Granatstein, J.L. “History at the Polls.” 
The New Federation 1.1 (1988): 12-15.

History at the Polls
by J. L. Granatstein

“History is bunk!” That was Henry Ford’s view of the influence of the past on current events. The great automobile manufacturer knew a great deal about making cars and making money, but he was no historian. History can and does have its effect on the present – and not only because historians are usually around to play Jeremiah and to draw their sometimes tortured lessons. 
History matters because it made our world what it is today.  It matters because it made our world what it is today. It matters because where we came from affects our attitudes to the present and our sense of what we are. Who could deny, for example, that Quebec – whose motto is, after all, “Je me souviens” – has a sense of itself that dates back to the 16th Century, that encompasses memories of the defeat on the Plains of Abraham, the Rebellion of 1837, the hanging of Riel, the conscription crises of two wars, the Quiet Revolution, and the Referendum of 1980? It’s not only Quebec. The Prairies’ deep sense of grievance against “the East,” against a federal government that westerners continue to see as being controlled by Ontario and Quebec, dates back to the Riel Rebellions and to the events that surrounded the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan as provinces in 1905. History matters. 
On the other hand, no one should ever assume that history repeats itself or that there are obvious lessons for the present in the events of the past. History never repeats in precise terms, and it is always the subtle differences between present and past, the differing attitudes and approaches of the key players, that make it so difficult and so fallacious to attempt to base actions or analysis only on the past. The only lesson in history, after all, is that there are no lessons in history.
But can history affect elections? That is a harder question to discuss. We all wear several different hats and it is very difficult to determine why anyone votes a particular way in an election. Our voter might be a 48-year-old businesswoman from Rimouski with a three-century pedigree in Canada. But will she vote in the next election as a francophone who sees Brian Mulroney almost as one of the family and winces at John Turner's accent? As a businesswoman concerned with the effects of free trade on her industry? Or as a middle-aged woman upset by the abortion controversy and the attitudes of the younger generation? Will she vote for the leader and the party or against the candidate in her constituency? Will she read the opinion polls and go with the likely winner? Or is she independent enough in her attitudes to “waste” a vote for a minor party? In honesty, all one can say is “Who knows?” And at this point, our Rimouski voter herself probably doesn't know which of the many influences on her will be decisive when she enters the voting booth.
But our Rimouski voter, like ail of us, is influenced by events. As a businesswoman, she will be concerned by the overall condition of the economy. If the national economy is booming, the odds are good that the local economy will be perking along too, even though unemployment in her region is higher than the national average. The stock market crash last October will weigh on her mind but, if she was lucky, her broker will have shielded her from the worst of its effects. But next time? And tax reform undoubtedly has confused her. Will she gain or lose? Even so, the economy is generally pretty sound, and that condition of affairs predisposes her to take a mildly benign view of the party in power. Our voter knows that the Progressive Conservative government in Ottawa has only a small capacity to direct and affect the economy in the face of world conditions, but she also knows, if only in a half-realized fashion, that elections in good times in Canada have almost always led to the return of the incumbent administration.
Free trade is a different question entirely. The trade agreement signed by Prime Minister Mulroney and President Reagan in January 1988 is so hard to understand in its details, so subject to different interpretations by its supporters and opponents, that our businesswoman will be puzzled. Will it mean cheaper prices on the goods she imports from New York? Will it drive her supplier in New Brunswick out of business? Will it increase or decrease the jobs in Rimouski in the next decade? 
At the very least, free trade means change, and change always upsets many voters. In 1911, after all, the Liberals, led by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, had been in power for 15 years and seemed unbeatable. Free trade had been a long-sought goal of virtually every government since Confederation, its accomplishment blocked only by the disinterest of the Americans. Now, Laurier had done it. But what was the reaction? The manufacturing interests – whose tariff protection under the National Policy Laurier had inherited from Macdonald and defended as vigorously as the Old Chief – were scarcely affected by the deal. Nonetheless, industry began to fear that the agreement was the thin edge of the wedge and that complete free trade would follow inevitably. The farmers of the West saw free trade as a way to get cheaper combines and supported the deal vigorously, but their numbers were small. The British-born saw a sell-out to the Americans, and the English-speaking and Protestants pointed a finger at Laurier as a French-speaking Roman Catholic continentalist, and shouted “disloyalty.” Quebec seemed largely uninterested in free trade, and the hot issue in French Canada was Laurier's navy and the possibility of conscription being necessary to man it. Quebec nationalistes, those who hated Laurier as a vendu, milked this issue for all it was worth, even cooperating with the Conservatives to topple the old chief. Whatever the issues, Laurier lost, and the Tories were in power for a decade.
