John Duffy, the late political strategist and author, began Fights of our livesHis animated and encyclopedic story of federal campaigns that shape this country, with a simple premise, one is always worth returning in moments like this.
“The elections are important,” he wrote.
Writing in 2002, Duffy was rejecting what he saw as the lazy cynicism of “academics, journalists and political dissidents of several stripes” who had worked very hard for many years to convince voters in democracies that the elections are inconsequential or, worse, perforated, so that this or that social group maintains dominant dominant, what happens in the surveys. “
Duffy’s opinion was that the elections, mainly human efforts, are precarious and dynamic, and the elections made by leaders and voters are consistent.
In any case, the last decade of global policy has made it much more difficult to be complacent. With the future of recently uncertain Western democracy, the climate crisis that relaxes and increasing polarization may now seem that elections almost matter too much.
In Canada, even before this spring, the notion that any given choice was possibly the “most important” that has happened was in a certain danger of becoming a cliche. But it is at least much more difficult to play this time.
“We face the most significant crisis of our lives,” said liberal leader Mark Carney at Rideau Hall last month, moments after asking the general governor to activate this election.
Two weeks later, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared in a rally in Edmonton with Pierre Poilievre and thanked conservative supporters for being a “positive part of the most important decision that this country will take in decades.”
The conservative leader Pierre Poilievre played defense in the final stretch of the campaign with demonstrations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where he painted a dark image of a divided and impoverished Canada under a fourth liberal government.
In order not to be behind, the former leader of the Reforma Party, Preston Manning, emerged in the middle of the campaign to warn That, beyond everything else, the unity of the country hung in balance, and that a liberal victory would boost the western provinces to separate.
Carney has repeatedly declared that this is the “most consistent choice of our life.” That is perhaps a judgment that can only be really done in retrospect, once the exact consequences are known. But given the options and circumstances, it certainly seems possible that the 45 general elections deserve that title.
Stewart Perst, a political scientist at British Columbia University, wrote this week that Canada’s domestic challenges are “multiple and significant.” But seeing the Leaders debates last weekPerst said it was clear that “Canadian voters, journalists, debate moderators and politicians are still reaching an agreement with the depth of change in the world around them.”
That is almost certain that it is true.
But this campaign was probably only about the Canadians to begin to understand the challenges in front of them, and, crucially, choosing who will lead the country’s initial response.
Unlike the “free trade choice” of 1988, the last time Canada’s relationship with the United States was so central to a federal choice, this perhaps is less easily reduced to a question of itself or not about a specific and tangible thing. While it can be remembered as the “choice of Donald Trump”, this vote refers to a stack of questions about how and what can be Canada at the beginning of this new era.
In question this week: all the main federal matches have finally published their expensive platforms, but will they balance the voters? How is the way to victory for each match on the night of the elections? And could some leaders lose their own seats?
2 very different candidates for the prime minister
It has been observed that, in some matters, the difference between the two main parties has been reduced during the last two months.
Carney has abandoned the federal government carbon tax, rejected the planned changes to capital gains taxes and opened the door to the approval of new pipes to transport oil and gas. Liberals and conservatives agree on the need to impose retaliation tariffs on US products in response to the tariffs of President Donald Trump about Canadian products.
The two parts propose widely similar increases in Defense expenditure. Both are promising income tax cuts. Both hope to use the power of federal expenditure to persuade municipalities to eliminate regulatory barriers for housing construction.
But liberal and conservative leaders still offer Canadians a marked choice of personalities, priorities and biographies.
Pailievre begins from the premise that the biggest problem facing this country is the broad set of policies implemented by the Justin Trudeau government in the last nine years, and that he is the person who leads to a great change. Carney begins from the premise that the biggest problem facing this country is Trump and the agenda and politics it represents, and that he is the most appropriate person to take the country through this precarious moment.
