Premier Doug Ford has called a snap election. It’s suddenly less than a month away — and 15 months early.

The Premier is pushing his advantage. He is in power. The opposition is off guard. 

The Liberal, NDP, and Green parties of the Bay of Quinte riding, which just had a by-election in September, have candidates in place for yet another election. 

But the worry is that this broad field divides the electorate, both provincially and nationally, clearing the way for PC victories both in the province and in the federal election. 

Cooperate for Canada (C4C) is a national grassroots organization fighting the “divide and conquer” strategy that yields victory after victory for a governing party the majority voted against. 

The idea is to back a single progressive candidate in each riding.

Jill Atkinson and Mary Jane Philp are members of Cooperate for Canada from Kingston. They are leading a Belleville to Brockville (B2B) chapter.

“We believe that the only path to defeating the Conservatives provincially and federally, or to hold them to a minority, is to stop splitting the vote among the NDP, Green and Liberal parties (not to mention the Bloc), and to all vote together against Ford and Poilievre,” they say.

They have identified the ridings where the poll numbers show the strategy could work. The Bay of Quinte is among them.

”When we look at all the platforms, the differences are really relatively minor — much more in degree than in kind,” they note. “The progressive candidates have more in common than not.” 

Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system doesn’t allow for a run-off ballot that would focus the progressive vote on a single candidate. Instead, the candidate with the most votes—not necessarily the majority of votes—wins. Doug Ford’s current government holds 67 percent of the seats, but only received 41 percent of the popular vote.

Likewise, the PC victory in the Bay of Quinte by-election last September was by a plurality, not a majority. 56 percent of the votes cast were against the candidate who won. 

A divided opposition lost the battle.

Strategic voting often occurs, but in an uncoordinated way. C4C wants to forge an alliance among parties. The goal is to reduce the number of progressive candidates in a single riding, and concentrate the progressive vote.

“We want to persuade local candidates, local riding associations, party leaders and party presidents to support one progressive candidate in each of the identified 30 (provincial) ridings, regardless of whether they are Green, Liberal or NDP,” say Ms. Atkinson and Ms. Philp

That’s a tall order. Ideally, the parties would to agree not to compete with each other in specific ridings. But for a political party, deciding not to run a local candidate is a major decision. 

A weaker option is to run a “paper candidate,” someone whose name is on the ballot but who has not campaigned. Even to agree not to attack one another would be a step forward.

Coordination must occur at upper levels of the parties, among the leaders. Understandably, this is the level of politics at which “rocking the boat” is seen as most risky. It is up to the people, individual voters, to let their party leaders, party presidents and local candidates know that this is something worth considering. A coalition government comprised of progressive candidates from different parties is a possibility if they cooperate before election day to concentrate the majority of progressive votes in each riding, winning seats that actually do represent the majority of voters.

This is a steep hill to climb—Ms. Atkinson more than once noted, “it’s a long shot for this election, but the idea is you always, you just push the boulder up there.” 

It is also a new strategy: Cooperate for Canada did not exist for the last election. Something like it, though, was used with some success in France last year.

Ms. Philp was canvassing in the County this weekend, talking to voters, stressing “province over party,” and looking for common ground in this time of crisis. 

For more information, visit cooperateforcanada.ca