BACK ON HUSTINGS
Federal election coverage
Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland joined in a warmup for local kids at a soccer dome on Friday, quite literally reaching for a parachute.
It would be going too far to torture the metaphor any further by suggesting the Liberals are in freefall, but there is a sense of urgency about the campaign, post English-language leaders' debate.
“Winning” a debate is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.
Seen through their partisan lenses, Liberals are claiming victory. Like a latter day caped crusader, Trudeau zapped the NDP's Jagmeet Singh with his contention that climate experts have praised the Liberal plan and dissed the NDP's green credentials.
Then he kapowed Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole by asking how he plans to reach a 90 per cent vaccination rate when he can't even get his own MPs to get jabbed, or how he intends to tackle climate change when he can't even convince his party that it is real.
Whether these lines, or the barbs aimed at him, registered with voters, we will find out in the coming days.
Green Leader Annamie Paul said, in light of the sexual misconduct in the military scandal and the ejection of former ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, she does not believe Trudeau is “a real feminist.”
Singh went after Trudeau for making promises he has not kept on emissions levels, housing and clean water on reserves.
The Liberal leader was asked by one journalist why Indigenous residents on reserves should believe he will deliver if given a third term. “One of the enemies of progressive politics is cynicism,” he said, appealing for a triumph of hope over experience.
O'Toole chided the Liberal leader for putting his own political fortunes ahead of Canada's allies in Afghanistan. “You should not have called this election, you should have gotten the job done in Afghanistan,” he said.
Experience suggests that very few of these thorns draw blood. Much more important than what the leaders say is their bearing and tone.
From that point of view, there was only one winner — Erin O'Toole. In the last election, around one-third of voters tuned into the debate. The clunky nature of the format probably means viewers didn't tune in for long this time.
But O'Toole is a relatively new leader with a recognition problem. He was probably exposed to more non-partisan Canadians in one night than in the entire year since becoming leader.
The Liberals have tried to depict him as a pawn, being manipulated by the party's extremists; a man who would usher in a new dystopian era of belching smokestacks, back-street abortions and heavily armed anti-vax mobs.
One suspects many viewers will have been pleasantly surprised to find a man who looks like one of their suburban neighbours; someone who admitted his party has to “restore some trust” on climate change; someone who has expressed his pride in his country and his desire to see the national flag raised again (Trudeau said on Friday he will keep the Maple Leaf flag flying at half-mast “until it is clear that Indigenous peoples are happy to raise them again.”)
Nothing any leader said will have registered with voters more than the recognition that the leader of the Conservative Party is not the man the Liberals say he is.
“I am driving the bus to make sure we get this country back on track,” O'Toole said, when asked who was setting policy. “And I'm here to defend the rights of all Canadians, women, members of the LGBTQ community.”
Trudeau's response at the event in Hamilton on Friday suggests he knows that he has to ramp up his efforts to move progressives into the Liberal ranks in the closing days of the campaign.
He has some material to work with. Both he and Freeland highlighted new employment numbers that indicate the economy has regained 95 per cent of the jobs lost during the pandemic.
The Liberals also clearly believe that O'Toole's pledge to rip up child care agreements with eight provinces and territories is a mistake — and they might be right.
Quebec Premier François Legault said this week that his province would gain more autonomy under a Conservative government, and criticized Trudeau for interfering in provincial jurisdiction on housing, immigration and health. But he stopped short of endorsing O'Toole because of his plan to renege on the $6 billion promised to Quebec for daycare.
“We're one election away from finally getting this done,” said Freeland, even though Singh has pointed out that he would have supported the childcare plan without an election.
Trudeau's pitch was focused on health care, where he said that the Liberals' plan to invest $25 billion, with $6 billion earmarked to reduce hospital backlogs caused by COVID in the next year. “That $6 billion is more than Erin O'Toole is proposing to spend on health care in the next five years,” he said (the Conservatives have committed $60 billion over 10 years for increased health transfers but only $3.6 billion will flow between now and 2025/26). “This pattern of not leading but misleading is something we are seeing more and more from Erin O'Toole,” Trudeau said.
Only someone viewing the debates through a partisan lens would rule out a Liberal victory. The party has a more efficient vote and more accessible voters, according to a recent Abacus poll (51 per cent of voters would consider voting Liberal, compared to 49 per cent for the NDP and 46 per cent for the Conservatives).
But the increasingly messianic tone suggests Trudeau thinks the Liberal campaign is losing altitude. “I will be ferocious in standing up for Canada and relentless in pursuing a better world,” he said.
The implication is that his Conservative rival will turn Canada into a cross between Mordor and Mad Max. But persuading voters that O'Toole is a weak leader who is out of touch with ordinary Canadians just got a little harder.