Even in a changing world, there are always a few certainties. One dependable feature of Canadian politics was modern Ontario’s unswerving loyalty to cautious, centrist politics. Yet on September 6,1990,38 per cent of the province’s voters gave themselves a majority ndp government. Ontario’s astonishment was matched only by the ndp’s. Had voters punished their Liberal premier for his devotion to the Meech Lake Accord or for David Peterson’s complacency about a deepening recession? And why had more voters gone left than right? And had the ndp promised more than it could deliver? As premier, Bob Rae found no magic to dispel the impact of a recession or the power of business, even within his civil service, but he could try to bring greater opportunities for women and for the visible minorities that had crowded into Ontario’s major cities.
Cynics saw Ontario’s choice as a brief aberration; others insisted that a pendulum had begun to swing, an impression confirmed when, in October 1991, the ndp’s Roy Romanow defeated Saskatchewan’s corrupt and bankrupt Conservative government and Mike Harcourt, a former Vancouver mayor, led the same party to power in British Columbia. However, as the recession deepened, with dwindling revenues and rising deficits, left-wing governments found themselves trapped by debt. Their own supporters opposed spending cuts, but business threatened to leave if taxes rose. Bob Rae utterly failed to persuade government workers to accept pay cuts in return for involvement in management. Public-sector unions became his most vitriolic critics. Spared the worst of the recession, Harcourt’s government was caught between the environmentalist concern for the old-growth forests of Clayoquot Sound and loggers who saw their livelihood vanishing. Overdue efforts to settle Native claims were similarly caught between sky-high demands and a widespread voter refusal to acknowledge any serious aboriginal rights.
Only Saskatchewan’s ndp succeeded, perhaps because the previous government had been so bad and partly because Romanow’s cuts seemed humane as well as necessary. Those who protested could soon look to Alberta. By 1992, the twenty-year Conservative regime looked doomed. But when Don Getty stepped down, his surprise heir was Calgary’s former mayor, a rumpled ex-broadcaster named Ralph Klein. His populist promises—to cut back government big shots, get tough with criminals, and give welfare bums a shovel—delighted many people who wanted easy answers to tough problems. In June 1993, Klein annihilated the ndp opposition, humbled the Liberals, and swept Alberta with a program of drastic spending cuts and sweeping privatization. As administrators of universities, schools, and hospitals bemoaned shrunken budgets, Klein’s public cheered. Why shouldn’t drinkers buy booze in privately owned stores? If private medical clinics made a profit, Klein reasoned, they would help him slash the cost of Medicare. “Ralph,” as admirers hailed him, was soon a hero far beyond his province. Ontario’s Conservative leader, Mike Harris, in third place after Liberal and ndp victories, took note.
Canada in the 1990s found itself in a global economy where national governments had a decreasing power to enhance their country’s prosperity or to protect their citizens from hard times. The Free Trade Agreement of 1989 was followed, with near inevitability in 1994, by a North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), which extended much of the earlier agreement to Mexico. The immediate advantage to Canada was a presence in what otherwise would have been a series of separate bilateral agreements between the United States and other hemispheric neighbours. As one of the world’s major exporters, Canada could only hope for the best in trade liberalization with Europe and, in 1995, with Asian countries. There were winners among firms that mastered new technologies and filled the international niches available to countries with a command of English and adequate public education; the losers were more audible. It was a strenuous time to do business, and, for those who failed, the lowest common denominator of social security fell significantly through the decade.
World History
