Toronto byelections provide a measuring stick for Liberals
This COVID-19 pandemic has been rewarding governments in power by giving them more power — a trend that will be put to its biggest-yet test next week in the United States.
Justin Trudeau must be feeling decidedly ambivalent about the whole phenomenon. If it holds in Canada, it would be good for Trudeau’s Liberal government.
If it holds in the United States, it means four more years of Canada dealing with Donald Trump.
But COVID elections are playing out much differently north and south of the Canada-U.S. border.
On Monday night, Liberals were well on the way to winning at least one of two byelections in their Toronto heartland, in what was a double report card on Trudeau: the first electoral challenge during the pandemic and the first byelections since Liberals eked out their minority government in 2019.
They were also a test for new Green party Leader Annamie Paul, running in Toronto Centre, and for new Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, who is looking for any indications that ridings in Liberal-friendly Ontario will take a second look at a leader from the GTA.
Early returns showed that Trudeau should be taking the Greens and Conservatives seriously with Paul making a much stronger showing than she did in Toronto Centre in 2019, and Conservatives making York Centre too close to call.
Winning in Toronto doesn’t give Trudeau more power, but chances are that the Monday results will add to the body of evidence that elections during a pandemic are a) possible and b) hold the potential to solidify the incumbents’ hold on power.
The prime minister is already being accused daily in Ottawa of trying to light the fuse on a federal election, with opposition parties saying he’s trying to capitalize on the COVID crisis to turn his minority into a majority.
Last week, in a close brush with the collapse of Trudeau’s government, New Democratic party Leader Jagmeet Singh said he was refusing to topple the Liberals out of spite — to deny Trudeau exactly what he wanted.
And why wouldn’t Trudeau want an election, given how things are going in 2020 across this country?
Monday night’s results, taken with provincial elections in New Brunswick, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, would seem to indicate that voters prefer to stay with the leadership they know during this crazy year.
New Brunswick’s government went from minority to majority, so will B.C’s government, it’s expected, after all results are counted in the next few weeks.
Saskatchewan’s Premier Scott Moe was due to keep his hand on government too after Monday’s elections in that province.
None of this is great news for the Conservatives, who once dreamed of sending Trudeau packing this fall.
Despite the escalating outrage from the Conservative team in Ottawa — now trying to make the case that the entire crisis has been mismanaged — it seems that Canadian voters are still averse to mixing politics with the pandemic.
Here in Canada, even in the midst of COVID’s second wave, politics seems beside the point, when citizens are still wrestling with more pressing matters, such as whether COVID is going to destroy their lives.
That is the big difference between the elections in Canada and the one going on right now in the United States. None of the votes here, at least so far, have polarized around the question of whether new leadership would actually save lives.
Relations between the political parties in Canada are close to toxic, but not that toxic, at least not yet.
U.S. voters, on the other hand, are being told by Democrats and Republicans that survival in this pandemic — be it economic or one’s own health — hinges on who wins the White House on Nov. 3.
So while Americans are making that fateful choice on their ballots, Canadians appear to be voting in the same way that they’re adhering to publichealth advice, more or less: wash your hands, wear a mask and do vote safely. When people vote out of duty during a pandemic, they appear to favour stability. When COVID is a defining issue, as it is in the U.S., all bets are off.
It probably hasn’t hurt that all political leaders in Canada, unlike Trump, have aligned themselves with their publichealth officials, often appearing at daily news conferences with them in tandem. Trudeau and the premiers, unlike Trump and the governors, are still more or less on the same team when it comes to COVID management.
This has been especially true in Ontario, where Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have moved way past their political antagonism of 2019 and now appear to be political allies.
Ford has said he wouldn’t be doing any election campaigning with O’Toole, while showing no reluctance to do events with Trudeau and say good things about how the Liberals have been handling COVID.
Whether that strange, pandemic-fellows relationship factored into the Toronto byelections is something that the party strategists will be analyzing in the days and months ahead. Ford didn’t give Toronto voters any reason to use these byelections as a verdict on the federal government.
The COVID pandemic has tested governments in Canada for most of 2020. The electoral tests have rewarded stability and continuity, to some degree. But politics, like the coronavirus, is unpredictable this year.