With only one week to go, Canadians — who just 11 days ago seemed almost completely unaware there was a federal election going on — have come out of their slumber, and in vast numbers have set about to change the complexion of the current election.
Here’s what the polls were looking like on September 2nd …
On Thursday, September 2nd, Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives seemed to have the election in the bag, their policy-driven campaign a wild success, while at the same time Jagmeet Singh’s federal NDP campaign had caught fire, and catapulted the usual also-ran social democrats into second place, and ready to assume the mantle of Opposition party in the next session of Parliament.
So, what happened in 11 days to turn the Liberal campaign around?
1. Voters took a closer look at a Conservative Party platform that would annul a national child care programme signed onto by eight provinces and territories; nullify a Canada Child Care benefit programme that has provided much needed aid to young families, while cutting child poverty in Canada by 40% since 2015; rescind the ban on tanker traffic along British Columbia’s pristine coast; and reverse the current ban on assault weapons that have murdered so many of our fellow citizens; among dozens of other provocations;
2. Canadians took a closer look at the fiasco that is pandemic policy in the four provinces where the Conservative party is in power, and what that might mean for Tory pandemic policy federally. The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan — both of which refuse to consider a vaccine card to help keep their citizens safe — have the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rates in Canada, and a citizen vaccination rate lower than anywhere else in the country, where the Premiers of these provinces say, “Everything is back to normal. We had lockdowns, quarantined our citizens, did contract tracing, and spent far too much taxpayer money on fighting a war against an invisible foe.” Recently resigned Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister and Ontario Premier in hiding, Doug Ford, have done little better in protecting their citizens and fighting the scourge that is COVID-19.
Canadian voters aren’t stupid: they know what an Erin O’Toole government would mean for the health of their families.
3. If Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party have risen 5.8 points in the polls in the past 11 days, and Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives have lost 8.7 points in Canada-wide polling, the party that has experienced the steepest decline in support is Jagmeet Singh’s NDP, who in falling from a September 2nd high of 28.4% to a mere 17.1% standing today — for an incredible (if not unexpected) drop of 11.3 percentage points — simply have to be reeling.
Although, the NDP will pick up three seats if the Mainstreet Research / iPolitics poll above is correct.
Election Day 2021 is but one short week away from today.
By late in the evening of Monday, September 20th, Canadians will know whether we’ve elected an Erin O’Toole government — certainly not out of the realm of possibility, given the volatility of the current election cycle — or returned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Ottawa, for what will likely be his final term in office, allowing him to complete his work on creating a national child care programme, and seeing us through this pandemic that has so disrupted the lives of all Canadians.
Tonight, at 6pm PDT, the leaders of the five major political parties in Canada will face off against one another in a raucous Leaders’ Debate — in what could turn out to be a pivotal event in the current federal election, and Canadian history.
Climate change, child care, affordability, Indigenous reconciliation, justice, health care, foreign policy, and COVID recovery will all be featured on tonight’s agenda.
In one of the most volatile federal elections in Canada’s long history, over the past week the probable outcome of the election has begun to come into clearer focus.
Jagmeet Singh’s duplicitous “When we form government on September 20th” campaign strategy in the latter days of #Election44 has seen New Democrat support in a tailspin. Registering at 26% support of Canadians aged 25 and under — the demographic least likely to make it the polls to vote — with the support of Canadians 54+ at a new low of just 13%, progressives are now deserting the party.
A national $10-a-day child care programme; continuation of the Canada Child Benefit that has reduced poverty among Canadian children by 40%; gun laws that banned rapid fire assault weapons — like the Ruger Mini-14 (used at the École Polytechnique shooting and in possession of the Nova Scotia gunman last year); the Beretta CX4 Storm (used at Dawson College), the M14 (used in Moncton); and the VZ58 (used in the Québec mosque shooting) — and the banning of tanker traffic along British Columbia’s coast are simply of too great an importance to progressive voters to risk the election of an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative Party to Ottawa.
No progressive with a conscience wants to see an Erin O’Toole government elected to Ottawa. As many of VanRamblings’ tried-and-true NDP supporter friends have voiced to us, “I’ll be voting strategically — and if that means voting for the Liberal candidate in my riding, the candidate who has the best chance of defeating the Conservative candidate, there’s not a question in my mind as to who I’ll vote for.”
A question placed by Rebel Media to Justin Trudeau following the French debate.
