By Barry Wilson, Ottawa bureau
The aggressive Conservative campaign for a majority government in the May 2 election is a dramatic shift in tactics for a party that in previous elections has tiptoed around the prospect.
Assuming in the past that Canadians were uneasy about giving almost unfettered majority power to a party that many feared had a “hidden agenda,” party leader Stephen Harper shied away in 2004, 2006 and 2008 from advocating a Conservative majority.
This time he is full steam ahead, insisting yesterday as he has throughout that it is the only way to get the Conservative agenda enacted.
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On the other side of the political divide, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff mused publicly April 19 that if he comes second, he still could be prime minister with the support of the third and fourth place parties.
Both of these positions have injected an issue of debate into this election campaign that has not been obvious in previous campaigns — legitimacy.
On the ground in many ridings across the country, opposition party workers are quietly countering the majority argument by telling voters that if the Conservatives win a majority of seats, they will still win a minority of national votes.
Would it be legitimate for a majority government with a minority of popular support to impose its agenda?
On the other side are the Conservative workers quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) arguing that it would be illegitimate for the “losers” to overthrow a minority government that won the most seats.
Individual voters will have their own take on the legitimacy issues, but Canadian history offers some lessons on both questions.
Does a government with a majority of House of Commons seats have real legitimacy only if it also won the majority of the votes?
Obviously not, since only four governments have won a majority of votes since the political landscape became crowded with regional parties in 1921: Louis St. Laurent in 1949 and 1953, John Diefenbaker in 1958 and Brian Mulroney in 1984.
Every other majority government has enjoyed minority popular support and yet introduced policies that have shaped the country.
R.B. Bennett created the Canadian Wheat Board, the CBC and the Bank of Canada in the 1930s with less than 50 percent support.
William Lyon Mackenzie King began the Canadian welfare state and the growth of federal power without 50 percent popular support.
Pierre Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with little more than a 44 percent mandate.
And Brian Mulroney’s government imposed free trade in 1989 and gun control with 43 percent popular support in the 1988 election.
In our first-past-the-post system, seats count and vote totals not so much.
On the issue of the “losers” overthrowing the government, it is constitutionally perfectly legitimate. A minority government has to keep the confidence of the Commons.
However, Canadian history offers no example in which it has happened.
The first-past-the-post winner of seats always has been given the right to govern through the support or acquiescence of one of the smaller parties, at least until enough time has passed to justify another election.
And for those who argue there are Canadian precedents for coalition government, the only example is not really relevant.
In 1917, Conservative prime minister Robert Borden enticed some pro-war Liberals into a “coalition” Union government to divide the opposition and win the election.
But he had a large majority at the time and had won with more than 51 percent of the popular vote in 1911.
It was hardly a “coalition” of parties that had lost the election but wanted to govern.
