Will Trudeau get another term?
TORONTO: If Canada’s elections were held in the spring of 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may well have been voted out of office. But the actual date is in October, and as summer changed into fall, he appears to have weathered the storm.
“It may be a stretch for him to have a majority government. It’s more than even odds that he will (form a government). But it’s quite close,” said Richard Johnston at the University of British Columbia’s political science department. That’s the opinion of another political scientist Andrew Mcdougall of the University of Toronto Scarborough, who said, “Right now the race is quite tight, with Trudeau’s Liberference als basically tied with Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives. This is very much an election that will depend on the campaign. Trudeau has a pretty good shot, but there’s no guarantee he will win.”
Challenges abound for Trudeau, including the controversy over a bribery case involving the Quebec-based multinational Snc-lavalin, and political interby the PMO. But that story first emerged at the beginning of the year and while it has the potential of some impact, issue fatigue may have set in as newer revelations haven’t affected his fortunes too much.
Still, he has to “hope he can move the conversation”, Johnston felt, and “get people to think in terms of the alternative”. Or, be the moderate. As Mcdougall said, he will “try to paint the NDP (New Democratic Party) to his left and Conservatives to his right as too out of touch and extreme for the ordinary voter”.
He still faces a challenge from Scheer, who could benefit from left-of-centre parties eroding Liberal margins. The Green Party is on the ascendant and NDP may have bottomed out despite a promising start to its campaign.