Of course, outstanding New Democratic Party candidates like multi-term Vancouver-Kingsway MP, Don Davies; Jenny Kwan in Vancouver East; Laurel Collins in Victoria; Rachel Blaney in North Island-Powell River; Peter Julian in New Westminster and Charlie Angus in Timmins-James Bay; whose numbers should be added to by the election of Jim Hanson in Burnaby-North Seymour, Avi Lewis in West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, and Anjali Appadurai in Vancouver-Granville — and the “re-election” of Ruth Ellan Brosseau in Berthier—Maskinongé, among a host of other NDP candidates / MPs, are must votes.
Meanwhile, over in Erin O’Toole’s Conservative camp, after a textbook, policy-driven start to the Tory campaign, the multiple flip flops over the past week — on gun control, abortion, vaccine passports, health care funding, and deficit spending — has cost the party support among its base, as support for Maxime Bernier’s racist, anti-vaxxer, libertarian People’s Party of Canada has risen to 11% in Ontario, and 9% — and much better in some regions — across the rest of Canada.
“John Ibbitson is right,” complained former Stephen Harper campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, on the Curse of Politics podcast. “Erin O’Toole really is the most liberal leader the Conservative Party has ever had — and party members don’t like it, which is why you see members leaving the party to join Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada. Erin thinks there’s no conservative alternative to the party he leads — clearly he’s been proven wrong with the rise of the PPC.”
“And I think pollsters are radically under counting support for the PPC, particularly in the rural regions of Canada. Chances are, I believe, that PPC support is in the 15% range. In many ways, the current circumstance reminds me of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign — when pollsters utterly failed to capture the extent of the discontent among the American electorate. People may have been reluctant to voice their support for Trump when they received a call from a polling firm — but come Election Day, Donald Trump was swept into office.”
One week ago, support for Erin O’Toole and the Conservative Party sat at a firm 37% — today, it’s at 32.9% and declining precipitously with each passing day.
Vancouver NDP MP Don Davies attended a Rally for Public Housing, adjacent to the site of the proposed Little Housing mixed housing development site that, in 2008, was slated to make 234 units of affordable social housing available to the community.
Support for Annamie Paul’s Green Party can barely be detected in the polls, while support for Yves-François Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois — following last week’s and last evening’s French debate — has all but obliterated Bloc support in the province, the party now sitting at single digit support, as voters desert the Bloc for Trudeau.
Ten days out from Election Day, with support for the Liberal Party waxing higher, the prospect now exists that Justin Trudeau will form the next government — albeit with a probable reduced minority, requiring the support and co-operation of Jagmeet Singh and the New Democratic Party of Canada in order to govern.
As to the future of the leaders of the five major political parties: Annamie Paul will be gone before the end of the year — to be replaced by Avi Lewis, or so the rumour goes, although — Jagmeet Singh will likely be shown the door in the next year, and Mr. Lewis could very well emerge as the next leader of the federal New Democrats.
Justin Trudeau will be gone sometime in 2023, if not sooner (if he loses this election, he’ll announce his resignation as Liberal Party leader late on Election night). Erin O’Toole’s days as Tory leader — even if he increases the Conservative Party seat count, but loses the election — will also be gone fairly soon, probably around the time Justin Trudeau leaves. Only Maxime Bernier will remain — to split the Conservative vote (yeah!) — to cause great despair to all persons of conscience.
For 9 long years, Canadian politics underwent a tectonic shift that for the longest period of time since Confederation seemingly buried the liberal elites of yesteryear, during the era of Stephen Harper’s reign as Canada’s Prime Minister.
The thesis propounded by conservative Globe and Mail columnist, John Ibbitson, and pollster Darrell Bricker, Global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs Research, is that Canada is undergoing a fundamental shift (the eponymous “Big Shift”) that in the 21st century will result in a reformation of Canadian politics, governance, economy and values. The authors argue in their book that the Conservative Party of Canada is the political force best poised to take advantage of this changing landscape, and over the years and in the coming decades will be transformed into what was once the purview of the Liberal Party: the natural governing party of Canada.
Bricker and Ibbitson argue that one of the world’s most consensual countries is becoming polarized, exhibiting stark differences between East and West, cities and suburbs, Canadian born citizens and immigrants. The “winners” — in both politics and business — will be those who can capitalize on these momentous changes.
For almost its entire history, Canada has been run by the political, media and business elites of Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal. For nine long, arduous years, though, these groups lost their power — without most of them realizing their power was on the wane. The Laurentian Consensus, the term John Ibbitson has coined for the dusty liberal elite, had been replaced by a new and powerful coalition based in the West and supported by immigrant voters in Ontario. How did this happen?
