a real challenge.  Quebec outside of their strongholds in the Chaudiere-Appalaches and Quebec City region rarely elects many Tory MPs.  I guess if they have a native son like say Gerald Detell, maybe they breakthrough like Brian Mulroney did, but I doubt their Prairie base would ever tolerate a Quebec leader unless it was a crazy one like Maxime Bernier who wouldn't do well in Quebec.  So with Quebec, out of the picture, that means 2/3 of seats in rest of Canada and that is extremely difficult to do.  Not impossible, but only been done three times in last century (1958, 1984, and 2011) and first two involved big breakthroughs in Quebec.  1917 and 2011 only times Tories got a majority totally sidestepping Quebec.  1917 was over conscription crisis where Quebec and rest of Canada stood on opposite ends, but don't see anything on horizon likely to create similar divide. 

Yes I guess perhaps, if Tories win a plurality and NDP decides to prop up Liberals, public swings en masse next time to Tories to get change, but point being Tories face basically an insurmountable hill to win a majority much like Labour in UK.  Difference is Labour in UK at least is preferred by most smaller parties over Tories so they can form government by just reducing Tories to a plurality, total opposite of Canada.

All of what you said is valid, but let's keep one thing in mind - the Canadian electorate is erratic and hard to predict. Only a few months before the 2011 election, nobody saw the NDP forming official opposition and sweeping Quebec. And when the 2015 campaign started, you would have been laughed out of the room for predicting a Liberal majority. Sure things are different now without Harper, but the voters in this country are remarkably nonpartisan and things can change dramatically. I think the Liberals would be making a huge mistake if they take a blasé or complacent approach.