A Lesson From Canada

An Economist.com article entitled The Conservatives by a bigger head notes that a fragmented Canada gave Stephen Harper another term as Conservative Prime Minister when his party won the October 2008 federal election, achieving a bit more strength in a minority government. While the Conservatives increased their share of the popular vote by little more than a percentage point to 37.6%, this will likely only be translated into about 19 more seats.

Harper and the Conservatives did solidify their western base of Alberta oilmen and Saskatchewan farmers, and picked up seats in suburban Ontario and the Maritime provinces. However, Harper failed to increase his party’s ten seats in Quebec. For the most part in Quebec, the separatist Bloc Québécois blocked any Conservative advance, even though independence never surfaced as an issue during the campaign.

However, more than the Conservatives failing to get a majority, the main lesson to come out of the Canadian election is that Liberals were the ones that really lost it. Their share of the popular vote fell to 26%, their lowest since 1867. The Liberal leader, Stéphane Dion, a Quebecker, chose to fight the election on a bold plan for a carbon tax just when voters began to worry about the economy. (It didn’t help that Dion is not a good communicator in English.)

A broader lesson from the Canadian election is that a candidate should not impose a tax on all citizens, particularly on the middle class, when the economy is slowing. This is a lesson the McCain campaign has ignored with its proposed tax on employees for the value of employer-paid health care benefits. This tax has been one of Obama’s most effective campaign attacks and the focus of his prime literature drops over the past few weeks.