Maybe we are talking about different sciences here but you would think that politics and energy would have some similar characteristics. What we are thinking of here is the tendency of the politics of the left to react to the actions of the politics of the right. For example, if Canada’s right-wing parties split would there be a reaction in the left-wing parties?
And knock off the laughter. You do not have to be too old to remember the days of the Reform and Alliance parties fighting with the Old Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Nobody ever said that the political manipulations of Stephen Harper were dumb.
And there is nothing left of centre in the party that Justin Trudeau is carving out of the old Liberal Party of Canada. He is creating a populist movement that is much further to the right than anyone anticipated. We are finally seeing a party that promises some pot for every chick.
But what happens to the left of centre liberals? And there will be lots of environmentalists who will be former Liberal Party members. Splitting all these people between the New Democrats and the Greens will not be a realistic solution.
Real Liberals hold to a basic tenet of the rights of the individual. That conflicts directly with the collectivism of the union-controlled NDP. Liberals will also find that the somewhat scattered policies of an immature Green Party are far behind the freedoms of modern liberalism.
Little is going to happen other than talk before the 2019 election but by that time, we should see some of the impact of recent changes. We expect Justin Trudeau to be in a strong position to run a more right-wing campaign in hopes of picking up a substantial share of the old Progressive Conservatives.
Left-wing liberals will waste their votes on the NDP and Greens and do nobody any good. Western Conservatives will split the country giving little support to the hated Liberals—even though the Trudeau government is supporting their exploitive energy extraction and pipelines economy.
After the election debacle in 2019, cooler heads to the left will start to see the potential for a more centrist social democratic political party in Canada. The creation of that party will take time but it can be done. It will be something in which Canadians can take pride.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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