The great rationalization of Canadian politics

Chantal Hebert has a column on the NDP today:

But the loss of the longstanding central Liberal place in the larger federal scheme has ramifications that extend far outside the immediate ranks of its reduced caucus and shrinking membership.

The 2006 advent of a Conservative minority government had already caught much of Canadian civil society — including the media — by surprise.

Five years later, most of the country’s chattering class was even more unprepared for the rise of the NDP to official Opposition status.

For the many who saw an inevitable return to Liberal rule as the equivalent of a return to business as usual, the main message of the May 2 election was that nothing of the sort is in the cards.

Two months later, most interest groups are still scrambling to take stock of what could become the new normal on Parliament Hill. …

In English as in French, past media coverage of the federal NDP can only be described as sparse.

Old habits die hard.

Even today, there is a tendency to treat the goings-on of the NDP as a distraction and the travails of the third-place Liberals as a main event. …

In time, the parliamentary media will raise its game and give the NDP the scrutiny it and the voting public deserve.

But for many national organizations, the so-called new normal on Parliament Hill will likely have more profound consequences than simply updating the list of their go-to contacts.

Many of their resources may end up being more fruitfully redeployed on the provincial front. That may be particularly true for those who are engaged in the social policy debate in general and the health-care discussion in particular. More on that in an upcoming column.

I hope that this election’s outcome is a lasting one.

Not because the Tories sit in the catbird seat in this party alignment, tho’ they do — for now. But more because this is a more rational alignment.

There SHOULD be a party on the centre-right, and a party on the centre-left, both of which compete for power. It’s good for the country to have that debate.

For that reason, it seems to me that there’s a real possibility of this sticking.

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And, again, this means that someday — possibly within a decade — there will be an NDP federal government.

But that’s fine — if people want what they’re offering, that’s how it should be.