The Conservative Party of Canada accidentally revealed a problem at their leadership vote over the weekend.
I鈥檓 not talking about the extremely delayed vote count, which was attributed to a machine tearing ballots. Though that was a source of amusement, especially as people waited impatiently for the leadership results, it鈥檚 something that could happen to any party, and hopefully everyone learns a lesson from those headaches.
The problem is more closely connected to the results of the ballots themselves. Overall, it was a close race, requiring a third ballot before the results were actually known - with Erin O鈥橳oole finally squeaking out a win. From the overall vote count you would assume it was a very tight race between O鈥橳oole, Peter MacKay and Leslyn Lewis. Derek Sloan was also there, but functioned as more of a novelty act, a kind of spectre to get left-leaning Canadians to get scared by the more fringe elements of the party.
However, the party decided that the best course of action was to reveal the first ballot province-by-province, and in doing so they accidentally revealed a major problem not only within the party, but in the country as a whole.
There is some dramatic regional division going on, and the Conservative Party itself put it on full display.
We鈥檝e always known there is regional division, and the results of any given federal election is a pretty good example of that division. After all, the west seems to vote Conservative no matter what, the east is solidly Liberal, Quebec tends to sway the agenda in their favor and Ontario seems to hold all the cards. There are clear regional divisions within the House of Commons that happen to be connected to party lines.
However, the regional divides are even more dramatic when you consider the leadership race that took place. Because it wasn鈥檛 a close race at all, it was 10 wildly different, sometimes lopsided races that wound up shaking out to a single close race. MacKay dominated the Maritimes and the eastern provinces, Lewis took Saskatchewan and was a strong contender in Alberta, O鈥橳oole was dominant in Quebec and took Alberta. The only consistent was that Sloan was nowhere near 小蓝视频 a contender - though he beat out MacKay in Saskatchewan, which isn鈥檛 an indication of Sloan鈥檚 popularity but instead showing that Saskatchewan had no interest in voting for MacKay.
Lewis effectively lost because she had no real base in Quebec - a tale as old as time in Canadian politics. But looking at the results one can see that each region had very different priorities and made a different choice. At Lewis鈥� campaign event in Yorkton, she fielded many questions and concerns about how she could deal with a divided Canada, and a west that feels alienated.
This isn鈥檛 a problem exclusive to the Conservatives. It鈥檚 easy to have a platitude about O鈥橳oole needing to bring people together, but honestly it goes deeper than that. The divisions within parties themselves, let alone the nation, aren鈥檛 anywhere near healing, and will likely get stoked again as a driver of votes next federal election.
The divide exists because it鈥檚 politically expedient to stoke it. The west stays a safe Conservative seat so long as the rest of Canada is against us, Quebec is a battleground because that province has figured out how to use it for their own gain, Ontario 小蓝视频 a seat of power is as useful as residents of that province as it is for parties trying to win votes in other provinces.
Canada鈥檚 problems won鈥檛 be solved by Erin O鈥橳oole. Nor will they be solved by Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh. In reality, they have no interest in solving these problems until it鈥檚 politically expedient to do so, and right now it isn鈥檛. As a country, we have to put effort in, from the local level, to make unity make sense, rather than buy into the forces that want to use our divisions against us. We鈥檙e going to be divided until we prove that we don鈥檛 want to be anymore.
A desire to be a hard done by underdog is 小蓝视频 used against us, and until we develop the self-awareness to stop that we鈥檙e choosing the path of least unity. Nobody is going to bring us together but ourselves, and it鈥檚 time to realize that maybe we might want to actually attempt some unity and common ground.