Does this history have any impact on 1988? The Catholic-Protestant division happily has lost almost all its force, at least in public, and no one these days would dare to charge that the Papist Irishman Mulroney is selling Canada out. (He might be denounced as a sell-out but not as a Papist Irish sellout!) The West is still in favour of free trade, agriculture largely being exempted from the agreement’s provisions, but the divisions between nationalists and continentalists remain as sharp as ever. Margaret Atwood and Mel Hurtig thunder about the need to save Canada's soul from the Mammon of America, while John Crispo and Tom d'Aquino promise two chickens in every pot. How much this rhetoric affects the voters is unclear. And for our Rimouski voter, the shouts of Toronto literati and Ottawa lobbyists undoubtedly have limited effect. Free trade does not appear to have stirred Quebecois as much as the rest of the country, although the Quebec government’s support for it holds out the intriguing possibility of a Quebec-Western Canada bloc in opposition to David Peterson’s cool Liberal government in Ontario. That would be a new alliance in Canadian politics. The nationalistes, in this day found in the depleted ranks of the Parti Quebecois, also seem to favour free trade as a decentralizing force that will hasten what they see as the inevitable victory of separatism. As in 1911 (but then against free trade), they will likely support a Conservative on this issue for their own reasons.
The Meech Lake accord has also been hailed by new PQ leader Jacques Parizeau because it serves his own agenda. And Canadians are told again and again that Quebecers generally would be outraged if the accord's ratification was blocked. But constitutional questions, like free trade’s fine points, are so complex, so difficult for the average voter to comprehend, that it is doubtful that Meech Lake will move many voters anywhere in Canada. Did the fine points of the King-Byng crisis of 1926 or Trudeau’s patriation of the Constitution win many votes? Probably not, though such measures help shape the ways in which parties are perceived. Mackenzie King and Pierre Trudeau were seen as nationalist and centralist and that set the tone for their party. By that same token, Mulroney will likely be perceived as decentralist and continentalist, something that could help in Quebec and the West, but might hurt in Ontario and the Maritimes. Since the Liberals and the New Democrats officially support Meech Lake, however, such impact as that issue may have is certain to be diminished.
And what of the NDP? Our Rimouski businesswoman in all likelihood had scarcely contemplated the existence of the NDP before the last two years. The social democrats had never made any impact in Quebec in the past nor won even a single seat there, and their sudden emergence in the opinion polls was probably as much a surprise to her as it was to Ed Broadbent. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the precursor of the NDP, had in fact been denounced by the Catholic Church for its socialism at a time when the clerical hierarchy wielded real political power. But Quebec is vastly different now, and the NDP, buoyed by favourable opinion polls, is battling the Tories for the nationalist vote. The NDP might pick up many of the votes of the disaffected, and it seems likely to benefit from the increased involvement in politics of feminists across Quebec and the country and of others wrapped up in social issues where the NDP stands firm. Still, the 1984 election, which demonstrated that the Quebec electorate can swing en bloc in a few days, makes any forecast of the results in an election yet to be called almost impossible. If history is any guide, the NDP will do much less well than it expects in Quebec; moreover, Ed Broadbent’s efforts to win favour in Quebec may cost him votes elsewhere in Canada. Didn’t Pierre Trudeau suffer in the West because his efforts to give Quebec its due share of power in Ottawa were deeply resented?
The NDP is also saddled with a neutralist defence policy, and defence is another issue that may affect our Rimouski voter. Historically, Quebecois have been cool to defence spending, the memory of struggles over conscription in 1917, 1942, and 1944 weighing heavily on the province's conscience. In 1963, the only peacetime election in which defence questions were the subject of a major national debate, Quebec seemed immune to the issue. Pierre Trudeau in Cité Libre thundered against Lester Pearson’s decision to accept nuclear warheads if the Liberals were elected, but voters in Quebec, like many elsewhere, rejected John Diefenbaker’s government because of its bungling policies, not because the Chief was (or seemed to be) against nuclear weapons. In the rest of the country, the Bomarcs were hotly debated only a few constituencies.
