The Unwanted Election Where No One Got What They Wanted
Tru-north, won, not free
“It looks like nobody wanted an election and no one got what they wanted’” — Chantal Hébert, CBC, Sep 20th 2021
A quick 600+ million tax payer dollars later and voilà — we have another Liberal minority government that looks strikingly similar to the one we had over a month ago. So how did we get here? Below is an analysis of the results, what the ‘new’ government under the ‘old’ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks like, and what you as a voting citizen can do to make sure they’re being held accountable.
Who knows, maybe Justin wanted to get four years of working time with fellow centre-left leader U.S. President Joe Biden, potentially avoiding a Trump return to the white house in 2024? Stranger things have happened.
Biggest Winners
Left Leaning Moderates
Whether you like it or not, centrist politics reigns supreme in Canada. The two biggest parties that lean slightly left or right of the centre dominate the seat count as usual in 2021, at times borrowing policy points and splitting hairs, and at others disagreeing for the sake of opposition to one another. The slightly more progressive flavour came out on top again for the third election in a row since 2015.
With the Liberals winning in what was supposed to be a tight race, the biggest conservative party in Canada was forced to move left on a number of critical issues to remain relevant — an outcome that is always a big victory for progressives everywhere. The caveat to this is that the more radical right-wingers who couldn’t stomach this pivot likely ended up in the arms of Maxine Bernier and the People’s Party of Canada.
Justin Trudeau seems to have struck gold as the conservatives collapsed in on one another around Jason Kenney and the PPC. It also seemed that the last minute sacking of Liberal candidate Kevin Vuong in the Toronto riding of Spadina-Fort York due to sexual assault allegations was swept under the rug enough to not cause a stir. What’s even more unsettling is that Vuong won the riding. Global news are calling for his resignation, and as a voter within his riding who supported him, I feel like democracy was distorted, and, demand a chance to re-cast my ballot in a future by-election.
When it came to election night — despite a rocky start in the Maritimes and losing a number of seats in Nova Scotia, the Liberals surged ahead early and never really looked back. The race was called far earlier than anyone expected at around 10pm eastern, still under one hour after polls closed in Central Canada.
The Liberals mostly held or expanded influence in Quebec at the demise of the CPC and NDP, particularly in Montreal and Gatineau. The same applied to other major urban centres including Toronto, Thunder Bay, and perhaps most critical of all — Vancouver. Trudeau’s time in the west seems to have paid off given that the Liberals won the vast majority of urban Vancouver seats in an NDP heavy province. Perhaps it was the B.C. Greens leader endorsement of his climate change platform that helped paint those ridings Red.
With a minority coalition set in place for at (hopefully!) another 4 years, Jagmeet Singh will play kingmaker yet again. The NDP technically gained one more seat than 2019, however it has to be said their overall performance was underwhelming at best. Singh was hampered by a weak debate performance, releasing his platform costing far too late (Monday Sep 13th), and often sticking too hard to the same old lines of “tax the rich” and “yeah but Justin did this”.
Endorsements by U.S. Senator and pop-culture mittens icon Bernie Sanders alongside former Toronto NDP heavyweight Olivia Chow did little to expand the Orange Wave, losing major ground in the Maritimes and Quebec while only picking up specks of Ontario surrounded by Blue and Red. As expected, the NDP dominated the west coast, but disappointingly stumbled in the greater Vancouver area.
Anti-Vaxxers
Although Maxine Bernier and his #PurpleWave didn’t win a seat (including losing his own seat of Beauce, QC), I’m not sure the former CPC leadership hopeful minds a whole lot.
From the outset, his mission was to disrupt the Conservatives who shunned him, and disrupt them he did. On the back of a whopping 10% Ontario rural riding vote count (5.1% nationally), he kneecapped O’Toole in a number of Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Maritime electorates.
While on one hand it’s great to see new parties come to life, it’s hard to get excited about the message put forward by the PPC. There’s a reason they weren’t invited to the national debates.
I personally think it was opportunistic and reckless for Bernier to play “rabble rouser” to anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine, and anti-establishment types during an already dangerous pandemic. I doubt he really gives a beaver tail though, going as far to state in his closing speech in Saskatoon that this was a protest movement rather than a political one, which is a perfect segue into our first biggest loser: the Greens.
Biggest Losers
Annamie Paul & the Greens
CBC pundits were piling on the shrinking Green party which seems to have done everything wrong in 2021. Despite a relatively strong showing in the September debates after being grilled on her leadership, Annamie Paul and the Greens started the 2021 election like a car with 3 wheels, running candidates in just 252 of the 338 ridings
To make matters worse, it seems the large cohort of Green voters that saw higher numbers in 2019 traded in their Green for a shade of Purple in 2021, CBC pundits claiming the more libertarian faction who might have voted Green just to stick it to Andrew Scheer in 2019 found a better home for their radical views with Bernier’s PPC this time around.
The result was their rapidly spiralling leader getting utterly walloped in her riding of Toronto Centre (9% of votes, 4th place) on election night. The one silver lining for the party was picking up its first ever Ontario seat, claiming Kitchener Centre after the once favourited Liberal candidate, Raj Saini, dropped out in early September due to rumours of female staff harassment.
Right-Leaning Moderates
Overall, Erin O’Toole left too many questions unanswered to instill enough confidence in the centre-right voters — especially on how he could control the more radical factions of his caucus on issues such as gun control, climate change, and vaccinations. These same factions (portions of whom likely shifted their votes further right to the PPC) attacked Trudeau in person on Wednesday September 15th, throwing gravel and spitting vitriol about his family.
