In the aftermath of this Monday’s vote, there is intense focus on feelings — justified, in many cases — of western Canadian alienation. Talk of “wexit” and a failed federation are rife. Alberta premier Jason Kenney and Manitoba premier Brian Pallister both defended Canadian unity in comments to the press on Tuesday. That was encouraging — I’m glad they did. The fact that they had to, though, is alarming.
Western separatism is a bad idea. But human history is full of examples of bad ideas getting taken out for a spin, particularly when those bad ideas are rooted in a sense of grievance, real or imagined. For what it’s worth, I think much of the frustration felt by western Canada is justified. And the election this week might be damn near a worst-case scenario for it. But I had a thought — how many friends does the west really have in the east, anyway? If they’re feeling alone and rejected, are they?
So I crunched a few numbers. Well, crunch is generous — I added several numbers together. And it painted a more interesting picture than you’d think. The picture is wildly imperfect, and my argument here rests on a few admittedly shaky foundations, but bear with me for a minute. Let’s do the numbers first.
On Monday, as expected, Alberta and Saskatchewan went as lopsidedly Conservative as had been expected. The Conservatives campaigns failed to deliver as the party had hoped in Ontario and Quebec, however, and inroads into Atlantic Canada were modest. This means the Liberals were able to form a stable minority even while losing the popular vote. Western Canadians are entirely justified if they’re freaked out by that.
I crunched a few numbers. Well, crunch is generous — I added several numbers together.
Fair enough — but how many people voted Conservative?
In Alberta, it was 1.4 million, give or take (that number, and all others, from the CBC’s tracker). In Saskatchewan, it was roughly 367,000. I’m going to somewhat sloppily round that up and use the easy number of 1.8 million Conservatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In Ontario, though the Liberals won more votes — just over 41% of the total — the Conservatives still had 2.25 million people vote for them.
Again, yes, I’m not blind to electoral reality — those votes only translated into 36 seats. That’s the admitted first flaw in my argument. But I was surprised by the number of raw votes. For every westerner angry at Ontario for always electing Liberals, you’ve got a point, but there are more Conservative voters in Ontario than Alberta and Saskatchewan combined.
There’s another interesting number — Quebec’s. The Tories only got 16 per cent of the vote in Quebec, and lost two seats. But almost 668,000 human beings voted Conservative there. There were 300,000 more Conservative voters in Quebec than Saskatchewan. Quebec has almost half as many voting Tories as Alberta.
Now let’s look at the Atlantic provinces — I added up the Conservative voters in all four, rounding off for simplicity, and came up with approximately 367,000. Huh, that number seems familiar — oh, wait. It’s exactly the same as the rounded-off number of voters in Saskatchewan.
So, Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario combined totalled 3,652,000 Tory voters. That’s more than double the rounded-up total for Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Yes, again, there’s flaws in my argument here — for starters, the failure of all these Tory voters to actually win seats might actually increase frustration in the west. And it’s also a too-simplistic framing — it’s not true that only Conservatives care about the west, and I don’t meant to suggest otherwise. People vote for lots of different reasons, and we can’t take a vote for or against a party as a 100 per cent reliable proxy for someone’s views on equalization, oil sands development, a carbon tax and so on and so on.
But those admitted limitations aside, I offer this up in the hopes it might in some way help take the edge of the sting many in western Canada may be feeling. You’re not ignored, you’re not alone and you’re not powerless. You’re in a tough spot, for sure, and I’m not wildly optimistic it’s about to get much easier any time soon. But if nothing else, take heart from these numbers. You’ve got more friends back east than you might realize.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/election-2019/matt-gurney-some-good-news-for-the-west-you-have-more-friends-out-east-than-you-might-realize?video_autoplay=true
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