Murray Mandryk: Long-standing Canadian grievances need perspective

It would be a bit too much to expect this federal election to bring us all together.

Elections accomplish precisely the opposite — especially in a first-past-the-post Westminster Parliamentary democracy that you can form a healthy majority government with less than 40 per cent of the vote.

Add the reality that Justin Trudeau — a Liberal prime minister whose disdain in rural Saskatchewan and much of the West has reached mythical proportion — really had no reason to call this election.

Yes, this is a minority government and minority governments usually last only two years in this county, but

it wasn’t exactly as if the federal Liberal government was threatened by the loss of power through a non-confidence vote.

Having this campaign now is the last thing the opposition parties wanted. And it surely isn’t what Canadians want in the middle of the pandemic.

But what’s clearly frustrating for voters also goes beyond the pandemic risks.

A majority of Canadians are frustrated by an electoral system — and a system of governance — that clearly doesn’t reflect government intent.

Perhaps that is where this conversation begins. Or at least, it might be slightly more productive than other conversations going on that seem to be going on surround this election campaign.

Therw is something very wrong in a country when the hope of Westerners is that separatists from Quebec now deprive Trudeau of the majority government that he desires.

And even if this happens, it’s doubtful that it will satisfy very many.

Canadians in Ontario and Atlantic Canada won’t necessarily have the majority government for which they voted. Separatists in Quebec will also be frustrated with results and the rest of the nation will continue to be even more frustrated that Quebec imposing is still imposing its will on the rest of the nation.

But it’s here in Western Canada — and especially in rural Saskatchewan — where the frustration may be greatest.

It would seem unlikely that there will be any meaningful change in Saskatchewan from the 2019 election that saw 14 Conservative Party of Canada MPs elected (although the Liberal candidacy of NDP MP Buckley Belanger in Desenthe-Missinippi-Churchill River adds a bit more intrigue to this campaign).

About the only other intrigue slightly intriguing is how well other parties to right of the CPC — Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada and the Maverick Party with its own Western separatist sentiments — may fair in Saskatchewan.

Unfortunately, moving towards those latter sentiments doesn’t help much.

One gets the frustration that this — frustration with not only our vote but also with our entire system of government.

Accompanying this campaign is a growing and unfortunate sentiment that people out here identify more with this province as Saskatchewan people than they do is Canadians.

There’s nothing wrong with having pride in where you come are from. We are, after all, a vast country separated by language and regional economic issues that have always made it difficult to bring us together as a nation. Defining exactly what it means to be Canadian is our perennial struggle.

However, there is something even more wrong with dwelling on the notion that we should only identify with our region and that is then what this election is exclusively about.

Obviously, things need fixing in this country — perhaps beginning with an electoral system fixated on creating large majorities when regionalism and very way we vote suggests we want something different.

Does this mean something like proportional representation in our electoral system that would create perpetual minority governments? That, too, might be a difficult conversation.

But come September 20th, what it does mean is adopting a view that your vote is about something bigger.

It’s a vote about a party can make.

This federal election is about which party can make a 155-year-old federation better.

That is something worthy of your vote.