June 29, 2004

Canada's Harper Rejects Sailer Strategy—And Loses

By Kevin Michael Grace

[Previously by Kevin Michael Grace: Canadian Conservative Leader No Immigration “Extremist.” Too Bad.]

Canada's federal Liberal Party won its fourth consecutive election Monday—the first time this has been accomplished in almost a hundred years. The Conservative opposition was stunned.

As well it might be. The Conservatives refuse to understand the critical importance of race and the National Question in Canadian elections. Unless they do, it could be another hundred years—or longer—until they win.

The results

[Rough Guide to the political parties of Canada here]

Total seats—308. Needed for control of parliament—155

Prime Minister Paul Martin, the Liberal leader, was hurt badly—reduced to a minority in Parliament. He will be forced to govern with the assistance of the NDP and possibly the Bloc, which both share his social leftism, if not his (relative) fiscal prudence.

But he survived.

The francophone (French-speaking) separatist Bloc—they prefer “sovereigntist”— took 54 of the 75 seats in Quebec, the only province they contest. This is a very strong showing. The Liberals took the other 21 Quebec seats, basically the Anglophone (“English-speaking”) or immigrant districts.

The Bloc triumph is proof, if proof is needed, that the regular burials of Quebec separatism that are a feature of Canadian commentary are always premature. 

Another Quebec separatism crisis is inevitable this decade. In Quebec at least, the nation-state is not dead.

The real election campaign took place in Anglophone  Canada—a nation which, since Pierre Trudeau, no longer has a state.

The debate was almost issue-free. Conservative leader Stephen Harper abandoned his putative conservatism, minimizing his differences with the Liberals. He played me-too with the Liberals on more billions for Canada's decrepit, statist medical system. He joined them in declaring his party “pro-choice.”

His immigration policy was even worse than I described in VDARE.COM recently. His immigration spokeswoman told the Vancouver Sun that her party, like the Liberals and the NDP, support immigration of 300,000 annually (i.e. three times the current U.S. level relative to population). She explained that Conservatives' formerly restrictionist policy had “matured.”

As in the U.S., there seems to be no limit to “conservative” stupidity on immigration. It was the Liberal Party that decided to abolish the almost “lily-white” Canada through Third World immigration in the 1970s, declaring the country officially “multicultural.” The Liberals did this for a reason. The “visible minority” cohort—13.4% in 2001, up from 11.2% in 1996—is apparently grateful. In the 2000 election, the Liberals took 72% of the non-European vote, the Canadian Alliance (the Conservatives' predecessor) a paltry 14%.

Yet once again in 2004, the Canadian Right made its ritualistic, idiotic Wall Street Journal / Tamar Jacoby noises about immigrants being “entrepreneurial” and “socially conservative.”

Canadian immigrant voters seem to care about two issues only: immigration and the ethnic spoils system. They trust the Liberals and no one else on these issues. Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was the most pro-immigration leader in Canadian history. He also instituted ethnic Affirmative Action quotas. Nonetheless, visible minority voters remained Liberal. In 1993 the Conservatives were wiped out in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver (and everywhere else).

Now, in 2004, Stephen Harper's Conservatives have had a result almost as disastrous in these cities.

The Conservatives now claim they lost because their “message” was rejected in Ontario. But what they obdurately refuse to understand is that it was non-white voters in Ontario who rejected their message.

Greater Toronto has 45 of Ontario's 106 seats. It was 36.8% non-white in 2001, up from 31.6% in 1996. The Liberals took 41 of these 45 seats on Monday, the Conservatives only three.

The truth about the Conservatives' present and future is staring them in the face, but they refuse to see it.

The provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario constitute Anglophone Canada's electoral heartland. They have 198 out of 308 national seats. On Monday's results, the Conservatives are already the leading party in the heartland provinces.

Voting percentages, B.C. to Ontario, 2004

The Conservatives are already the solid choice of white voters in these five provinces. If we assume that non-white voters in these provinces (17.0% in 2001) repeated their 2000 voting pattern, and we then remove them from the equation, we get this result for the heartland:

Conservatives 42.4%, Liberals 29.7%

In Ontario (19.1% visible minority in 2001), we get almost a draw:

Conservatives 35.6%, Liberals 38.2%

So much for Ontario rejecting the Conservative “message.” Non-white Ontario rejected it. Non-white Ontario—i.e. Ontario prior to Pierre Trudeau's immigration reforms, so eerily similar to the Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Immigration Act—did not.

Given that Canadian electoral law gives undue weight to non-urban ridings, the Conservatives would probably have won a majority of Ontario seats if only white votes counted.

If Canada's immigration pattern continues, the Conservatives are doomed. Unless, of course, they start grazing where the grass is.

As Steve Sailer has repeatedly pointed out in the U.S. context, white votes count just as much as non-white votes. And there remain are a lot more of the former than the latter. As of 2001, Canada was still 86.6% white.

Yet Canada is governed as if whites were in the minority—they are oppressed by massive immigration, quotas and hate laws. No party speaks for them.

The Conservatives could—and should—be that party.

But unless they stop drinking multicultural Kool-Aid, they are doomed to suicide.

And no-one need mourn.