By Two & Out

PETERS: American two-party system will soon be mirrored north of the border

Feb 1, 2019 | 10:48 AM

AMERICAN VOTERS WHO BECOME DISENCHANTED with the political system in the U.S. often lament the dominance of the two-party system in their country. 

You are either a Democrat or a Republican, or your vote doesn’t matter. 

So two-party skeptics look north to Canada, where we have long had the luxury of more than two choices. 

But it seems that’s changing, both in Ottawa and closer to home. 

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As we look toward the fall federal election, the NDP is on the verge of irrelevance. 

Most voters decide largely based on party leadership, and the NDP has elected a leader, Jagmeet Singh, who has virtually no profile outside of Ontario. 

He has led the federal NDP for more than a year, but you’d be hard-pressed to think of a signature moment for Singh, in large part because he is not yet a Member of Parliament. 

It will be Justin Trudeau versus Andrew Scheer in the fall, and that’s a matchup Trudeau can absolutely win. 

In Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, the Liberals made a big move in 2015 with a quality candidate in Steve Powrie riding on Trudeau’s momentum. 

If not for a terrific NDP candidate in Bill Sundhu, the Liberals may have taken the riding from incumbent Conservative Cathy McLeod, who saw her support dip. 

Say the federal Liberal candidate this year is Terry Lake, and say the NDP can’t find someone to match Sundhu’s caliber. 

Suddenly it’s a two-horse race between Lake and McLeod, and Kamloops might actually go Liberal for the first time since the first Trudeau.

Provincially, another by-election has revealed a two-party race is set to return to BC. 

The Green Party vote collapsed in Nanaimo this week, with the BC Liberals and NDP both gaining at the expense of Andrew Weaver’s party. 

Weaver’s problem is that, even though the achievements of the alliance government with John Horgan’s NDP may have included several Green priorities, it will be Horgan who gets all the credit. 

Voters who chose Green in 2017 will see no reason to do so again if their priorities align with what the NDP has done since being elected. 

And if their priorities are more in line with the BC Liberals, chances are they abandoned that party because of the taint from the Christy Clark years. 

That vote can return home to the BC Liberals in 2021.

While we may have a history of offering more choice, Kamloops, BC and Canada are all trending toward a two-party dichotomy in the years to come.