There seems little reason to expect anything to change in the coming election. New Brunswick and Quebec constituencies with ship-building yards may be pleased with frigate contracts and the possibility of building nuclear submarines; ridings with military bases will almost certainly look sympathetically on the Conservatives’ efforts to rebuild the armed forces. But in Rimouski and in the 250 constituencies without a military presence? If the defence issue stirs our businesswoman at all, she is likely to look askance at $8 billion for nuclear submarines and at even more billions for frigates and low-level air defence systems. On the other hand, the defence constituency is small, to be sure, but Canadian voters support Canada’s military alliances, or so the polls say. If that is true, then the NDP may suffer from its policies among certain defined groups of voters. Certainly both Mulroney and Turner will denounce the NDP for its policy, and this may reinforce nagging concerns about the good sense of the NDP – and Ed Broadbent's ability to control his followers.
If Broadbent is saddled with his party's policy resolutions, Mulroney carries the albatross of corruption around his neck. His government has seen ministers resign in wholesale because of their involvement in a series of unsavoury scandals. The Prime Minister himself has been rocked by charges of high spending on his residence, and some of his cronies, brought into the Prime Minister’s Office in September 1984, have played the patronage game with a zest that astonished observers. Does this matter? Scandals have always provided good sport for journalists in the past. The Pacific Scandal drove Sir John A. Macdonald out of office in 1875, and Mackenzie King walked through the “Valley of Humiliation” when his and his party’s roles in the Beauharnois Scandal were exposed in 1931. But the St. Laurent government suffered scarcely at all when charges were hurled that horses were on the payrolls at Camp Petawawa, and Pierre Trudeau’s swimming pool faded from public attention quickly. It seems that scandals hurt only if they continue without cessation, entrenching an image of corruption in the public mind. The Mulroney government has come perilously close to that point; if there is another major scandal before the election, and especially if any of the mud thrown at the Prime Minister sticks to his Gucci shoes, the Tories could pay a heavy price in Rimouski and elsewhere.
Then there is leadership. For a quarter century, Canadian politics have become steadily more presidential in tone. The leaders monopolize the television coverage, and it’s the Broadbent Party or the Mulroney Party (but not the Turner Party). The leader was always important in the past, to be sure, and Macdonald campaigned in 1891 on the slogan “The Old Man, The Old Party, The Old Policy.” But candidates and organization in the constituencies and regions mattered more then, and so did the construction of a post office or wharf. Such things have tended to decrease in importance as our media emulate the American press and TV in their obsessive focus on the leaders.
Unquestionably this is John Turner’s major weakness. Although his party still retains its lead in most of the opinion polls and its chance of forming the next government, he has been in difficulty continuously since the day he won his party’s convention in 1984 and then promptly lost the election. Unable to keep his fractious party together on Meech Lake or free trade, Turner's personal popularity stands low in the opinion polls. Broadbent has steadily risen in public esteem, on the other hand, and he runs well ahead of his party. The Prime Minister, like John Turner, is not widely admired by the electorate, but he is a shrewd tactician, he has a record (Meech Lake, free trade, a growing economy), and he is in power. Moreover, Mulroney has managed to make Quebecois believe that he is almost a francophone, and there is no doubt that loyalty to a favourite son has always been strong in the province. Laurier held Quebec until his death in 1919 (only suffering nationalist inroads in 1911) and his support was so solid that it could be passed intact to Mackenzie King. St. Laurent and Trudeau too kept Quebec as a Liberal fiefdom, and this support solidly entrenched the Liberals as the Government Party. In 1984, Mulroney swept the province, and the odds, if not yet the opinion polls, suggest that he may do so again. In a very real sense, if Brian Mulroney fails to get the vote of our Rimouski businesswoman, his party is likely to lose the Quebec base that it needs to hold power. What does seem clear is that of the three leaders, only Ed Broadbent will be put up front and centre by his party strategists. Mulroney and Turner are neither popular enough nor error-free enough to be allowed free rein in an election campaign.
Where does this leave us? To be honest, confused. History matters, yes. But did history prevent Joe Clark from failing to turn his 1979 minority government into a majority? Or was it bungling by the Tory high command? Did history save John Turner from being savaged by Brian Mulroney in the TV debates that largely determined the 1984 election outcome? In the end, the party’s leaders, policies and tactics, added to the way all these are perceived in the minds of the voters, determine the result. A strong performance by John Turner in the campaign could see the Liberals form a government. A repetition in a television debate of Mulroney's devastation of Turner could make voters ready to give the Prime Minister a second chance. And Ed Broadbent has a good chance, if he can control his party activists, of solidifying the support he himself and his party have garnered in the polls. Our voter in Rimouski and her compatriots all across the country will have to decide. 

J. L. Granatstein teaches Canadian history at York University, Toronto, and is author of books on the Liberal and Conservative parties. He is co-author with Desmond Morton of Marching to Armageddon: Canadians and the Great War 1914-19, forthcoming in Spring 1989.