Liberals Headed for Victory in Canada Vote

TORONTO — An election campaign that deepened Canada’s regional animosities ended Monday with voters apparently poised to award a second term to Prime Minister Jean Chretien--though with a smaller majority in Parliament.

Polls published Friday--the last day for polling under Canadian law--indicated that Chretien’s Liberal Party probably would hang on to a majority of seats in the new 301-member House of Commons. The western-based right-wing Reform Party, led by Preston Manning of Calgary, Alberta, was expected to win the second-highest number of seats.

But the electoral map of Canada figures to be polarized as never before.

The Liberals were expected to pile up as many as 60% of their seats in a single province--populous Ontario. Reform had hoped for a breakthrough in Ontario but instead seemed likely to remain a favorite only in the west. The Bloc Quebecois, which advocates independence for Quebec and runs candidates only in the French-speaking province, was expected to lose some seats but remain the leading party there.

The leftist New Democratic Party, led by Alexa McDonough of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the moderately rightist Progressive Conservatives, led by Quebecker Jean Charest, were struggling to pick up seats on the prairies and the Atlantic Coast, respectively. Both parties were crushed in the last election, in October 1993, and are trying to avoid virtual extinction.

Analysts said the political fragmentation resulting from the campaign, which featured a hard line toward Quebec by Manning, would be unprecedented.

“The result reflects a divided country,” said Kenneth McRoberts, a political science professor at York University here and author of “Misconceiving Canada,” a new book on Canadian national unity. “The government will not have a strong base across the country as a whole, and neither will any other party. . . . We’ll have a Parliament that’s not really equipped to do much in the way of national reconciliation.”

The divisions will be especially acute if, as expected, the Quebec separatists, who control that province’s government, call another referendum on independence before 2000. In the last referendum, in October 1995, Quebec voters rejected separation by a margin of less than 2%.

Chretien based his reelection campaign largely on his success in reducing Canada’s once-formidable budget deficit and on the resulting drop in inflation and interest rates. Although Canadians’ personal income has declined during his 3 1/2 years in office, and unemployment remains high--9.6% nationally in the latest report--Chretien has argued that the government austerity program will set the stage for sharp economic growth and greater prosperity in the next few years.

His opponents countered that he had done too little to stimulate job creation. The Conservatives and the Reform Party argued for tax cuts, while the New Democrats advocated increased taxes and more government spending.

But Chretien also has been careful to stake out the moderate middle ground on most issues. That benefits the Liberals when there are as many as five candidates on the ballot in many parliamentary districts. Each seat is awarded to the highest vote-getter in each district, even if the victor receives only a plurality.

Under Canadian law, Chretien was not required to call an election until the fall of 1998, and his decision to go to the polls so early annoyed many voters. Chretien’s explanation--that he wanted a mandate to carry his government into the 21st century--was largely dismissed by Canadians, who instead saw the early election as an attempt to capitalize on polls showing the Liberal Party leading all rivals by 25 points or more.

But that calculation may have backfired. Chretien got off on the wrong foot by announcing the election just as the Red River overflowed its banks, inundating southern Manitoba with Canada’s flood of the century. The timing made it appear as if Chretien was more worried about politics than about Canadians fighting to save their homes and farms.

That and Chretien’s dull performance on the campaign trail led to a steady erosion of the Liberals’ poll rankings, though they never appeared to be in danger of falling into second place.

The only emotional flare-up in the campaign arose from Manning’s explicit appeal to anti-Quebec feelings in Canada’s English-speaking majority, particularly in the west. Alone among major party leaders, Manning argued that Quebec should not be given special recognition in Canada’s Constitution as the only majority French-speaking province. But a television commercial for Manning’s Reform Party went further, suggesting that Chretien and Charest should be disqualified from national leadership because they were Quebeckers.

Charest replied by calling Manning a “bigot,” and McDonough accused the Reform leader of taking the path toward civil war. Commentators said Manning, who borrows many of his ideas and campaign tactics from U.S. Republicans, had become the first national politician to openly exploit anti-Quebec prejudice.

“Canadians are now being treated to the darkest underbelly of American campaign dirty tricks, the hot buttons, code words, wedge issues, single issues and attack ads of the win-by-any-means and at-any-cost school,” wrote columnist Frances Russell in the Winnipeg Free Press. “. . . [Manning] is the only leader of a major political party ever to play fast and loose with the nation’s most fragile fault line.”

Manning’s tactic also appeared to work with voters. Once he shifted his campaign theme from cutting taxes and reducing the size of government to Quebec, Reform’s poll numbers began to rise.