Top five elections: number 1

There is actually a tie for first place: the elections of 1896 and 1988. Obviously the free trade issue prompted a number of participants in the survey to choose the 1911 and 1988 elections. I do not contest their significance. However, elections which have seen major shifts in partisan support or in the parties themselves I would judge to be of greater importance.

American political scientists have long theorized about the periodic realignments which have seen such shifts occurring every generation or so in the US. The years 1860, 1896 and 1932 mark such watershed elections. One might add 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in a generation. Although the concept of realignment is not unknown here in Canada, political scientists have not made as much of it as their counterparts in the US. This may be due to our not having had as many elections that could qualify as genuinely realigning. Certainly 1896 and 1993 would fill the bill. Yet given that a single political party, namely the Liberals, has dominated the government benches since that earlier year, few other elections have seen a similar shift in partisan loyalties. If Québec is the bellwether, then 1984 may be of significance, insofar as it saw the beginning of the end of unquestioned (federal) Liberal hegemony in that province. Yet ten years later the Liberals were more entrenched in power than ever before. We'll see whether monday will change that.

I am still surprised that so few, if any, mentioned the 1980 election, which is more significant than many of my colleagues appear to think. That election gave Pierre Trudeau his second wind and allowed him one last chance to make his mark. Indeed the patriation package that he bullied the provinces into accepting did not just change our constitution; it changed the very nature of our constitution in a way that empowered the courts over Parliament, which had always been the centre of our political life prior to that time. This has encouraged governments not to take responsibility for divisive issues and to defer to the courts. That this conflicts with our hallowed convention of responsible government would seem evident.