Commentary
By John Ibbitson
The Liberal government’s defeat in the Oct. 14 Newfoundland and Labrador election leaves only one Liberal provincial government remaining in all the land—that of Premier Susan Holt in New Brunswick. As well, the government in Yukon is Liberal.
Better than nine in 10 Canadians live in a province or territory without a Liberal government. Most of the provincial governments are conservatives of one variety of another, with the NDP governing in Manitoba and British Columbia. The governments of the Northwest Territory and Nunavut are consensual.
At the federal level, the Liberals have won four consecutive elections. But they lost the popular vote in two of those elections, and the April 28 federal election was something of a freak, with the Conservatives dropping more than 20 percentage points in only a few weeks.
Liberals governed federally through most of the 20th century because the conservative coalition was incoherent. But that coalition now is both coherent and strengthening. Progressives at the federal and provincial level need to ask honest questions about how their side should respond.
If they don’t, the 21st century may see conservative parties dominant in every capital.
Taking a tour of the pollical horizon, we find that Liberal parties at the provincial level are virtually extinct in the Prairies and B.C. The Grits are the third party in the Ontario legislature and both the Liberals and the governing Coalition Avenir Québec appear headed for defeat at the hands of Parti Québécois after the next Quebec election.
Liberals remain competitive in Atlantic Canada, but the region now accounts for only seven per cent of Canada’s population and is likely to see that share decline as the populations in Ontario and Western Canada continue to grow through immigration.
Federally, the Liberals appear to be as dominant in this century as they were in the last. But those appearances are deceiving.
In the 20th century, conservative parties usually came to power only after voters had wearied of decades of Liberal rule. R.B. Bennett, John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney all enjoyed landslide victories. But Bennett’s government lasted only one term, and his defeat was followed by 22 years of Liberal rule. The Liberals governed for 21 years after the Diefenbaker Progressive Conservatives were defeated in 1963, with the exception of Joe Clark’s brief interregnum in 1979. Mulroney’s PCs were left with only two seats after the 1993 election and never recovered.
Conservative governments at the federal level struggled in the last century because their caucuses usually consisted of nationalist MPs from Quebec, populist conservatives from the West and Red Tories from Ontario. The conservative coalition was incoherent.
But in the 21st century, political and demographic changes began to favour the Conservatives. The western provinces, where the party is most strong, are growing in population and political influence. The Conservative Party of Canada that Stephen Harper led after the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives was also strong in rural Ontario and had some support in Atlantic Canada and in the Beauce region of Quebec.
But Canadian elections are usually won and lost in the 905—the band of suburban cities surrounding Toronto named after the region’s first area code. The region is very similar to the suburban cities of B.C.’s Lower Mainland, and the two regions often vote the same way. Many voters in the 905 and the suburban Lower Mainland are immigrants from countries such as India, China and the Philippines, who are more socially and economically conservative than many native-born Canadians.
Harper won a weak minority government in 2006 with little support in the 905, but then set out to conquer it, with the help of his indefatigable immigration minister, Jason Kenney. In the 2011 election, the 905 decisively swung Tory, delivering Harper his majority government. The Liberals under Justin Trudeau won those voters back in the 2015 election and the 905 sustained him through subsequent elections, though he was reduced to a minority government in the elections of 2019 and 2021. By 2022, the Liberals were effectively governing in coalition with the NDP through a supply and confidence agreement.
The 2025 election should have belonged to the Conservatives who led the Liberals by more than 20 points in early January 2025. We all know the convulsions in Ottawa and Washington that allowed Mark Carney’s Liberals to win a third minority government, with the NDP losing party status in the House. Without those convulsions, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would almost certainly have become prime minister.
Now it’s the turn of progressive voters to decide on how to establish and maintain a coherent coalition. The New Democrats are at risk of extinction federally while the Liberals appear to be headed in the same direction provincially. Should the parties merge? Is one party destined to prevail over the other?
At this point the future is impossible to predict. But one thing we can say: Conservative parties dominate at the provincial level and are now coherent and competitive at the federal level. Progressives will need to establish coherence as well or face a future in opposition.
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