Gravel wasn’t the only thing thrown at the Prime Minister, with O’Toole landing the first personal low-blow early in the week leading up to election night, questioning Trudeau’s character — something that a lot of voters do not normally like as once the mud flies, it sticks, and it’s very hard to peel off.
The CPC campaign trail continued to decline, surprisingly in Quebec where the endorsement of Premier Legault was expected to bear fruit. This proved to be inadequate in pushing votes toward O’Toole who was trying his darnedest to focus on understanding and improving Quebec childcare.
On election night, despite starting strong by picking up a number of seats in Nova Scotia from the Liberals (likely due to early campaigning on seniors and healthcare), the People’s Party successfully dug into the Conservative vote count early in a number of ridings across the Maritimes including Long Range Mountains (NL) and Miramichi-Grand Lake (NB). As we know, this trend continued right across the nation.
In the end, the Conservatives will likely lose seats rather than gain ground on their Liberal opponents. Given how close the polls were going into the weekend, this isn’t going to go down well with both the moderate voters, or, members of the CPC. Even O’Toole’s job as leader now looks uncertain given the disastrous result for an almost rudderless Conservative Party.
Despite positive signs out east, it was all downhill from there once polls closed in Ontario & Quebec for the CPC, with COVID-19 blunders by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney hurting the blue stronghold in Alberta.
The Rank-n-File Conservatives in Alberta
Blue blooded Albertans had a bad week amid a frightening pandemic fourth wave. The almost spectacular backflip on Premier Jason Kenney’s formerly “open door” policy to COVID-19 restrictions proved to have hamstrung the federal conservative cause.
These acrobatics are likely what opened the door for the progressive parties to pick up a few seats in Edmonton, Calgary, and even playing a partial role alongside the PPC in losing South Okanagan-West Kootenay to the NDP.
L’homme de Jeu
Yves-François Blanchet is likely to gain a few seats for the Bloc Québécois on the back of English debate question controversy, but didn’t capitalize on the drama enough to win his gamble of hitting the 40 seats he so boldly claimed as the “goal” earlier this month.
Blanchet believed the national slight to Quebecers would be enough to galvanize the province toward the magic four-o, however this soon became the “dream” closer to the election, until all of a sudden no one from the Bloc wanted to talk about anything higher than 32 seats. All eyes were on Quebec Premier Legault spoiling the Bloc party by backing O’Toole’s Conservatives, however it was Trudeau’s Liberals that played party poopers across the more urban Quebec ridings.
What Happens Next?
Now that the smoke has cleared — we have a new government! Isn’t this great? Despite one of the lowest turnouts since 2008 (currently 58%, final number to come by Thursday September 22nd) Macleans says its time to put the nose to the grind for Trudeau in implementing national daycare, tripling the carbon tax and their respective rebates, and to start cozying up to Joe Biden.
But guess what? Politics doesn’t stop just because the election is over. Here are a few things to make sure you’re keeping engaged and involved:
A) Take note of any by-elections that still need to be decided. Although unlikely — these could be in electoral districts where candidates dropped out before the end of the election campaign. We already know it’s likely to happen in Toronto’s Spadina-Fort York riding.
Despite it being rare for these to happen in the first place, and even rarer for these to block even a minority government from forming, they may make a difference when it comes to the makeup of a coalition, or, may affect you directly if you live in an electoral district experiencing a by-election.
B) Keep an eye on what the winning party does in their first 100 days in office. This is often a strong key performance indicator for a new government looking to cement public support early so that its upcoming term is as smooth as possible. Usually the public (and the media) will apply high levels of scrutiny on enacting change, particularly if a new leader is chosen. Given that Justin Trudeau is retaining his leadership title, voters have told us they expect a little more of the same, but that they mostly want reform on child care, climate change and the electoral system.
C) Observe what happens to the non-majority parties. I deliberately didn’t use the term “losing” here. Leaders get replaced, platforms change, and infighting happens, but there’s still a critical part for these politicians to play. Elected MP’s still need to participate in parliament, and the Conservatives will form the official Opposition — a critical piece in the cog of democracy designed to keep the elected government honest, and, to provide alternative policies for the house of commons to consider and vote upon.
D) Get involved in democracy! Here’s a wonderful little series of COVID-19 safe things you can do from the Museum of Australian Democracy that is 100% transferrable to the Canadian political system which includes:
- Contacting your local MP about issues in your electoral district
- Staying up to date with local & national politics
- Attending digital public meetings held by your local councillors or representatives
- Signing recognised on-line petitions and discussing on social media
- Joining a political party (if you’re over 19), a junior political organisation (if you’re under 19), or a non-party-affiliated policy “think tank” (if you want to contribute at any age)
So this brings me to the end of my 3 (surprise, it’s now 4?) part project on the 2021 Canadian Election. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
If you missed Part 1: “An Informed Decision” — it took us through my enrolling experience, observations on leadership candidates, perusing my local electorate, and, explained my free ‘Election / Candidate Voter Tool’
If you’re interested in additional context on what happened in the debates on September 8th and 9th, check out Part 2: “Words, Mots, Words”.
If you want to know who I predicted to win the election and how I spent my final days leading up to election night — head over to Part 3: “Heavy Lies the Fed Who Wears the Crown”