So far in the 21st century, though, the Conservatives have governed for only 9 of 21 years. Despite their dispiriting election losses in the 2015 and 2019 federal elections, the Conservative Party has nonetheless continued to remain strong in northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in the rural regions of Ontario, and has even shown strength in Québec — but not in the Maritimes.
In his review in The Globe and Mail of John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker’s book, The Big Shift, journalist and academic Christopher Dornan writes …
“The Big Shift, as its title suggests, is one of those books that purports to divine a single, telling fact to explain Canada. If that fact echoes Jacques Parizeau’s infamous 1995 comment about “money and the ethnic vote,” it is not, as Bricker and Ibbitson advance it, a form of bigotry, but a species of determinism: The political values, and therefore voting tendencies, of new arrivals and first-generation Canadians are contingent on their race and region of origin.
Further, this “Big Shift in power to the West and to suburban immigrants” is not only permanent but “will make Canada inexorably a more conservative place.” Resistance is futile. Bad news for progressives, whether they manage to unite or not. They’re on the wrong side of a fundamental and irreversible demographic shift.”
While both of the book’s authors take great pains to stress that they’ve merely set out to document a “seismic shift” in the demographics of Canada, and what it portends for the political, social and economic future of our nation, for most who would read the book and interpret its internal thesis, from the book’s outset through til its end, it would be difficult to ignore the sense of triumphalism evident throughout Ibbitson and Bricker’s polemical treatise, as if somehow the shift to the “new” — and increasingly right wing — Conservative Party is inalterably inevitable.
“It’s one thing for the Conservative Party to chafe and protest when in opposition,” writes Dornan. “But, if Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s style of government — which might best be described as “undertaken in a spirit of spite” — offers an example of what Canadians might expect from a Conservative government, it is entirely likely that a goodly number of our fellow citizens would find this approach to governance to be untenable, particularly in a country populated by families who came here to escape entrenched antagonisms. If that ever changes, then the Canada we all love — left and right, newcomer or born-and-bred — will be truly at risk.”
When Canadians go to the advance polls to cast a ballot this week, or to their polling station on Election Day, Monday, September 20th, Canadians must vote not just for the Prime Minister and the government of their choice, but for the future of Canada — our most cherished home — and the uniquely Canadian values of fairness, respect, compassion, equality, inclusion, diversity, safety, peace, and for being there for one another, as collectively we seek to create a more sustainably just Canada for everyone. As in every election, there is in 2021 a great deal on the line.
There he stood, morning in, morning out for a year. A whole year. Reassuring the nation that all would be fine. Standing in front of his Rideau Cottage home, his beard growing longer with each passing day, his wife herself, initially, a victim of COVID-19, leaving him to care for his children alone while his wife Sophie self-isolated, a father to his three children and Canada’s father in a time of despair.
On March 11, 2020, the World Heath Organization declared that the world was in the grip of a once-in-a-century pandemic that would kill millions, no vaccines yet existed to fight off this killer, and to protect us, lockdowns would be required that would keep us inside our homes for weeks and months on end.
Businesses across Canada were shuttered, no one went outside without wearing a mask — once a week shopping for necessities would be approved, but little else.
In addition to the health crisis that jeopardized our collective health, nations across the globe faced an economic crisis the likes of which we’d never known. On March 18, 2020, on the orders of British Columbia’s Public Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, the province declared a State of Emergency.
On March 16th, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that until further notice, Canadian borders would be closed to foreign nationals — urging Canadians abroad to return home as soon as possible, given the ever-tighter travel restrictions countries around the world – including Canada – were imposing to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, stating that before the end of the month, the federal government would disallow the opportunity given Canadians to return home.
Canada was in a crisis, as the COVID-19 pandemic led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide, presenting an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work, causing economic and social disruption, devastating the lives of millions of Canadians at risk of falling into poverty.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces $82 billion rescue plan | March 18, 2020
The Liberal government and Justin Trudeau — working in concert with Health Minister Patti Hajdu and Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Anita Anand, among other Ministers — mounted a massive and efficacious response to the pandemic, quarterbacking an unprecedented campaign against the threat of the virus and lockdowns that had shaken the economy, legislating a blitz of new and necessary programmes designed to keep Canadians safe, and economically whole.
March 15, 2020. Ottawa commits $2 billion to buy supplies, purchasing tens of millions of masks, and thousands of testing kits and ventilators from Canadian-based manufacturers, who shifted production to make the badly needed equipment and supplies.
