Why I don't consider what most call "strategic voting" to be strategic

When most people talk about voting strategically they mean voting for someone who they don't consider to be the most qualified candidate in order to keep someone they dislike the most out of power.

Being strategic to me would be to make voting decisions today that have a longer term goal in mind.  What most call "strategic voting" may superficially may feel like a consideration of the future, but I consider it to be short-term thinking.  Even if you only take the specific vote in front of you, you are voting for someone you consider to be a lesser candidate which means that the best case scenario for your strategy is a bad outcome.


Lets look at what we have seen in recent decades to see what some of the failures caused by some of these strategies.

After the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to two seats in the 1993 general elections, those who consider themselves to be conservative in some aspect of their political beliefs tried to regroup.  In the 1997 election the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties both ran, but of course under the antiquated First Past the Post electoral system they split votes from voters who might have more in common with either of those parties candidates than the candidate who won in their riding.  As is also typical of this disruptive electoral system, the PC party had nearly as many votes as the Reform party, but only ended up with 1/3 of the seats.

Rather than working with people across parties and non-partisans who wanted to modernize the electoral system, some conservatives decided to create a "united alternative" movement to create an alternative to the Liberal party who has predominantly been the beneficiary of this disruptive electoral system.  In the 2000 election the Reform party and some converts ran under the new name of the "Canadian Alliance", and they then progressed to what many consider to be a hostile takeover and eventual annexation of the federal Progressive Conservative party.  By the 2004 election the PC party was gone, with only the renamed "Canadian Alliance" now using the title "Conservative Party of Canada" remaining.


You might ask: who cares?  A party with "conservative" in the name, the Liberals and the NDP all existed prior to the 1993 election and do today.  The problem is that much was lost within the conservative movement when the new coalition party was created. There are noises about creating yet another "united alternative" with the only difference being it is from those who consider themselves to be from the left.  If we continue down this path, we will end up with Canada having a system as dysfunctional as that in the USA where fringe elements of society effectively define the two potential governing political parties where the vast majority of reasonable thinking moderates are ignored.

I consider the possibility of subjecting Canada to another "united alternative" movement to be worse than any electoral outcome.  One has been bad enough for Canada, and we should be looking for ways to gain sanity in our politics -- not make an already bad situation worse.


I personally felt the loss within the restructuring of conservatism in Canada.  I was not involved in politics until the 1990's while I at university.  Friends had introduced me to the NDP and Liberals, but I didn't see anything of myself in those parties.  I was introduced to the Green party by someone who articulated the vision of the German Green party, but in the Green Party I kept bumping up against what I felt were disenfranchised NDP supporters.

I became quite excited by the PC leadership race of David Orchard, and joined the PC party in 1998. Mr Orchard lost to Joe Clark who considered Mr Orchard and his supporters to be "tourists" in the party.  I didn't support Mr. Clark, didn't feel welcome in the PC party, and put my political support back behind the Green Party.  When I compared the 2000 platforms of the PC party under Clark and the Green Party there were enough similarities that I could easily have stayed with the PC party, an possibly even helped get a candidate elected in my riding.

What I saw in Clark's PC party, I see nearly the opposite in Harpers's "Conservative" party.

While there are many types of conservatism, and not all people who consider themselves conservative agree with each other, there are some core values that unite us.  One is a belief that the government should not intrude on the private lives of its citizens. On those rare occasions when some intrusion is necessary to protect life and property that this be done with full independent court oversight to monitor the government (often in the form of the police) to keep those intrusions to the minimum that is absolutely necessary.

You can see the feelings about this type of policy with the multi-election campaign about the "wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry". The Harper government eventually ended the campaign (err... registry) and included requirements that the police destroy all records from the registry.   This was one of those issues that could unite all types of conservatives, including those in urban settings who saw it as a "motherhood and apple pie" type issue that might not affect them, but just felt right.  It was treating private information from law abiding citizens in a way that it felt accusatory of those citizens.

