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Prime Minister Jack Layton?

Tony Wanless

| April 26, 2011

Image by: BCBusiness

As Canada cleaves between left and right, the federal political landscape is coming to resemble BC's.

Next week’s federal election is still about nothing, in terms of issues. But it is shaping up to be about the political landscape of this country, which is becoming more like the B.C. model.

As we near the end of this incredibly boring election campaign, it’s suddenly become interesting.

Not because there are any substantive issues – it’s been all bromides and attack ads so far – but because, it appears, this country is being divided up between left and right.

I guess in that sense, politically, the Rest Of Canada (ROC) is becoming more like B.C.

There’s this amazing surge by the NDP. This is followed by an apparent collapse of the centre, the traditional ground of the federal Liberals.

Many pundits try to paint this as due to the leaders – the Conservatives' Stephen Harper, the new Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, and the NDP’s Jack Layton – but I think that’s a trite and easy analysis.

It’s more than that.

Essentially, the Conservative campaign has worked in that it is forcing the country to choose between Conservatives and NDP – right and left – and squeezing the middle out of the equation. All those Canadians who were traditionally centrist are starting to choose up sides because it appears to them that they have to.

Obviously, the Conservatives believe that the majority of those in the centre will move over to their side because they’re straddling the centre right, and so are less threatening. The NDP is benefiting from those on the centre left who couldn’t stomach voting Conservative.

This is, of course, a lousy choice for most Canadians who have always stuck firmly to the middle.

But here in B.C., we’re used to it.

We’ve been living with this kind of centre right-centre left politics for decades. Sometimes it strays too far to one side or the other, and we get all upset and change things. But mostly we just enjoy the fight.

It makes for the kind of fractious politics for which we’re famous. In this province, which coined the term, "socialist hordes are at the gates," it's bare-knuckle all the time. And when that doesn't work, we pull out the knives and guns.

I think the ROC is welcome to it. This kind of interesting politics may be fun for a while, but is generally pretty destructive. It will be interesting to see if they think it's so great in a few years.