Within the scope of this research, we will assess the factors that accounted for continuous rule of Conservative party in Ontario in the post war period. In Ontario, the Liberals did not win a single provincial election from the late 1930s to the mid-1980s but, with the exception of 1984, they frequently have fared quite well in federal elections. The Conservatives governed the province continuously between 1943 and 1985 and lost badly in the 1987 and 1990 provincial elections, but the party has been a formidable force in the federal arena since the late 1970s. (Nossal 1989) The NDP also has electoral support in Ontario and, although the party typically has run behind its Conservative and Liberal rivals in federal and provincial elections, in 1990 it swept the Liberals from power to become the first NDP government in the province’s history.

The tendency toward domination by a single party is evident at the provincial level in different Canadian provinces. There are numerous examples. In Ontario, the Tory "Big Blue Machine" governed continuously from 1943 to 1985. Newfoundland was governed for twenty-two years (1949-1971) by the provincial Liberals led by Joey Smallwood. In Saskatchewan, the provincial NDP governed without interruption for twenty years (1944-1964), and Social Credit was in power in Alberta for thirty-six years before being defeated by the Conservatives in 1971, who, in turn, have been in power continuously since then. In British Columbia, Social Credit has formed the provincial government for all but three years since 1952. In Quebec, the Liberals were in power for thirty-nine years without interruption early in the country’s history, and between 1936 and 1960 the Union Nationale governed for nineteen years. (Coleman et al 1990)

Tendencies toward one-partyism notwithstanding — there is a curious periodicity to party fortunes. A party may enjoy years of electoral success and then rapidly fall from grace. The tendency has manifested itself equally strongly at the provincial level. In Ontario, the long-dominant Conservatives saw their seat totals drop from 56 percent to 42 percent to 12 percent in three provincial elections held between 1981 and 1987. (Atkinson 1993) These sharp swings in party fortunes are at least partially the result of the aforementioned fact that many Canadians have weak and unstable party identifications. Further, the pattern whereby a party within a particular province fares much better in federal than in provincial elections, or vice versa, is related to the tendency of many voters to "split" their partisan attachments: to identify with party "A" at one level of the system and with party "B" at the other.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 11:21 am and is filed under Description Essay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.