page_title: Anything But Conservative
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Anything But Conservative / 2008 federal elections / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a visit to Mexico.
context_page_description: Anything But Conservative, also known as the ABC campaign and Vote ABC, is a political campaign whose aim is to defeat the Conservatives in Canadian federal elections. It encourages strategic voting.
  Canadian federal elections use first-past-the-post voting which allows a party with minority support among the population to win the majority of the seats in the parliament. Given the current make-up of existing political parties, the progressive vote tends to split between the progressive federal parties, the NDP, Liberals and Greens, which allows for the Conservatives to win a disproportional number of seats in the parliament compared to their popular support. This results in Conservative candidates winning seats in some ridings with as low as 30% of the vote in the riding.
  It is estimated by ABC campaigners that widespread strategic voting in 2015 federal elections decreased the number of Conservative seats by over 72.
context_section_description: The Progressive Conservative Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Danny Williams attracted national attention on December 23, 2004, when he ordered all Canadian flags removed from provincial buildings during a dispute with then Prime Minister Paul Martin. Williams wanted the province to keep all of its offshore oil and gas revenues, along with equalization payments, an exception to the fiscal formula which rescinded equalization transfer payments to a province that had increased natural resources revenues. Martin largely accepted Williams' demands in late January 2005, supposedly due to an expected by-election (incumbent Liberal MP Lawrence O'Brien was terminally ill) that would hold the balance of power for the Liberal minority government. After O'Brien's death, Todd Russell retained the seat for the Liberals in the resulting by-election held on May 24, 2005, which helped to shore up the Martin government's tenuous position in parliament.
  The agreement, known as the Atlantic Accord, was unpopular in the rest of Canada as it was considered unfair to other provinces. It was particularly criticized by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. While Ontario was traditionally one of Confederation's "have" provinces, while Newfoundland was a "have-not", this has changed in recent years. McGuinty complained that his province – already sending more money to the federal government than it gets back in equalization payments – would get further shortchanged as the accord permitted Newfoundland to keep its oil revenues rather than sharing it with the other provinces. While the accord did prolong the federal Liberal government's time in power, it was viewed as "short-term gain for long-term pain" as Paul Martin gained a reputation for doing or saying whatever was possible in order to stay in power, something that caused Ontario voters to become disenchanted with the Liberals.
  On January 4, 2006, during the 2006 federal election campaign, the then-opposition Conservative party leader Stephen Harper sent a letter to the conservative Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Danny Williams with the following statement regarding federal equalization formula:
  A Conservative government would also support changes to the equalization program to ensure provinces and territories have the opportunity to develop economies and sustain important core social services. We will remove non-renewable natural resource revenue from the equalization formula to encourage the development of economic growth in the non-renewable resource sectors across Canada. The Conservative government will ensure that no province is adversely affected from changes to the equalization formula.
  — Stephen Harper, letter to Danny Williams, January 4, 2006
  Following the election and after 
  becoming Prime Minister, Harper began to distance himself from the statement that October. The subsequent 2007 federal budget ostensibly met this promise by introducing the option of a new equalization formula allowing each province to exclude its natural resources – but it also imposed a cap on the amount of equalization each province could receive, effectively negating the Atlantic Accord. The budget also gave each province the option of retaining the original equalization formula, meaning that no province would lose revenue due to the new formula. This budget was praised by Ontario Premier McGuinty, a critic of the Atlantic Accord.
  Nonetheless, Williams said that, based on the restrictions imposed on the new formula, the province had been "shafted", and that "based on the fact that they've broken their promise and broken their commitment, citizens should not vote Conservative in the next federal election."
caption: Stephen Harper, former Prime Minister of Canada
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