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Except I really have to go home for dinner.
On "the centre" (that's the Canadian spelling) -- I don't happen to believe in it at all, anywhere. I would instead use words like "apathetic", "ignorant" (in the nicest possible sense), or "self-serving" to describe people who locate themselves in any political "centre".
There are conflicting interests in all political issues. It just isn't possible to be neutral on them unless one is apathetic, or to pretend to be equally concerned about both parties unless one is disingenuous. Political action will always come at someone's expense, and someone's gain. If one is actually familiar with the issues and interested enough to take a position, calling one's own personal preference for how to resolve those conflicts "centrist" is just self-serving. Anybody could do it, by framing the issues in the way that best suits him/herself.
So. The mythology is that "Conservative" (a word whose meaning is changing as we write) is the "right", NDP is the "left", and Liberal is the "centre".
In point of fact, the Liberal Party, if left to its own devices and not forced to respond to leftward pressure from the electorate in order to maintain its grip on power (that being its one unifying aim), is right-wing. And don't let any of my fellow Canadians persuade you otherwise. ;)
Of course, a US Democrat might not see the Liberal Party as right-wing, if s/he thought that the Democratic Party was "centrist" or even left of centre. But that's neither here nor there. The US political spectrum is an idiosyncratic one.
The Liberal Party, otherwise known as the Natural Governing Party, holds a majority of seats in the House of Commons. (The Senate is irrelevant for electoral purposes -- its members are appointed for their effective lives, and its ideological composition reflects the ideology of whatever party last got to make appointments to affect the balance of power.) In a parliamentary system, the party that holds the majority of seats forms the government, and the leader of that party will be the Prime Minister.
The Progressive Conservative Party, which just voted to disband itself and merge with the more economically neo-con and "socially conservative" Alliance (formerly Reform Party), had a long and relatively honourable history up until 20 years ago. It was the party of Canadian cultural and economic nationalism, while the Liberal Party was historically the continentalist, free-trade party.
The modern PC Party also had a decent contingent of what are known as "Red Tories" -- perhaps the origin of compassionate conservatism. Economically conservative, but with a big helping of collectivist social conscience, a modern reflection of the old-style noblesse oblige that characterized conservatives of an earlier era. (The rich much look after the poor.)
Under Pierre Trudeau, starting in the late 60s, the Liberal Party took a firm and very modern interest in individual rights and freedoms -- both traditional civil liberties and more modern "equality rights". The 1981 Canadian constitution got an "equal rights amendment" before it was adopted ... after an enormous lobbying effort by feminist groups, of course. Conservatives were perhaps less enthusiastically in the forefront -- but even mainstream conservatives here differ more on the fine points than on the principles.
The Supreme Court of Canada has spent the years since 1986 (when the equality guarantees in the Constitution kicked in, giving governments time to adjust their legislation) interpreting and solidifying the rights that it contains. For instance, it has long since held that the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Charter (which applies to governments and their legislation and policies, not private actors, which are covered by provincial and federal human rights legislation) is not exhaustive, and protects members of any vulnerable/stereotyped minority. Of course, that includes gay men and lesbians -- and even USAmericans who want to become lawyers in Canada.
Anyhow, maybe if we think of the "centre" as being the broad ground that most voters and parties recognize as the way things should be, and think of things that might distinguish the Canadian "centre" from the "center" in the US, it would include universal publicly administered and paid-for health care (no serious party or candidate would dare deny that, although many neo-con governments, including the present Prime Minister, Martin, have done what they can to undermine the system). It would also include policies that promote multiculturalism, recognition of minority language (English and French, both of which are official languages) rights, recognition of some degree of autonomy for First Nations peoples, recognition of a woman's absolute right to choose (there are no laws regarding abortion, which is covered by public health insurance for the most part, and only the very right-wing propose to do anything about that), strong support for public schools and accessible post-secondary education, and a general distaste for religious spokespeople having too much to say about public policy.
There are regional variations. Alberta is our Texas: more religious fundamentalism, more prone to electing economic right-wingers. BC is lotus-land: 30% of the population self-reported in 2001 as having no religion, and it is among the most prone to electing the NDP, which is also popular in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The east (Atlantic provinces, east of Quebec) tends to be more Tory, but not necessarily of the hard right, neo-con variety; it's kind of a cultural thing, the UK (Scots and Irish) ethnic influence there being a little stronger than most other places outside small-town Ontario.
Quebec ... well, it's changed more than most places on earth in the last 50 years, from being oppressed under the combined weight of the RC church and anglo capitalists, and the corrupt right-wing politicians who kept it that way, to being one of the most socially free-thinking places around: it had civil unions for both same- and opposite-sex couples before the current round of court decisions about same-sex marriages, and has one of the highest rates of unmarried couples, including couples with children. The politics of Quebec nationalism I'll mainly leave for another day, but essentially it began as a movement of national liberation with the usual other political goals -- greater social equity in addition to self-determination -- and has been about as hijacked by the indigenous élite as any other movement of national liberation usually is. The Parti Québécois started out with promises of progressive policies, and before too long was busting public sector unions. The same criticism can be made of the NDP in Ontario in the 90s, for instance.
Ontario has just escaped a decade of vicious right-wing government under its local Conservatives, and brought in a Liberal provincial government in a landslide. Some people expect it to be different. It could hardly help but be different, since its Tory predecessors were really an aberration on the Canadian landscape, more attributable to the general neo-con mood of the 90s ("tax cuts create jobs") than to any permanent alteration in the Canadian psyche.
There have been strong indications for the last little while that Canadians are sick of all that, and don't, for instance, see privatization of health care as the solution to the problems in the system (which most of us see as having been created by right-wing economic policy, and not as structural).
So there's my blather, in which all my fellow Canadians will have to forgive the inevitable omissions or simplifications.
Of course by the time I finish here and post, I won't likely be "first" at all. ;)
Hope it helped!
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