Pailievre, an experienced and combative parliamentarian, is a Populist conservative who has promised to fight “Awaken ideology“And who jokes that” Income Tax is the fine that pays for the crime of working hard. ”
Carney, a former central banker but a rookie politician, is a technocratic progressive Who feels comfortable with the word “catalyze” and who believes that the government needs to “take a step forward and act in the uncertainty of the current crisis. His presence has restored the political playing field, but still leads a party that has been in power for more than nine years.
Campaigning in Ontario, rich in votes, liberal leader Mark Carney took home his message of being better suitable to face the president of the United States, Donald Trump, since Canada’s electoral campaign enters his last days.
On the climate change crisis, the two parties are possibly as far as they have once beenwith conservatives no longer committed to an objective to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
With the governments that still fight to contain the opioid crisis, conservatives would move away from damage reduction policies to which liberals have opened the doors, ending the safer supply programs and putting new limits on supervised consumption sites.
Liberals believe that a new public agency must be accused of building new affordable homes; Conservatives believe that liberals will only succeed in losing more money in bureaucracy. Pailievre says it would Use the clause despite annul the judges in the judgment decisions; Liberals argue that it would establish a dangerous precedent.
Both parties have promised to reduce the cost of government operations, but liberals would be willing to perform slightly higher deficits over the next four years.
The conservatives have stopped by completely adopting social programs designed by liberals such as child care, dental care and pharmacare, saying that they would only honor the “existing” agreements and coverage (only three provinces and a territory have signed pharmaceutical agreements with the federal government).
The two parties do not agree fundamentally on the future of the CBC.
Both leaders speak widely about the value of economic sovereignty, but they seem See Donald Trump’s challenge differently.
Pailievre has framed Trump’s challenge as a tariff fight that should end with a renegotiated commercial agreement (and perhaps even an extended trade with the United States). Carney frames the Trump challenge in terms of a changed relationship and a changed world that will require Canada to act differently, forge new alliances with “related countries” and renegotiate its terms with the United States.
Part of the difference in the frame could be explained by the political interests of each leader. But its different frames also talk about real elections that this country will have to take in the weeks, months and years ahead of its relationship with the United States.
It is estimated that 7.3 million Canadians, a record, took advantage of early surveys and launched their tickets during the long weekend, according to Elections Canada. Éric Grenier, the founder of the brief who directs the CBC survey tracker, explains what could be behind the increase.
The heavy burden of victory
In a Interview with National Public Radio This week, Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard, said that Americans “no longer live in a democratic regime.”
That statement could contain two warnings for Canadians, one on the immediate future of the giant towards our south, and another about the little that can be taken for granted when it comes to the health of any democracy.
After five weeks of official campaigns and four months of remarkable change, the Canadian electorate has grouped around two options.
Drawn by the populist message, conservative ideals or their unhappiness with the state of things after nine years of a liberal prime minister, something like 38 percent of voters seem committed to the conservatives of Poilievre, almost as large as voters as the conservatives of Stephen Harper received when they formed a majority government in 2011.
Promoted by concerns about Trump, the opposition to Pailievre or his preference for progressive values, a little more than 40 percent of voters are inclined to join behind Mark Carney’s liberals, a little more than Trudeau’s liberals received when they formed a majority government in 2015.
If the surveys coincide with the result on Monday night, it would be the first time since 1957 that two parties received each of 38 percent or more in a federal election. In that case, two fifths of those who voted will wake up disappointed on Tuesday morning. The winners will have to deal with that.
Whoever prime minister after Monday will inherit all the challenges that were present before Trump returned to the White House, from the cost of housing to the climatic crisis to the opioid crisis to the various forces that threaten democracy in the 21st century, and will have to take this country through a moment of incredible stress and uncertainty.
They will have to deal with a president who takes unprecedented actions. The global economy can bow in a recession. The prime minister will have to make a dozen important decisions that we can only guess.
This moment in Canadian history has been a reason for reflection and patriotism. He has inspired a competitive choice and can lead a higher race than usual to surveys. One way or another, the result will be consistent.
But the winner will carry a heavy load.
