@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis This may get long... In Canada the Liberal party isn't so much a left party as a centrist one. The term "Liberal" actually is a complicated one, as often outside the US such parties are centrist or centre-right. The Australian and Dutch Liberals for example are both centre-right
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis The Canadian Liberals historically have been very centrist. They would often shift left or right slightly to respond to wherever they felt threatened. In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s that threat came from the left and so they supported welfare state expansion.
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis In the 1990s the party moved to the centre-right (in part to win Progressive Conservative voters, in part because the country was petty much broke and needed to get its budget in order).
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis Moreover, the Liberal party coalition until the 2000s was more about identity than about left/right politics. The Liberals won a lot because they would win the support of most Quebecers and most English Canadians sympathetic to accommodating Quebec.
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis Prior to the 1950s the Liberals also won a lot of Western voters, but that was more because the Conservatives were seen as an Ontario party and Westerners hated Ontario. In the late 1950s the Conservatives found a charismatic Western leader and won over the West.
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis The NDP (then called the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation) emerged as a party of Western farmers pissed off at capitalism during the depression when both the Liberals and Conservatives were pro-free market parties.
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis The party evolved into a pro-labour centre-left party in the standard labour/social democratic mold. It took, though, until the late 2000s for the party to gain any traction in Quebec because they didn't have the same credibility as the Liberals on identity issues.
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis Without support in Quebec, the NDP struggled to make the case that it could make a viable challenge for government. At the same time, it won enough unionized and other left voters to win significant numbers of seats (largely in working class parts of the country).
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis In essence, for most of Canadian history Canadian politics has not been about left/right issues and the Liberal party has taken advantage of that to be successful as a centrist party. At the same time, enough left voters have cared about class to keep the NDP alive.
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis The 2000s are a bit of different story because left/right started to become more important in that era. I would argue though that the Liberals are more a economic centrist socially progressive party in the mold of Macron in France while the NDP us trying to be a trad left party
@David_Moscrop @karandikara18 @christoaivalis TLDR: while the two parties share a lot of voters, they have different ideological cores and different bases of support. Those different bases of support are enough to keep both parties alive (though usually only one is competitive for government).
