Life, Writing, Weirdness

Here in Canada, it’s already Election Eve. Those of us who didn’t vote in the advance polls have one more sleep until it’s time to do the bare minimum civic duty and we figure out which party or parties gets to govern for the next little while.

We have a two-party system in the North with, depending on where you live and how you count, as many as five viable parties to vote for. Disregarding how broken the system is for now, every single one of those parties has a fundamental flaw for this particular voter, and I don’t think I’m alone or even in the minority. Because I doubt anyone reading this is going to be particularly interested in me doing an in-depth analysis of the Canadian political landscape or system, the rest of this post is going to be very reductive and not particularly nuanced. Take it at that level, an expression of overall feeling rather than a detailed critique

Taking things by expected vote share in the election we’re about to have:

The problem with the Liberals is that they seem to believe saying something is the same as doing something when it demonstrably isn’t. They can be dragged into action, but it will slow, tiny, grudging action unless there really is a national emergency or an election is at stake.

The problem with the Conservatives is that they seem to feel entitled to their own reality and get very shouty about needing to make the rest of us go along with that. They’re the first to scream oppression when they’re being disagreed with and far too quick to default to insults rather than arguments. And occasionally slurs when they don’t think anyone is paying attention.

The problem with the New Democrats is that they seem to have forgotten they’re supposed to be running a left of centre party, bold and loud and dragging the government closer to caring about people over profits.

The problem with the Bloc Québécois is that they’re treated as a serious political consideration nationally. Regional parties shouldn’t get the national stage in an election even though regional concerns should be part of a national conversation.

The problem with the Greens is they’ve tried to generalize into a “standard” political party, reducing themselves to just another centre-left party, ground already covered by the NDP, at least by appearance.

It’s worth noting that in most ridings, it’s really a two-horse race, and while I don’t see them as particularly effective, the Liberals are demonstrably less evil than the Conservatives, though the distinction isn’t quite as stark as we see south of the border. Which doesn’t necessarily tell you who I’m going to vote for, though it will tell you who I’m definitely not voting for.

Leaders are another piece of the story.

LPC: Mark Carney. The coming home to rule Canada schtick is working out better for him than it did for that Ignatieff fellow, eh? What do we know about this particular stiff-necked finance guy? For a lot of folks, the fact that he’s not Trudeau and very much not Poilievre seems to be good enough for now.

CPC: Pierre Poilievre. Has had two and a half years as leader to do something other than talk about how the Liberals suck at everything. But until the last week of the campaign, he hasn’t bothered to have any ideas about how the Conservatives will do better, or even do things differently, so it comes off as a lot of blustery whining about how he should get a turn. And he shouldn’t.

NDP: Jagmeet Singh. I’m so glad he finally dropped the “I’m running to be Prime Minister” line, because that’s never been the case, and we all knew it, but he could have been pounding the “hold the government to account” nail really hard, even if that hasn’t really been true in the past session. I really wish he’d found some big ideas to crack this campaign open with, but the only thing that stands out is that he’s the only leader who’s talked about rent controls instead of just building more homes, recognizing that our economy isn’t ever going to let everyone actually own their own home.

BQ: Yves-François Blanchet. I’ll just say outright that I’ve seen too much of him in national-level coverage. He represents regional interests, but his platform centres on the idea that Québec should be a separate country. At its peak, the Separatist movement couldn’t manage a 50% + 1 vote and the BQ has always done much better when it fights for the province’s interests without talking about separation. M. Blanchet does enough passive-aggressive sniping at the nation of Canada instead of focusing on what he can actually accomplish. All that said, I’m not sure he’s had a good day since Mr. Carney became Liberal leader, never mind during the election. He just looks more and more deflated every time he appears on screen.

GPC: Jonathan Pedneault and Elizabeth May – wait, the Green Party has two co-leaders? How did I not hear about this until they got tossed from the debate for not having enough candidates (and yet M. Blanchet got to stay). I feel like it’s unlikely to end well. The polls may be bearing that out, but we’ll see how Election Day goes.

There’s my snapshot, but there’s one more piece of things I want to touch on. Often misquoted, but journalist Paul Wells came up with two rules of Canadian politics in way back 2003, expanding it to four a year or so later, and annotating them in 2009. I’m only going to look at the first one, although I think three and four also apply to the current election.

Rule 1: For any given situation, Canadian politics will tend toward the least exciting possible outcome.

I’m more likely to say interesting than exciting.

The least interesting outcome in my eyes will be that we finish the election by electing yet another Liberal minority government, the third in a row out of four victories. That’s actually what I’m expecting. Looked at sideways, this is also the funniest possible outcome for all the sound and fury we’ve had over the year to date.

Least interesting or funniest, the aftermath will bring new job opportunities for at least two of the four leaders, possibly three. Mr. Singh has had three kicks at the can with generally unsatisfactory results for the party overall, which is unfortunate. M. Blanchet is on track to get crushed. Those two I expect either way, although nothing is guaranteed. The third is a slightly bigger question mark.

The Cons are typically one and done with their leaders in recent decades, which is unfortunate for them because I think if they’d kept Erin O’Toole on after the election he didn’t win but didn’t lose any ground on for the party, the election we’re having right now would have come a lot sooner and he likely would have squeezed out a Conservative minority on the strength of a general public dislike of Justin Trudeau.

But they didn’t, and the party swung harder to the right in picking M. Poilievre as the new leader outright, not even as a compromise candidate. We see how well that worked out. Having blown a 20-point lead, Mr. Poilievre seemed to have a hard time switching gears after Mr. Trudeau stepped down and an even harder time not veering to the right at every opportunity. At the very least, he’ll be forced into a leadership review after the election. He might have the political capital to survive it, but only if he holds the Liberals to a minority. If, however, the polls are actually right and they pull a majority government, he’s boned.

And that would break the Wellsian rule. We’d wind up finishing 2025 with a new leader in each of the top four parties, which, if not exactly exciting, does seem like a very interesting outcome to me.

Of course, polls can be wrong and the main voting day is tomorrow. We’re not exactly having an election party, but there will be lots of coverage viewed in our house as we wait for the official results to tabulate.

Be well, everyone.