The Canadian Party System in Transition

Extract

The Canadian Political Science Association, half-way through the second year of the Century of the Common Man, naturally devotes some of its attention to the prospects of democracy in our own country. It is fitting that we should inquire into what has been happening to our party system, for we have had as long an experience as most modern countries in the working of popular political parties as part of the machinery of democracy, and our experience should be of some significance to other peoples as well as to ourselves. How little systematic study has been done on this subject, however, is brought home to a Canadian after he has lived for a time in the United States and has had to try to answer Americans when they ask for books on the principles, organization, and history of Canadian parties, such as they produce so abundantly on their own parties. It might not be a bad idea, therefore, to begin this paper with some reference to recent American discussions of their party system. One can usually derive from a study of American experience the most useful categories of thought in which to arrange our own Canadian experience. And American books on democracy in general and on political parties as one of the techniques of democracy have been pouring from their presses in great profusion in recent years.

American study of the subject of political parties in America has now reached the stage at which text-books digesting for university undergraduates the conclusions of the experts are almost as standardized as American motor-cars. When one reads the new ones that appear with each new publishing season one gets a strong impression that the chief reason for the new publication is not the author's urge to throw fresh light on the subject but simply the reason which produces new text-books in most subjects, namely the urge to supplement a meagre salary by a comfortable income from royalties.