“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

It’s an election that pleased no one.

The Liberals aren’t pleased because they didn’t get a majority, The Conservatives aren’t pleased either even though they got more than 40% of the popular vote. And the NDP? Well, they collapsed along with their leader who quickly ruled himself out of running again. The Greens fell to one seat from two. You can’t fall much lower than that. And the other parties in the race experienced equally dismal results.

So where are we headed now? Not to a good place, I fear. But not necessarily a bad place either if our political parties are willing to accept some of the challenges that became evident in the election aftermath.

The biggest challenge, of course, is how to deal with Donald Trump, the plague from the south, which hung over this election like a proverbial dark cloud. It was no accident when Trump brought up annexing Canada again the final week of the campaign. Trump knows that his “fifty-first state” rhetoric drives most Canadians bonkers and when chaos occurs it’s usually to his advantage. And it worked like clockwork with most of the candidates replying in kind which told Trump he could manipulate Canadian politicians anytime he wanted to.

When that happens, we lose.

Trump aside, the election showed that Canadian politics are becoming more polarized every day similar to the American zeitgeist. In both countries, there’s really only two parties – rural and urban. The only difference is the number of guns. Maybe it’s not that bad in Canada yet, but it’s happening and that’s disquieting.

Also disquieting in both countries is the homeless issue. In the US, homelessness is strongly tied to racism and prejudice against migrants which is not nearly the case in Canada. But tent-encampments are still a fact of life in the Great White North and not nearly enough new housing is being built to deal with it.

But one positive aspect of this election was the 68% turnout rate which is the best turnout in years and shows that Canadians still care deeply about democracy. No doubt living next door to the world’s most bellicose superpower has something to do with our strong support for democracy. And this election, with all its quirks and surprises, speaks volumes about the Canadian political character.

Probably the biggest surprise of the election was the defeat of Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre. Ironically it was former Liberal Party Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who kiboshed Poilievre’s fate when she dramatically resigned from cabinet inspiring other Liberal MPs to publicly criticize the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who was no longer talking about “sunny ways.” That sent the dominoes falling with Trudeau dropping his plans to run again and clearing a path for Mark Carney to run. Will Freeland be rewarded for her forthright action when Carney names his first cabinet? One would think so.

The other major surprise was the almost total collapse of the NDP led by Jagmeet Singh, who ran a highly emotional and strategic campaign for the NDP, but saw his party drastically drop anyway. Clearly the socialists have some political soul searching to do before the next election, especially after losing 13 seats in their former stronghold of B.C.

In Poilievre’s case he’s made it crystal clear he intends to bump one of his Conservative colleagues and run again, a questionable move in a party riddled with in-fighting during the campaign. As for the Greens, they will go nowhere until the first-past-the-post system is scrapped and that doesn’t seem likely in the near future.

As for Carney, the only banker in history to have chaired the central banks of both Canada and the UK, there can be no doubt of his prowess as a banker. But can he do politics as well as he does banking?

That’s what Canadians are going to discover over the next four years.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who has never seen a Canadian election as surrealistic as this one

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