Unfortunately what the Harper government did from a policy point of view was a dishonest slight of hand. While the data from the long-gun registry was kept in Canada and only available to law enforcement agencies, we have the Harper government ramming through Bill C-51 which shares a much broader amount of citizen's private information across many more government departments and "law" enforcement agencies. Coupled with Harper's massive push to cave in on the Trans-pacific partnership  (TPP), this boondoggle database about law abiding citizens can't even be guaranteed to be restricted to access regulated by Canadian law.  Add in Harper's disastrous economic policies based on gut feelings rather than evidence stifling Canada's high-tech sector, and we can pretty much guarantee even our health information will be stored only in foreign databases.

While Harpercrits (Harper devotees) claim the TPP is a "trade" agreement, trying to argue that past benefits from free trade will apply, it is really a reckless untested policy harmonization treaty that was authored at the request of a very few special interests at the expensive of the economy and the interests of citizens as a whole.



I will not be the only conservative minded person who feels this way about Steven Harpers failed and in most respects anti-conservative policies.   The problem is: under our current antiquated voting system, and with these big-tent parties ignoring the views of moderates, who are people to vote for?  Harpercrits can still drum up fear of the Liberals to effectively get votes from people who strongly disagree with them, thus freeing Harper to do anything he want no matter how opposed it is to core conservative values.

While I held my nose and voted for David McGuinty in my current riding of Ottawa South, their vote on Bill C-51 reminded me of all the things that I've always hated about the Liberals.  While Harper's big government manipulation of markets and intrusion in the private lives of law abiding citizens is out of place with a party calling themselves "Conservative", it is very consistent with the long-standing policies of the Liberal party. Bill C-51 is effectively the same intrusive thinking that went into the long-gun registry, only on massive amounts of steroids -- exponentially increased by the job, privacy and economy destroying TPP.

I still don't feel comfortable with the NDP on many levels (don't get me started about unions...), but under Tom Mulcair the party has shifted to the right a bit (some say they are to the right of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau).  They have also come out more strongly in favour of modernizing our electoral system, repealing Bill C-51, and rejecting the TPP : three core policies for me that I consider to have far more longer term implications than any single election.

So, what does strategic look like to me?   If the NDP were even on the map in Ottawa South, I  -- a past member of the Progressive Conservative party -- would have voted NDP.  Given this particular riding will be decided between the Liberals and the Harpercrits, I voted Green as there is no long-term strategically minded alternative to vote for.

Harper promoting Liberal Brand as: A vote for the Liberals is a vote for Harper

The most important aspect of this years Canadian Federal Election campaign is the fact that Canada is still using an antiquated horse-and-buggy electoral system known as First Past the Post.  Under this unfair and divisive system a politician does not need to have the support of a majority of constituents, they only need to divide and conquer the opposition.

Harper's election campaign has been clear from the start: promote the Liberal brand and Justin Trudeau as if it were the "opposite" of the Harper brand.  This way voters who agree with Harper will stick with Harper, but those who oppose will go to the Liberals which is Harper's second choice.

Harper will promote the Liberals for a number of strategic reasons:

• The Bill C-51 vote demonstrates that the Liberals are weak in opposition, and they can be trivially frightened by "you are with us, or with the terrorists" style rhetoric.  Harper knows that both Thomas Mulcair and Elizabeth May are adult and more seasoned politicians who aren't going to be so trivially manipulated.
• Under the current voting system the Liberals split the opposition vote, which is the most effective way for a Conservative party member to win.  Harper realizes that there are only a few ridings where the Conservatives have the support of a majority, and he must prop up the Liberals in order for the Conservatives to win over the NDP or Greens in most ridings.
• Without Harper's active promotion of the Liberal brand, more Canadians might notice the polls of other Canadians and realize that it is the NDP that are more likely to win against Harper. In Alberta it was the NDP that dethroned the Progressive Conservative party, with the Liberals nowhere to be found.
• Harper wants less engaged voters to believe nothing has changed in recent decades. He wants people to either vote Liberal or (no longer Progressive) Conservative, as had been the case for decades. This distracts people not only about the changes in other parties federally (Growth of center-left NDP, and center-right Green), but the radical differences between the Progressive Conservative party and the Harper Conservative party.

I can only prey that Canadians become engaged in this election, and not fall for Harper's trap.

