Before the conservatives presented their electoral platform on Tuesday, the last platform that will be launched by the main federal matches, more than seven million Canadians had already voted.
That suggests that a significant part of the Canadian public felt that they did not need to compare the platforms of expensive parties before casting a vote. But also questions the relevance of such documents.
“I think that the fact that all the key matches waited too late in the campaign to present their platform, gives me an indication that they did not believe that this were what the voters would be very interested,” said Sébastien Dallaire, executive vice president of East of East of East Leger for the signing of Leger surveys.
Last Saturday, the liberals and the NDP published their complete platforms after the leadership debates and a full day of early voting. The conservatives published their own platform after advanced surveys had already closed.
“In the past, those platforms arrived much earlier because the games knew or believed that voters would pay close attention to deficits and taxes. And this time, he suggests that the parties did not believe that this imported so much,” said Dallaire.
He said that the reason for that is because the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the tariffs that imposed on Canada have become central issues in this campaign.
‘Survey after survey’ showed that voters have Trump in mind
“This is what voters worried. This is what the survey after the survey was showing was more important,” he said. “It has been very difficult to get voters to concentrate on something else.”
David Coletto, founder and CEO of the Market Research and Research firm based in Ottawa, Abacus Data, said that his survey shows that the country is divided into the election between which part and the leader can better deal with the impact of Trump’s decisions and who can better change the policy and direction of the country.
The power panel analyzes which party has published a platform more likely to attract voters.
Liberals are winning 40 percent among those who say it is Trump, while conservatives led by 26 percent among those who say it is a change, he said in an email to CBC News.
“Instead of looking at the platform of the party in detail, I think the Canadians are evaluating the character and experience of the leaders,” he said. “At this point, I don’t think the platforms have a lot of impact on voting behavior on these elections.”
However, there are some data that indicate that the main electoral issues may be moving from which leader and political party best adapt to face US threats.
According to the CBC voting compasule, before the debates of the leaders, 25.2 percent of the respondents said that the relationships of Canada-United States were the most important electoral problem. After the debates, only 19.6 percent said this was the most important issue. Other problems such as affordability and medical care increased in importance.
Cynicism of matches ‘cheap talk’ platforms: professor
The platforms remain important documents and are a predictor quite good of how a party will govern if chosen, said Richard Johnston, professor of Emeritous Political Sciences at the University of British Columbia.
“The parties actually, in general terms, mean what they say and to the extent that circumstances allow it, do what they say they will do,” he said. “So, cynicism on party platforms is a cheap talk. They actually take this seriously.”
Mostafa Askari, chief economist of the Institute of Fiscal Fiscal Studies and Democracy of the University of Ottawa (IFSD), echoed that any party is elected, its expensive platforms, which include projections of public expenses and sources of income, with some adjustments, will be its budget.
“So, why not have that idea before going to vote and have an idea of what they are planning?” said. “I can’t trust any of these politicians if they only talk without really putting anything on the table and showing me what they plan to do.”
But platforms may not matter in the way in theory should, said Andrea Lawlor, associate professor of Political Science at McMaster University.
“If they operated the way we would think, they would be subject to the scrutiny by the public, and we would make our decisions in large part about the treatment of problems by politicians,” he said. “I think in practice, it doesn’t work exactly that way.”
“I am not sure that many Canadians consult these documents or consult them thoroughly and make their decisions based on them,” he said. “I think there are many people who have a rather determined vote and felt comfortable by going to surveys even in the absence of a platform.”
It is more likely that Canadians have an idea of the promises of the party through consistent campaign reports by the media, he said.
“Many of these promises have already been announced in some way or shape through deployment in campaign stops or media interviews,” Lawlor said. “I don’t think there is an expectation that there was a radical change“
However, platforms are important for deliberative democracy because they establish a plan that Canadians should reasonably expect that parties continue if they form the government, he said.
“It has a function of responsibility that allows voters and the media and anyone who is attentive returns and verifies if the parties are delivering.”
The early vote was extended from Friday to Monday, with the occupied centrals occupied during the long weekend as the Canadians cast their vote. James Hale of Canada’s elections says that several factors contributed to mass participation.
Askari agreed that it is important that people see exactly where the parties are in terms of their plan., and how those plans will affect them.
That is why IFSD thought it was particularly important to publish expensive platforms before debates.
If the parties had done it, much of those debates would have focused on the differences in their approaches, their ideologies and the way they join their platforms, Askari said.
“Since their platforms were provided after the debates, it will not have much impact on the results now,” he said.
One was past?
Andrew Macdougall, who was a communications director of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said he believes that party platforms can be “a past era” when they were published early in a campaign were based on the hope that they attract attention and generate impulse over time.
“Now a platform meets after the fact, once each idea has revealed one day at a time,” he wrote in a recent column of Toronto Star.
MacDougall wrote that through the prism of social networks, launching a platform is like “putting its plan in a blender and seeing it splashing on the wall. Not only that, each of those splashes brands can be transformed into an important problem if the incorrect end of the algorithm is put from it.
“It’s for this reason [Pierre] Pailievre and [Mark] Carney has waited so long to put her complete plans in nature, “he wrote.
