Canada and Australia make for an interesting compare/contrast exercise. Their similarites begin with the fact of King Charles III being the Sovereign, even to the point of his head being on their coins. Other similarities are their high standards of living, federalism, multiculturalism, bigness in area and roughly similar patterns of exports. Their differences are that Australia is unicultural where Canada is bicultural, Australia is an island where Canada has a giant neighbour to its south and Canada is a cold country where Australia is hot. The Canadian Liberal Party is progressive while Australia’s Liberal Party is conservative.
The above being the case, it’s interesting to record that both countries will have general elections in the same week, Canada on Monday April 28 and Australia on Saturday May 3. Both Canada and Australia have parliamentary systems but at the moment their lower house is dissolved. Anthony Albanese will contest the New South Wales electoral division of Grayndler in Sydney while Mark Carney will contest the Ontario electoral district of Nepean in Ottawa. Mind you, Canadian journalists are not so pedantic as to refer to Nepean as an “electoral district”. Carney, they say, is contesting the “riding” of Nepean. These two prime ministers differ in that Albanese will win Grayndler for the ninth time while Carney will win Nepean for the first time.
Canada is both more American and more British than Australia. Its lower house is called the “House of Commons” showing its Britishness while Australia uses the general term “House of Representatives”, as do the Americans. Both countries have a Senate, but Australia’s Senate is more-or-less modelled on the American and is “unrepresentative swill” in the same kind of way. The Canadian Senate is not elected, so it is rather like the British House of Lords.
The lower house of both Canada and Australia is composed of a certain number of seats distributed between the states (provinces in Canada) according to a population formula. In both cases the principle of single member electoral divisions prevails. Seats have been redistributed recently increasing the Canadian House of Commons from 338 seats to 343, but reducing the Australian House of Reporesentatives from 151 members to 150. The total population of Canada is 41 million while Australia’s is 27.2 million. Of more interest, however, is the number of electors enrolled to vote. We’ll learn these exact numbers after the elections are over. Current estimates are that Canada will have 29 million electors and Australia 18 million. That means each Canadian riding has 85,000 electors on the roll while Australia’s electorate average number is 120,000.
Politically Canada is more British than Australia in two important ways. First, the casting and counting of votes is first-past-the-post in the United Kingdom and Canada and preferential in Australia. The second is that voting is voluntary in the UK and Canada and compulsory in Australia. Bearing these differences in mind I have decided to make more general predictions in the case of Canada and give more details about Australia in a later article for Switzer Daily.
Canada became a country in 1867 and Carney is its 24th prime minister. Australia became a country in 1901 and Albanese is its 31st prime minister. That is another way of saying we have had a remarkable number of very short-term prime ministers, being Frank Forde (1945), Earle Page (1939), John McEwen (1968), Arthur Fadden (1941) and Chris Watson (1904) each of whom served for less than 120 days. By contrast, Canada’s shortest term prime minister Kim Campbell (the only woman) served for 132 days in 1993. If the Liberal Party loses the forthcoming election then Carney would become the prime minister with the shortest term.
The Leader of the Opposition in Canada is Pierre Polievre, the leader of the Conservative Party. He has held both posts since 2022. He represents the riding of Carleton in Ontario – so both leaders come from Ontario and both note that English is their preferred language. In this they differ from former prime minister Justin Trudeau (November 2015- March 2025) who has represented the riding of Papineau in Quebec and notes his preferred language to be “French/English”. Until Donald Trump started his trade war with Canada Polievre was widely expected to win the 2025 general election.
As indicated above my prediction now inclines to the view that the Liberal Party will win again – something I would not have predicted if I had made a forecast six months ago. Trump is the man who has caused this turn-around. He is just as bad a president as I predicted when I forecast his election. See “June 27 and July 13 gave Trump the 2024 election”, posted on July 19 last year. https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/malcolm-mackerras/june-27-and-july-13-gave-trump-the-2024-election/ . As a former governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-13) and later the Bank of England (2013-20) Carney benefits from a reputaion of being a good economic manager. Polievre, meanwhile, has lost the ability he had in spades against Trudeau, namely to condemn the Liberal prime minister as being “woke”. Polievre now tries to be as anti-Trump as possible but there are doubts about the extent to which he can succeed in Trump-bashing.
The turn-around in the opinion polls caused by Trump is what has made me now inclined to predict Carney winning – but it is not the only feature of the situation that causes me so to forecast. I am aware that the electoral system favours the Liberal Party and disadvantages the Conservative Party. The explanation for this is that the Conservatives win all the seats in Saskatchwan and nearly all in Alberta and these massive wins waste away the Conservative vote. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party wins seats in the eastern provinces by smallish majorities. So, the Liberal vote is spread economically.
The most recent general election in Canada was the 44th held on 20 September 2021. The second most recent was the 43rd held on 21 October 2019. At both those elections in Saskatchewan all 14 ridings were won by Conservatives with massive majorities. In Alberta in 2019 there were 33 Conservative wins of the 34 ridings. In 2021 it was 32 out of 34. It is true that Alberta (as the most rapidly growing province in population) is to get three more seats at this 45th general election but that lessens the bias only to a very small degree.
Let me give the statistics of the 44th general election in September 2021 when 17.2 milion votes were cast. In votes the biggest party was Conservatuive with 5.75 million votes. That won it 119 seats. The second biggest party in votes was Liberal with 5.56 million votes. That gave it 159 seats, making it by far the biggest party in seats. The third biggest party in votes was the leftist New Democratic Party with 3.04 million votes and 25 seats. So, the NDP was third biggest in votes but fourth biggest in seats. The fourth biggest party in votes was the Bloc Quebecois which won 32 seats, all of them from Quebec. Likewise, all its votes came from Quebec but accounted for 1.31 million in total. All the rest combined secured 1.54 million votes and won just three seats, one each in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.
The alleged unfairness between parties in Canada for its House of Commons is essentially the same as the alleged unfairness between parties in the United Kingdom with its House of Commons. Consequently, in both countries there is incessant talk about proportional representation. For a variety of reasons about which a magnum opus book could be written no change is ever made.