Why Ontario Will Not Vote for Harper
May 9, 2005 · By Max West
Canadians feel like foreigners to each other — and they’re right. That’s why Ontarians don’t want to vote for a PM from Alberta: They don’t want to be ruled by a foreigner. And Alberta rightly feels that it’s ruled by a foreign power.
But few are willing to admit it to themselves – except in Quebec. Even in Alberta, most want to believe that Canada is a real country. They want to believe that any child can grow up to be the Prime Minister of Canada, but it’s just not true. The reality is that most Ontarians will never vote for a PM from Alberta. They’ll vote for drooling cretins and dithering old flatuses before they’ll vote for someone from the West. They’ll vote for fraudsters before they’ll vote for foreigners.
Ontarians feel in their bones that they’re the only true English Canadians. They see Canada as a senior partnership between Quebec and themselves, to which the other provinces are either clients or colonies. Ontarians believe that the West is just a colony of their own creation, a foreign outpost that they have the divine right to rule. For Ontarians, the West will never outgrow its colonial status. That’s why Stephen Harper has no better chance of winning Ontario than William Lyon Mackenzie or Louis Papineau had of being elected Prime Minster of England. (For those who in school weren’t interested in the history of foreign places, they led the Rebellions of 1837.)
But to maintain their imaginary view of the country, Ontarians must lie to themselves. They can’t admit that Westerners are foreigners to them because then they would have to admit that Canada is not a real country. So instead they make up stories about why they won’t vote for a western-based PM.
See (says Ontario), Stephen Harper is just too bland and unemotional, like a robot. And he’s too angry. Yeah, that’s the ticket: he’s too bland and unemotional and too angry and emotional. That’s why we can’t ever vote for him. And he has a secret agenda. You can’t ever prove it but you know it’s there – otherwise, see, it wouldn’t be a secret. If he denies it, that just proves it’s a secret. Yeah, that’s the ticket. We can’t vote for him because of the secret agenda and because he’s too emotionally angry and too blandly unemotional, not because he’s a foreigner from Alberta.
Just like that Preston Manning guy. He had that funny voice and those glasses, so he didn’t appeal to us. And then he changed his voice and got rid of the glasses. See, you just can’t trust a guy like that. We couldn’t vote for him because he was too dumb to not look like a nerd and then he was too clever when he changed his appearance. Yeah, that’s the ticket: he was too dumb and too clever. Whatever he did, you just couldn’t trust him. Not because he was from Alberta, though. No, it’s just that he didn’t have what it takes to make it in Ontario. He was sort of like an immigrant, except we like immigrants. No, he was just a pushy foreigner who came here and expected us to vote for him. See, you just can’t trust a guy like that.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s not that we’re bigoted against Westerners. Canada is not a bigoted place and Ontario is the heart of Canada, so we Ontarians cannot possibly be bigoted against those creepy strangers from the West. See, it’s them that’s the bigots – yeah, that’s another reason we don’t trust those creepy weirdos from out West. Don’t forget that one, write that down. Next election we need to remember not to vote for those dangerous foreign bigots, those bland, emotional, dumb, clever strangers from the West. Yeah, that’s the ticket. They’re prejudiced, those Westerners. You just can’t vote for them.
And so Dalton McGuinty demands $5b so Ontario can fulfil its role as “leader of confederation” (as he said over the weekend).
there are a myriad of factors at work endorsing and promoting the self-centeredness of the east. i recall moving to ontario in the mid 80s, to return to the west in the early 90s. i thought i was moving to eastern canada, but was quickly informed by ottawans that i now resided in CENTRAL canada.
this was the hey day of the edmonton oiler dynasty – yet it was almost impossible to get a glimpse of the best team to ever grace the ice. instead, a weekly dose of ballard’s inept leafs was peddled as hockey. given the time difference, one rarely even got details of games from the west – unless the leafs were playing. we were lucky to get the score two days later in the newspaper. even then, the average ottawan or torontonian couldn’t stand the simple fact that the oilers and the flames were the two best hockey teams. these were the days before internet and 300 television channels. technology has improved, but the eatern bias (the center would be winnipeg, i believe) continues to know no bounds. they are more likely to travel to new york,london, or paris than to vancouver or calgary. can’t say that i blame them, but even with technology’s capacity to diminish the consequences of distance, the cultural egoism of easterners persists. it is the work of sisyphus to try to counteract it. that is why something more drastic than a reshuffling of the cards of fiscal federalism is required, and long overdue. we not only need a new deck, but a new game.
Good post. I think that this is likely a subconsious impulse on the part of Ontarians. Not that that makes a difference.
I wonder how much longer a people as proud as Albertans are will tolerate this treatment within a loose federation.
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[...] s a history of ripping off Canadians to fund his political empire. This is the party that Ontario is going to vote for yet again. They’ll get the [...]
This strikes me as… to be frank…. whiny. Although I live in Ontario now, I was born in Saskatchewan. And I know all too well how Albertans tend to conflate themselves with “the West”, when in fact, they tend to be the peculiar exception even west of the Ontario border. Other provinces’ premiers, for instance, have to compete in elections. The coronations of Alberta politics are unknown to the other western provinces.
The fact is is that Stephen Harper just has not been able to sell himself as prime ministerial in much of urban Canada, even in the west. In fact, one of the other heartlands of Conservative support is in the valleys beneath Parliament Hill. yes, it is true – politically, Albertans have more in common with Eastern Ontarians of the Ottawa valley (both in terms of social, fiscal, and firearms conservastism) than just about any other region in Canada.
Hi Evolver. Regional interests and ideology cut across the population in different ways. That’s why, in the jargon of the experts, they’re called “cross-cutting cleavages.” In Canada, the political structure makes the regional cleavage dominant over the ideological one, to the perpetual advantage of Ontario. Here in BC, for example, lots of NDPers are also PO’d at the Imperial Center.
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I moved to Calgary from Halifax in October of 2000 with everything I owned in my car. I did not know what the future had in store but I had faith that it had to be better than what I was leaving behind. I am intimately familiar with how Liberal politics work in the East, having once held a membership (I am ashamed to admit) in that party.
My life is much better since moving to Calgary. I have not lived anywhere else in the country where there is so much economic opportunity and a real sense of confidence, a real sense of “anything is possible.” Are there rednecks here? Sure, but are there any more rednecks here than anywhere else in Canada? No.
There is a growing number of ordinary people here who are coming to regard a more independent Alberta, and even an independent, sovereign nation of Alberta (if necessary) as the only way to ensure that the freedom and economic opportunity that we enjoy here will be enjoyed by the next generation. The East will not change. And it is time that Westerners who were born and grew up here accept that, and listen especially to people who moved here from the East because they were fed up with the sleazy politics and arrogant smugness of Liberals back there.
Calgary is changing. The Provincial Liberal Party is poised to sweep the City as well Edmonton. Right now we hold 3 out of the 30 seats, and we kept another 20 candidate on edge, including Calgary Elbow MLA Ralph Klein. Most Political Pundits say that in the next provincial election the Liberal Party should win 45 percent of the popular vote. Not enough to win the government since the Klein Conservatives have gerrymandered the seats so that the Rural Areas have more MPs than the Urban ones. In rural Alberta has 75 percent of the seats but only 15 percent of the vote. So that’s what would stop the Liberals from winning. PC will with with about 25 precent of the vote.