Federal politics isn't a two-party game National Edition

• Published in: National post (Toronto)
• Main Author: MacLean, Brian K
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Don Mills, Ont Postmedia Network Inc 18.09.2000
• Subjects: Candidates; Tax cuts; Vendors
• ISSN: 1486-8008

Everyone knows the next election will be contested by five major political parties: the NDP, Bloc Quebecois, Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance. Yet this hasn't stopped some news commentators from painting the next federal election as a battle between two of the five. The Bloc and especially the NDP are largely ignored. The Conservatives mainly get mentioned in discussions of how many MPs and supporters they'll lose to the Alliance and the Liberals. The [Harold Hotelling] model readily extends to competition between two parties positioning themselves along a left-right policy spectrum. For example, it helps to explain the historic British general election of May, 1997, a contest primarily between the traditionally left-of-centre Labour Party and the right-of-centre Conservatives. By moving to the centre under Tony Blair, "New Labour" captured the middle ground needed to sweep the Conservatives from office. So Canadian multi-party politics is a game of strategy where the positioning of parties such as the Liberals and the Alliance depends not just upon each other but also upon the positioning of parties such as the NDP and the Conservatives. Just as we need to know about [Ralph Nader] to understand the strategic moves of [Al Gore], we need more coverage and analysis of the NDP, the Bloc and the Conservatives to predict the moves of the current front-runners.