The Death of Centrism?

Why a polarized House of Commons will either kill or rejuvenate Canada's lifelong love affair with the political centre.

A robust Conservative majority and a fresh-faced NDP opposition means Parliament is the most ideologically divided it's been in years. The Ottawa Citizen's Dan Gardner fears the two parties will abandon the centrism that has defined Canadian government since Confederation to energize their respective bases. “If that were to happen, Canadian politics would become increasingly polarized and nasty,” says Gardner. “And Canadians would increasingly be asked to choose between two options which do not reflect the centrist views of the population as a whole.”

Tim Harper of the Toronto Star, on the other hand, thinks a polarized Parliament will do just the opposite: “[It] would quickly become a struggle between the centre-right and the centre-left because, by its very nature, that’s how a polarized system works – it forces ideologues to moderate in order to win votes.” Voters are more likely to force parties to heed their interests, and not the other way around, says Harper. Further, it would stop parties who net less than 40 per cent support from forming a majority government. All told, the will of voters would be better represented ­at the expense of a broader selection of more ideologically driven parties.

And in an analysis that could only come from a poli sci professor, Tom Flanagan explains in The Globe and Mail that the “median voter theorem” (bear with us) all but prevents a bipolar system from heading to the extremes. The MVT posits that if a party moves to the left or the right, it leaves its centrist supporters open to be swayed by the other, keeping the parties indebted to the moderates. “The Conservatives will not privatize health care, and the New Democrats will not nationalize key industries,” says Flanagan. “Maybe they should, but they won’t, because both initiatives would take their proponents too far from the median and leave their opponents room to move in and cut them off from a majority of voters.” Both parties are bound to hurl invective each other's way, but it'll all be over the soft, creamy middle where most Canadians reside.