Politics 2007

When it came to the ballot box, 2007 was quite the year. There were six provincial elections and a territorial one.

Three new premiers strode onto the national stage: Liberal Robert Ghiz in Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall in that province, and Floyd Roland in the Northwest Territories, where nearly a third of the 19 seats changed hands.

In Quebec, the first to go to the polls back in March, Jean Charest's governing Liberals were reduced to a minority, the first there in 129 years.

Related

Elections 2007 interactive

A more confident Gary Doer and his NDP government won re-election in Manitoba in May, as did incumbents Danny Williams, a Progressive Conservative, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Liberal Dalton McGuinty in Ontario, in October, thus completing the coin toss that is Canadian electoral politics — three new faces, three old shoes and a hung jury (Quebec) to be decided anew.

Must be some kind of record. Well, actually, not quite. In fact, in a long list of hectic electoral seasons over the past 20 years, 2007 would only take the bronze.

The big year was 2003 — nine contests, four governments changed hands if you include the N.W.T., where the premier is selected by the legislature at large.

Next on the list would be 1999, eight elections, four new government heads, including again the N.W.T., where they obviously like to keep their political leaders fresh and on their toes. Then, 2007 with seven.

Find the pattern

Notice a pattern here? 1999, 2003, 2007. That's right, a four-year electoral cycle. We appear to have landed ourselves in a rut. And it may well get even more entrenched now that more and more governments are locking themselves into legislated four-year fixed election dates.

Go back over the last couple of decades and a big election year would have maybe five or six, at the most, elections.

Provincial governments of the day tended to look at the calendar and try to guess what the feds were going to do. Then they would plan their own elections either right alongside — or, more often, as far away as possible — depending on what tactic provided the best political cover.

Federal elections tend to stir up the dust, so provinces are often more content to visit with their electorates just in advance of Ottawa or midway through the federal cycle if they can, when things are a little quieter.

The other advantage with being off-cycle from Ottawa is that you get to tap into some of the federal party's top campaign workers, which is a huge benefit in some places.

Remember Expo '67?

The first big electoral cycle of the modern era might be said to have begun in 1967, the Confederation centennial anniversary, when five provincial governments took advantage of the happy mood to seek new mandates. Trudeaumania was less than a year away.

That cycle petered out in 1979 (six elections that year), just before the first Quebec referendum of 1980. The rest of that decade was a bit of a hodgepodge with election dates scattered hither and yon, often after only three years in office, as incumbents sought to dodge some of the more uncomfortable fallout of 1980s politics, notably the free-trade debate and Meech Lake.

The most recent cycle can be said to have begun in 1999, perhaps because those in power were worried about communing with their electorates in the year 2000 when the notion of millennial change might be in the air. And there we sit.

An interesting factor about this latest cycle is the feds are almost a formal afterthought to the big election years. Eight elections in 1999, a federal election isn't called until 2000. Nine elections in 2003; federal election a year later. As for 2007, we will have to wait and see.

Seasonal change

Is there any other pattern here? In 2000 and 2004, Liberal incumbents Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were re-elected, though Martin only squeaked back with a minority government and lost to Conservative Stephen Harper in 2006.

In theory, then, this should bode well for Harper, the incumbent, if his minority government is "forced" to go to the polls in 2008. But of course there are always other factors at play.

Canadians, in their crabbed crofter's wisdom, tend to like their provincial governments to have a different stripe than the party in power in Ottawa, all the better to play one off against the other.

When Trudeau was in power during the 1970s and early 1980s, provincial governments were mostly Conservative. After Conservative Brian Mulroney became prime minister in 1984, provincial governments slowly but surely began turning Liberal: first Quebec, then Ontario (that was a surprise after 43 years of Conservative rule), and not long after, the last of the Atlantic provinces turned colour. The same with Chrétien after 1993.

So where do things stand now, with the Conservative Harper in power and election-palooza 2007 out of the way?

Well, Newfoundland is massively Conservative but not particularly friendly toward Ottawa. In fact, Premier Danny Williams is threatening to back an Anyone But Conservatives slate in the next federal election because of his problems with the feds over the Atlantic Accord.

P.E.I. is newly Liberal after 11 years of Tory rule. Nova Scotia is barely Conservative, a not-quite two-year-old minority that could also be going to the polls in 2008. New Brunswick has a narrow Liberal majority under Shawn Graham and the opposition Conservatives have not yet chosen a successor to former premier Bernard Lord.

Quebec is a Liberal minority, under Jean Charest, a former federal Conservative minister. Ontario is massively Liberal. Manitoba is NDP. The Saskatchewan Party, a bit of an unknown entity, rules in that province. Conservative Alberta, with a new leader, will almost certainly be going to the polls in 2008 as well. B.C. is Liberal in name only.

Let's see, that is, well, pretty confusing. We will just have to see where the chips fall.