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A brief primer on the forthcoming Canadian federal election
I say brief in an attempt by myself to keep this short. The newly sworn-in Mark Carney has asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election for April 28. This was as an anticipated reaction to the recent swings in polling so it's not exactly a surprise, but it's still short notice and parties are rushing to fill out their candidates and get their campaign in action.
The big story in all of this is the massive collapse in Conservative polling support, which is what prompted the election call as the Liberals hope to capitalize. The Liberals have been in power for ten years now, and were up until Justin Trudeau's resignation in December seemingly cooked. The Conservatives were on the verge of outright majority support in the polls, Liberal support was in the high teens, almost every ironclad safe Liberal seat was up for grabs, and it seemed possible - if not necessarily probable - that the Liberals might be reduced to a mere handful of seats nationwide. Now, as the election kicks off, polls suggest something between a comfortable Liberal minority to a majority government. What happened?
For general context: Canada has four major political parties, three national (progressive NDP, centrist Liberals, centre-right Conservatives) and one regional (Bloc Québecois). There are also two minor parties, the environmental Greens and libertarian/populist People's Party. Canadians are in general not partisan: it's very natural for support to shift between parties, and your average Canadian will have voted for 3 different federal parties by the time they hit middle age. What's unprecedented is the degree of the swing in support towards the Liberals, not that it never happens; in 2015 Justin Trudeau entered the 5 week election campaign thoroughly in third place but ended up winning a majority.
I think there's three major factors, and they are all individuals rather than larger undercurrents. The first is obviously Donald Trump. Never has one man done more for Canadian pride and unity. Canada of course is heavily intertwined economically and culturally with the United States, and the actions of the Man Down South has put everything in a bit of a frenzy. For once we are actually seeing meaningful progress towards dismantling inter-Canadian trade barriers, to building new nationwide infrastructure, and indulging in a bit of national pride which has been treated as rather disdainful the past decade. It also goes without saying that Trump's antics are repulsive to most Canadians, and you could not do worse as an advertisement for conservatism to Canadians. It does not help that there's a very fringe and annoying portion of MAGA Canadians, or that the federal Conservatives have done an agonizingly slow job of voicing meaningful denunciations to Trump's tariffs and annexation threats. (By comparison: Doug Ford whipped about quick and used the bully pulpit very effectively, and won his Progressive Conservatives another majority in Ontario).
Pierre Poilievre, the federal Conservative leader, is the second factor. To put it simply: he is not an inspiring candidate to most Canadians. He has spent the past two decades in Parliament (he has never worked outside of politics; he became an MP more or less immediately after graduating university) as the attack dog, and he has kept up that spirit as party leader. He has incessantly and somewhat annoyingly been fixated on Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax for the past few years, ever eager to get in a dig. The problem: Justin Trudeau is gone, and so is the consumer carbon tax (Carney axed it on his first day as PM). Poilievre was never a popular individual, but up against an even less popular leader in Trudeau and his generally maleffective ministry Canadians would have grumblingly voted for him. Now suddenly he is very much the dog who caught the car. The things he has been harping about for years are gone, and he has not shifted his message an iota since the start of Trump's upheavals. The old tricks are simply not working anymore. I think if the previous Conservative leader Erin O'Toole were still leading things they would still have a comfortable lead. He was much more palatable to the average Canadian and far less vulnerable to the changing of the winds. Poilievre's combative nature has put them in a real bind because even if they win the most seats it's hard to imagine them forming government: the things I hear from insiders suggest people just hate working with him, and he's done his best to piss off all the other parties.
And that is particularly damaging because of the third factor, Mark Carney. He might be the most qualified individual to have ever become Canadian Prime Minister; he was appointed to lead the Bank of Canada during the Great Recession under the previous Conservative government, and was subsequently the first non-Briton to head the Bank of England. In a time where there are suddenly great questions about the economic future of the country, he is exactly the type of person voters look to. (Whether he will lead the country effectively remains to be seen.) I've often said that in times of turmoil even the most dysfunctional of democracies will pick boring bankers as leaders, but I was imagining this to be the case in 2029: I really did not see this polling turnaround coming. I think everyone misjudged Trump's capacity for havoc. Poilievre's partisan nature and lack of experience are very stark in comparison to Carney who at least so far is setting a more centrist sort of tone in his messaging and is soliciting notable from both the Conservatives and NDP to run for the Liberals in this election.
