I am sure you have all heard it before; voting for the centrist Liberals instead of your favourite but third place party so they win the most number of seats, form the government and get the second best versions of policies you want in. But when it comes to making policy, often the amount of seats are meaningless. Instead, the opposition’s popular opinion and where it could be heading, even if from a second or third place party, can be the ones influencing policies the most. The governing party will react policy wise to win votes of the most successful opposition.

There are so many examples in Canadian politics. In the 60s, the NDP formed and was said to have the potential to dominate Canadian politics like the labour/social democrat movement did in all of Northern Europe. It never happened because the Liberals implemented NDP policies at the time, like higher social spending, universal healthcare and pensions, old age security, partial oil nationalization and more generous unemployment insurance, all within a few years. Once it appeared the NDP wasn’t taking off nationally to the public as the Liberal took all their policies, the Liberals then returned to the status quo until it moved left again in the late 80s/early 90s when the NDP was pulling ahead and the Tories behind in the polls. In 1995 while in power, the Liberals saw another new party, the Reform Party, take off. Like they did with the NDP, the Liberals didn’t want Reform to win an election and be established as a major political force so they started taking their policies of cuts to spending and taxation. After a major drop in the public opinion for the Alliance followed by the NDP doubling their support in 2003 from 8-9 to 16-18%, Paul Martin stopped talking about high taxes and spending cuts and instead campaigned on gay rights and universal childcare. This is a shinning example that the Liberals are really the moderated representation of the most successful opposition party present. Look at the growth of the Green Party and how most of the Liberal leadership candidates have windmills and the word “environment” front and centre of their campaigns websites. So wouldn’t it make sense to vote for the opposition party you want in order for them to be successful rather than the Liberals who pick up the policies of the most successful opposition party of recent. 

BC is another more extreme and more obvious example on a two party level. With the right wing Socred governments in the late 70s and 80s, many claimed it ran a policy to run just as left wing as possible in order to steal enough potential NDP votes to get safely reelected. Around 2000 and nearly a decade in power, the NDP was clearly losing to the Liberals so the NDP takes some of the Liberal tax cut policies. The Liberals still won a landslide election and made large tax and spending cuts only to have the NDP surge in polls afterwards. As a result, the BC Liberals increased some taxes and spending in order steal enough potential NDP votes to get safely re-elected.

In Nova Scotia, Tories cut taxes resulting to a reduction to a minority government next election from NDP support. The NDP continues to gain strength so the Tories made a large progressive tax increases to keep up with spending in order to narrowly get reelected again into government. 

In Ontario in the 70s and early 80s, Premier Bill Davis was seen as quite the Red Tory, often left of the Liberals. It was because he was smart enough to stay in power for that whole time by striking enough appeal to the left to keep the NDP and Liberals just barely out of reach of power.

It’s a shame too people don’t get it when politicians break promises because otherwise some politicians would be getting more credit than they deserve.