March 16, 2020. Canada announces plans to close the border to international travel. The Canada-U.S. border closes to non-essential travel, with exceptions for truckers and a few other groups. A mandatory self-quarantine for travelers. Anyone returning to Canada legally required to self-quarantine for 14 days.
March 18, 2020. Government announces an aid package providing economic benefits for Canadians affected by COVID-19, the programme fleshed out in subsequent days & benefits increased.
March 25, 2020. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) announced, providing $500 per week in financial support to employed and self-employed Canadians affected by COVID-19. Minimum Employment Insurance benefit increased to $500 weekly. Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit of $500 per week for workers who’d contracted COVID-19. Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit of $500 per week to support families with children six years of age, or younger, and to support low-income workers and families. Mortgage Deferral Payment provided to homeowners facing financial hardship. Old Age Security pensioners receive one-time $500 tax-free benefit.
March 27, 2020. For businesses in Canada: The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy provided to employers, to keep employees on payroll during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy to provide rent / mortgage subsidy to qualifying businesses, including charities and non-profits. Relief measures for Indigenous businesses, providing $306.8 million to small and medium-sized Indigenous businesses, and to support Aboriginal Financial Institutions that offer financing to these important businesses.
August 31, 2020. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government signs contracts with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to procure more than 100 million doses of their experimental COVID‑19 vaccines, signing contracts with Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), Novavax and AstraZenica/Covashield for 80 million more doses. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announces funding to establish a new biomanufacturing facility at the Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre in Montréal, and two other biomanufacturing facilities, in western Canada and Ontario, approved by the National Research Council of Canada to increase vaccine manufacturing of up to four million doses per month, to ensure Canada’s ability to produce sufficient vaccine doses to meet our country’s need.
The federal programmes and actions above barely scratch the surface of the response by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government — which set out to provide health, social and economic support for every Canadian, and support for every sector of the economy. The critically important programmes enacted by the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government were and are unprecedented anywhere across the globe.
Little wonder, then, that going into this election, Justin Trudeau’s personal approval rating was in the high 80s, and support for his government at 45%.
The rhetoric you’re likely to hear from an Erin O’Toole Conservative government
Ask yourself: given the chaos Canadians have witnessed in the anti-science Conservative government-led provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, what is the potential that an Erin O’Toole-led government would have responded to this once-in-a-century pandemic any better than we’ve witnessed in those four anti-science Conservative provinces — where each of their leaders have record low approval ratings — or we saw in Donald Trump’s COVID denialism (and we witness in today’s federal Conservative party Trump acoloyte caucus)?
“It’ll just disappear one day. It’ll go away like all things go away,” Trump said. “I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. COVID will go away without a vaccine, just go away, and we’re not going to see it again. It’ll be gone, like it was never here. You have my word on it.”
The 44th Canadian general election is the most volatile election in our nation’s history. Both Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole, and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh have together employed American, Republican-style politicking, unprecedented in Canadian history that a right wing and (allegedly) left wing party would collude on their campaign messaging to “gain power” …
“Justin Trudeau is a liar,” say O’Toole and Singh. “He’s not done a damn thing for you. He’s a smarmy, self-righteous, virtue signalling fraud who trots out the same — still unfulfilled — campaign promises he did in 2015 and 2019. He can’t be trusted, he’s not on your side. Vote for me. I’ve got your back. Throw that Justin Trudeau onto the scrap heap of history. He’s done. It’s time for a new day.”
Don’t you believe any of the malarkey above that’s being spewed out by Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh. You know better. You’ve witnessed Justin Trudeau advocate for us, and over the course of these past 19 months, Mr. Trudeau — and his incredibly competent and hard-working, principled Ministers of the Crown — have sacrificed for us, and provided for us each and every day, keeping us all safe.
Please don’t allow Erin O’Toole’s and Jagmeet Singh’s cynical politics of personal destruction cause Canadians to indulge a sense of collective amnesia, and not recognize that, indeed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a Canadian national hero. We would not have pulled through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic were any other Canadian leader in place. Justin Trudeau as Canadian Prime Minister remains critical to our national health, our ability to prevail in this pandemic, and to our national identity as Canadians working in common cause for the benefit of all.
Quite simply — and you know it’s true — there is no other Canadian political leader (and certainly not Erin O’Toole or Jagmeet Singh) capable of returning each one of us to the lives we led prior to the pandemic, ever more emboldened that we found the strength and the wherewithall to make it through this tragedy, and come out the other end all the better, more fulfilled personally and economically, with a greater wealth of spirit, and a sense of joy to inform all of our days yet to come.