• If you don't like Harper's policies, then stay away from Justin Trudeau and the Liberals as they would make a very weak official opposition or government.
• Don't trust the Liberals who claim that you need to vote for them to avoid splitting the vote and allow someone else in.  It is the Liberal candidates that split the vote, and who if they were really concerned would be saying something very different (Lets start with not sabotaging attempts in Ontario and BC to modernize away from the antiquated system which creates the "vote splitting" problem)
• Please pay attention, and realize that between the Liberals and the NDP it is the NDP in the lead.  If your choice is between candidates from those parties, then don't split the vote by voting Liberal.
• If you were a supporter of the Progressive Conservative party, please recognize that the Harper Conservatives are a very different brand.  As a past member of the federal PC party, and as someone who voted in federal PC leadership races, I do not recognize myself in the Harper Conservative brand.  No self-respecting conservative Canadian should support Harper's intrusive big-government policies such as we see with C-51 : who needs a long-gun registry when far more information about all of us will be freely shared between government departments for purposes we all know will have nothing to do with "terrorism".  Harper has duped you if you believed the rhetoric he abused in debates around the long-gun registry or the long-form census.

Tough on criminals and terrorists, but soft of crime and terrorism

Out of interest I subscribe to the email mailing lists of all 4 Canadian parties with members in the house of Commons (I have no interest in the Quebec-only parties).  While there is nothing unexpected in the mailings from the Greens, Liberals and NDP, I find the messaging from the Harper Conservatives to be surprising.  In their choice of parliamentary activity to highlight, and the language they use, they come off as excessively emotional, immature and naive.

I could quote specific examples from mailings, legislation and media, but I suspect we have all seen it.

There seems to be no recognition that there is a difference between being tough on crime and terrorism is very different than being tough on criminals and terrorists.  There seems to be a simplistic focus on punishment rather than looking into the reasons why people commit acts which are put under these labels.  There also seems to be an ever increasing list of activities which are being put under these labels, with more and more otherwise law abiding citizens fearing that their legitimate political activities might be captured by these labels.

Canadian society, like any other, is complex and the solutions to complex problems within our society will themselves be complex.  This is not what we are seeing from the Harper Government.

There seems to be no recognition that police officers are human beings.  Within the ranks of Canadian society there are a small percentage which will carry out activities which fall under the label of illegal, criminal or worse.  Contrary to the language used and policies promoted by the Harper Conservatives, the same is true of the Canadians who are employed by the various types of police, security and military agencies.  While there might be more scrutiny of the employees of these agencies than for most other jobs, there is also more exposure to a wide variety of scenarios that would entice them to harmful activities (bribery, increased power which corrupts, often seeing and having to engage with the worst of society, etc).

With the subjective language used around terrorism (which sometimes seems like we are headed towards "thought crime"), more and more power is being granted to police and security agencies that can be abused to harm otherwise law abiding Canadians.

The reality is that for the same reason why we need police forces to protect society from that minority which would disrupt it, we need to restrict the power of the police and must police the police to protect society from that minority which would disrupt us all.  The Harper Government has a blind trust of police forces and security services, naively believing that giving these agencies access to more information about Canadians without court or other oversight is not itself a harm to Canadians.  This puts information of ordinary law abiding Canadians in the hands of individuals within these agencies that can and will abuse this information.

The naive and harmful policy is the same whether we are talking about so-called "lawful access", so-called anti-terrorism laws, or so called "tough on crime" bills.

I find it both sad and ironic that the same Harper Government which cancelled the long form census (IMO incorrectly) claiming that there were privacy concerns has been ignoring the legitimate privacy concerns of Canadians when it comes to information collected by government agencies which are far more likely to abuse this information.


Terrorism is the use or threat of violence for political aims.  The purpose is to disrupt society towards those political aims.   It is hard for me not to feel like the Harper Government is disrupting Canadian society by ignoring legitimate privacy interests, granting inadequately policed powers to police and security agencies, and through the politics of fear making people feel less safe.   While the violence is not their own, it appears to me that the Harper Government is using the violence and threats of violence of others for their own political aims.   While I believe governments must protect their citizens from terrorism, I feel that what we have been seeing from the Harper Government is counter productive.