Introduction

Political Parties in Canada represent a wide range of approaches to technology regulation, data privacy, and other security, infrastructure, or critical Internet components that affect the Canadian population collectively. It is clear that though they all strive for a “better Canada”, agreement on what this means can be unclear.

The Liberal Party and Conservative Party remain the two parties with the most power while smaller parties often provide their support and feedback to these two parties.

Political Parties

Liberal

• The Liberal Party of Canada is one of two central political parties in Canada. Their core tenets are individual freedom, responsibility and human dignity, and political freedom for meaningful participation.
• The Liberal Party today is a left-wing leaning party on the spectrum as they advocate for social programs like universal healthcare and old age pension and stress the importance of balancing these alongisde economic development.
• The Liberal Party of Canada is known as a “socially progressive” party that favours national Pharmacare, a Green New Deal to reduce emissions, affordable housing for seniors, and equal opportunity for all people, to name a few policies.

Conservative

• The Conservative Party of Canada is Canada’s second-largest party and the official opposition the currently-ruling Liberal Party.
• The Conservative Party today is a right-wing leaning party that favours an unintrusive government, law-and-order and respect for tradition.
• Some of the founding principles in their policy declaration include fiscal responsibility, social policy guided by self-reliance, freedom of the individual and freedom of speech to the greatest extent
• A key feature is that the Conservative Party believes that the role of government should be limited to ensure “individuals and private initiative can prosper”.

Smaller Parties

• Other than the two most prominent political parties, there are smaller parties that have attained a following and factions of support.
• The New Democratic Party (NDP) was founded in 1961 and believes in a green economy and investing in “fair transition” programs, implementing a federal minimum wage of $20 minimum, taxing the ultra-wealthy, and fighting against the privatization of healthcare.
• The Green Party of Canada declares themselves a party dedicated to “providing an evolving social, economic and political structure that embraces and supports Green Values” in their constitution. Their official principles come from the Global Greens movement and include:
  • Ecological Wisdom - or respecting all forms of life including non-human species, Social Justice to distribute resources in an equal and fair manner, Participatory Democracy so that all citizens have the right to express their views and be heard.
• The Bloc Quebecois is a regional political party that supports Quebec independence from the rest of Canada and has rose in prominence and support due to their highly-concentrated support in Quebec.
  • Their recent 2021 platform promised, among other things, to make speaking French a necessary condition for obtaining Canadian citizenship in Quebec, to create a Quebec organization to replace the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), to allow Quebec to sign international treaties