Grit empire crumbles

Empires do not end, typically, in revolution. They dissolve by stages. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire took hundreds of years. The Liberal empire has taken two elections, and may take a third. But it is going, if not gone.

The first one, 2004’s near-miss in which they were lucky to escape with a minority, cracked the Liberal aura of invincibility. The party’s weakness revealed, Gomery did the rest: once it was clear that it was possible to change the government, the public’s seeming apathy about Liberal corruption was dispelled. It was not apathy, it turned out, that had dulled their conscience. It was hopelessness.

All that remained was to show there was indeed a government in waiting, a safe pair of hands, ready to take the wheel. After so many years so far from power, the Conservatives had a job to do to convince the public of this. It appears they have succeeded -- partly. The public, especially in central and eastern Canada, is not yet ready to hand them the keys to the car outright. But they are willing to let them drive, under adult supervision: a minority government.

That’s enough. The Tories know it, and you’d best believe the Grits know it. This is why the Liberals fought so savagely, so desperately. They knew that if ever the Tories got into power, however narrowly, it was over. They have been clinging to power for election after election, on the strength of one primal, atavistic instinct: fear of the unknown. They have used all the levers of power at their command to stave off this day, and they have failed.

From now on the Tories, for good or ill, will be a known quantity. If they fail, it will be for what they have done, or failed to do -- not what they might do. Now the Tories have their hands on the levers of power, and they will set about with a will to dismantling the apparatus of Liberal rule: a sweeping program of ethical and democratic reforms, to prevent both the overt abuses of power that were the Liberals’ downfall, and the broader deployment of patronage and favours that was their greatest strength.

They will have help. If there is another winner in this campaign, it is the NDP, their numbers up strongly after a smart, adroit campaign. Now they have a common interest with the Tories, otherwise their ideological opposites: to dish the Grits. While the Liberals spend the next months and years in recriminations and bloodletting -- oh yes, and a leadership race -- the Tories and the NDP can pursue a good-news agenda of reforms aimed at democratizing government and making it more accountable, on which the two parties have a surprising degree of overlap.

Indeed, this may be a longer-lived minority than most. The Tories will have obvious reasons to want to demonstrate that they can be a steady hand at the tiller. But the Liberals, drowning in debt as they are, will be in no hurry to go back to the polls any time soon. Neither, for that matter, will the Bloc: supremely confident going into the election, the Bloc lost ground throughout, taken unawares mid-campaign by the surge in support for the Conservatives.

Quebecers’ tentative embrace of the Tories is clearly one of the stories of this election. If this is not the Diefenbaker or Mulroney sweeps, neither is it the Clark shutout of 1979. This time, the Conservative wave coming out of the West did not break on the banks of the Rideau, but washed over into Quebec. That gives the Tories a foundation to build on -- a much more lasting basis for success than a sudden sweep, born of irrational hopes and impossible expectations.

As important is Ontario’s turn -- again tentative, cautious, but further than in many years -- towards the Conservatives, and the West. Indeed, this election is further evidence of an important trend: Ontario, outside Toronto at any rate, is joining the West. The democratic values and hardy optimism that are hallmarks of the West’s political culture have worked their way into the Ontario psyche. More and more, the West’s interests and values are also Ontario’s.

For Stephen Harper, this is a remarkable personal triumph. The man who many people said could not win the race for Canadian Alliance leader, who could never reunite the warring right-wing parties, who could not win the leadership of the united Conservative party, and who most certainly would never, ever become Prime Minister, now stands on the very brink of power.

Who would have guessed that this cold-eyed ideologue would show such a flair for consensus-building; that the apostle of the “firewall” would put together the most genuinely national party in the country. And here’s another irony: though he comes to power preaching the virtues of a looser federation, with a less intrusive federal government, Mr. Harper may succeed where others failed in building a stronger sense of national unity.

He is off to a good start, merely by virtue of having dislodged the Liberals. So permanent did the Liberal dynasty seem, so completely did the Liberals identify themselves with the Canadian state, that many people across the West had come to believe the same thing, associating the federal government with the Liberal party, and rejecting both. Now they have a chance, for the first time in a generation, to see themselves reflected in Ottawa.

Quebecers, likewise, now have an option, beyond the endless, unyielding Liberal-Bloc stalemate. The icefloes have begun to move in the province, in directions we cannot yet comprehend.

Finally, there is the Tory agenda itself. A more democratic federal government, one in which ordinary MPs have a genuine voice, is the first prerequisite to rebuilding federal legitimacy -- and a more legitimate federal government is one that can once again play a vital role in the affairs of the nation. Strange but true: Mr. Harper is the federalist beau risque.