Fall election could backfire on Trudeau
The PM should be wary of the mood of Canadians during the pandemic
Will he or won't he? Our prime minister's election dance marathon continues. This week, however, speculation about an imminent election call seemed to intensify more than ever with another poll showing the Liberals could be within reach of a majority government if a vote is held “soon.” Concern is that if they wait, and the Delta variant creates a fourth COVID wave, it might not be opportune for the Liberals to call Canadians to gather for an election. Also this week, more multi-billion dollar election promises plus the extension of the COVID financial benefits for an extra month, despite the fact that some of those benefits, like the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), are partly responsible for a labour shortage in the country.
The nonsense of a prime minister deciding when to call an election based on polls, and manipulating the circumstances, was supposedly addressed with the fixed date election law passed in 2007. Fixed election dates every four years were meant to prevent governments from calling snap elections for short-term political advantage and to level the playing field for all parties.
However, the law can't really apply with minority governments, which is the current parliamentary situation since the last vote in 2019. In calling an election, Trudeau will likely claim he needs a majority to get things done and get Parliament working again. This explanation might be good for the Liberal Party but not necessarily for Canadians. With the partisan way politics works, minority governments are often a better solution. Why should we give a blank cheque to any government to do as it pleases? In a minority Parliament, the government can still get legislation passed, but it requires negotiation and compromise with the other parties. Reaching across the aisle is lacking in politics today, yet could be beneficial for democracy.
There have been several minority governments in our history and no shortage of landmark legislation adopted during those years. In the 1960s, Lester B. Pearson ran two minority governments. Supported by the NDP, the Liberals adopted the Canada Pension Plan, universal health care and official bilingualism, among other things. Numerous initiatives were also achieved during the Pierre Trudeau minority government in the early 1970s and the consecutive Stephen Harper minority governments from 2006 to 2011, the latter of which required careful collaboration with opposition parties to help navigate Canada through the difficult financial crisis.
Minority governments are fragile, and the downside is constant speculation about whether the opposition will gang up to bring them down with non-confidence votes. But that's how it should be. If an issue is important enough to topple the sitting government and either force an election or a coalition government among the opposition parties, eventually the electorate will pass judgment.
For Canadians there is no benefit for Justin Trudeau to call an election now. Leaders who dissolve parliament based on favourable polls or circumstances, even in minority situations, have been punished often enough when the move is perceived as opportunistic. Just ask David Peterson in Ontario (1990), Pauline Marois (2014) and others who paid the price for calling elections prematurely and unnecessarily.
Polls at the beginning of an election campaign have also shown to be useless at times. The orange NDP wave in 2011 and the red Liberal wave in 2015 developed well into the campaigns, turning pollsters' expected results upside down.
It doesn't seem fathomable that any of the opposition parties, under their current leadership, can win an election. But if it looks as if you're trying to manipulate democracy, voters don't like it. Trudeau should be wary about the prickly mood of Canadians in this pandemic, and recognize that it's time to stop dancing and sit down.
Robert Libman is an architect and building planning consultant who has served as Equality Party leader and MNA, as mayor of Côte-st-luc and as a member of the Montreal executive committee. He was a Conservative candidate in the 2015 federal election. twitter.com/robertlibman