The Great Divide

This site has been silent for the last year, since I had given up blogging. As a new federal election approaches, however, I thought I should write about a disturbing phenomenon which is receiving almost no attention in the media. In surveying the landscape of the country, the media focuses almost exclusively on provincial and regional differences. I would argue that such divisions are increasingly irrelevant, and that the much more important trend is the growing chasm between urban and rural Canada.

I am far from the first person to comment on this trend. Indeed, in the aftermath of the 2006 elections when the Conservatives formed government with no seats in any of Canada’s three big cities, the issue was explored by several sources, and in particular by the insightful pollster Michael Adams. If the Conservatives succeed on wrestling rural and suburban Quebec from the Bloc during this campaign and perform well in their western strongholds, they could conceivable win a majority government with no big city representation whatsoever. What could this mean for Canada? Can the trend be reversed?

I’m not hopeful about finding any solutions from the Conservative movement. For one thing, they don’t seem to think any problem exists. Tom Flanagan seems to think its really just a problem with the ethnics. After all, Conservatives can win in Regina, and Toronto is essentially Regina with ethnics. Even if one were to accepts such an asinine interpretation of the 2006 elections results, it doesn’t explain the Tories’ subsequent hostility against urban voters.

A good example was the recent byelection in my riding, Toronto-Centre. The Conservative candidate, Mark Warner, was removed by the party for the sin of discussing urban issues in a place like Toronto-Centre. He was replaced by a preacher from outside the riding, who when asked a question about bedbugs, suggested that the poor practice better hygiene. A frustrated Warner said it best…

“Harper believes that the entire country deserves the same kind of cookie-cutter campaign approved by focus groups in Landmark, Manitoba: 1,500 Mennonites and no visible minorities.”

It wasn’t surprising when the Conservatives dropped to fourth place in the riding, down from their usual third. It was an even more dismal performance than the Liberals achieved in the rural west during the last election.

The gap between urban and rural voting patterns is growing, and showing no signs of abating, In Toronto, no Conservative, federal or provincial, has won a seat in 6 elections. Meanwhile, the Liberal presence has gradually but consistently been receding from rural ridings. The reasons for this are complicated, but the end result is that the underrepresentation of urban voters has increasingly large consequences.

On average, urban ridings have greater population than rural ridings, and therefore each urban voter has weaker representation. Fair is fair, and if representation by population means anything, this problem needs to be addressed.