According to Warren Kinsella anyways
The second lesson of that historic night is this: As long as the Bloc Québecois exists – and as long as vote-rich Ontario remains split between Tories, Grits and New Democrats – no party will be able to win a majority in the House of Commons.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is closest to realizing that dream, of course. Two of the three recently-announced by-elections in Ontario and Manitoba will likely result in Conservative wins – placing Harper a wee bit nearer to a Parliamentary majority.
But in a general election, seasoned observers expect Harper will lose most of his 11 Quebec seats. And no one expects he will be able to offset that in the way that Chretien did – namely, by winning virtually every single one of Ontario’s 106 Commons seats.
And so, we will continue to get what we’ve got: A Conservative Party on the cusp of majority power, and a Liberal Party that has a much greater way to go. With the separatist Bloc, and a splintered Ontario electorate, standing in the way of the aspirations of both.
Harper’s temptation, perhaps, might be to do what Chrétien did: Hug the centre, and jettison his opposition to things like the long-gun registry, same-sex marriage and liberal immigration rules. In that way, he might attract enough urban youthful and female voters — the ones that have so far eluded him.
But in doing so, Harper knows he risks blowing apart the Conservative coalition in the way Brian Mulroney did — driving Westerners back into a Reform-style option, and Central and Atlantic Canadians back to a Progressive Conservative model. So he’s stuck.
If I remember correctly, Mannings idea for forming the Reform Party (that’s Refoooooooooooooooorm Party for you old Manning supporters out there) was that he felt that Canada’s political scene was going to disintegrate into regional parties. Libs and the PCs in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, Bloc (or something like the PQ) in Quebec, and the NDP chipping away votes all over the place which would make it really hard for someone to win enough support to get a majority. Chretien may be the exception that proved the rule in that he won Ontario so handily and was strong enough in Quebec and eastern Canada to win three straight majorities. To counter Chretien’s strength, Manning tried to create a national party while it’s membership wanted to keep everything that make the Reform Party unattractive to Ontario and Quebec voters so we have the stalemate that we have now and probably will have until the NDP and Liberals can cobble together a stable coalition government that doesn’t include the Bloc.