The only other thing to add is the real loser in all this might be the NDP. They had helped prop up the Liberals for the past few years and for the last two were generally polling ahead of them. But now the tent is collapsing and all their support is shifting to the Liberals instead. I very much dislike their leader Jagmeet Singh and will not be sad to see him go, but it looks likely that the NDP will lose official party status. It's a long long fall from where they were ten years ago, when they entered the 2015 campaign looking likely to form their first government.
My personal opinions are as follows: part of me wants to see the Liberals win a majority because it would be very funny, and I quite strongly dislike Poilievre and would find it simply embarrassing if a man like that were the leader of my country. We've been through ten years of Trudeau making a mockery of us and do not need any more nonsense. The other half of me finds it a bit galling that the Liberals might escape ten years of misrule and divisive politics without punishment. They are for better or for worse the natural ruling party of Canada (and the one I am most closely aligned with, ideologically) and that means they are the experts at shifting with the public, but it means they also can get arrogant and complacent and that begets all kinds of nonsense and corruption. So I guess I'm hoping for a small Liberal minority that chides the Liberals and forces them to do a better job.
One thing that annoys me a lot is that I don’t even think Poilievre was slow to denounce the tariffs or other Trump policies (I recall seeing articles about him denouncing them the day they were announced) - I feel like the internet (generously aided by what was probably an advertising blitz for Carney) decided to ignore it.
One thing that happens in Canadian politics is that as a conservative, you do not have any of the leeway granted to a LPC or NDP candidate. Most donations to the LPC are close to the donation limit, and they facilitate the largest transfer of wealth out of the middle class? Well obviously the CPC is the party of neo-feudalism and big business. LPC candidate literally raised from birth to be prime minister with a multi-million trust fund while the CPC candidate was adopted and raised by a middle class family? Clearly the CPC candidate is the elitist.
It’s really frustrating how little people seem to react to the facts on their own. Someone who votes for Carney because he doesn’t care for Poilievre is infinitely more palatable to me than someone who votes for Carney because Poilievre is secretly in the pocket of big business.
Don't think I have to say anything more than that, really. There are no checks and balances to prevent them from screwing up the rest of the country like there are in the US, which is why this divide is permanent in a way it really isn't there. It's the same problem all one-party states suffer from.
At this point I don't think there's any compromise.
Canada is hardly a one-party state. Sure, the Liberals have been in charge for almost ten years, but before that the Conservatives were similarly in charge for almost ten years.
But I agree that Canada just doesn't have the same checks and balances as the US, either for offices or for individuals. The only thing keeping a PM from being in office for life is that eventually something bad will happen that they'll have to take the blame for. I do wonder how much that's uniquely Canadian vs just being a feature of parliamentary systems.
Uniquely Canadian is an oxymoron. Also, this is a design feature of Parliamentary systems.
Canada in 2006 was not as harshly divided urban/rural as it is now. The ultimate problem is that one specific hyper-urbanized area is able to dominate Canadian politics to the detriment of everyone else, so if it votes as a bloc (and it does far more often than not) for any variety of reasons there aren't any moderating factors (no law, no bill of rights[1], no separation of powers) to slow them down.
Actually, that's another design feature of Parliamentary systems, since the entire reason that system exists is to let London do exactly that to the rest of England. You don't vote for an MP and who they are is irrelevant (again by design- wouldn't want individual members being accountable to the public or anything); you vote for a party and that's it.
[1] Before you say "but the Charter", I will remind you of Section 1, which exists to nullify the entire thing and make it more of a polite suggestion than anything that can be used to defend oneself against government overreach.
Could you elaborate on this ? Do you mean the GTA ?
25% of Canada's population lives inside of Greater Toronto and Greater Montreal. Ofc they get to decide regional and national outcomes.
For all intents and purposes, the nation of Canada is one consequential urban corridor containing 50% of its population (Quebec City -> Toronto). The remaining Russia sized mass doesn't get a say, because it is the minority. That is how it should be. For comparison, the Boston - NYC - Philly - Baltimore - DC corridor only contains 14% of Americans.
Which is why it should be its own country. They have very little in common with those outside there and everything they do is destructive to those outside of it.
That is how it should be.
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