by Running through all the what-if scenarios that could unfold over the next few weeks has become a favorite activity for Canadian junkies. Here’s one that just occurred to me. What happens in the (unlikely, according to constitutional experts) event that Michaelle Jean granted a request by Stephen Harper for a dissolution of Parliament? We’d have an election. And here’s where things would get even more interesting.
Running through all the what-if scenarios that could unfold over the next few weeks has become a favorite activity for Canadian junkies. Here’s one that just occurred to me. What happens in the (unlikely, according to constitutional experts) event that Michaelle Jean granted a request by Stephen Harper for a dissolution of Parliament? We’d have an election. And here’s where things would get even more interesting.
The Conservatives would run the full slate of candidates (with the possible exception of not running against Andre Arthur) and I’d expect the Bloc to run its 75 candidates as well. But what would the Liberals and NDP do? Would they run against each other? The danger in doing so is that they would risk splitting non-Conservative votes and possibly help facilitate a Conservative majority. It would be hard to run against each other since they now apparently have so much common ground. I could see them not running against each other’s incumbents, but how would you divide up the other districts?
Even if the coalition government goes through, the question of how this would affect electoral competition is one the two parties would have to confront at some point. Most countries with coalition governments have proportional representation electoral systems, where the parties can safely run against each other because there isn’t much fear of vote-splitting being an issue. But in a single-member plurality system, this is a big issue and could presumably lead to some kind of non-competition agreement. Ironically, though, this would reduce the absolute number of votes for both the Liberals and the NDP which, as we all know, are worth $1.95 per year.
The more you think about this, the more you realize it really is uncharted territory.