Can PM resist calling an election?

Ihave been struck by a sudden insight.

I have so few, I thought I’d give the announcement its own one-sentence paragraph.

It’s not Newton level — you know, apple, gravity, laws of planetary motion. But it can hold its own. Here it is.

Pandemics are never an ideal time to hold elections.

The wisdom contained in that axiom is almost too much to bear. And to think it came in such a sudden flash. Perhaps prompted by a lurking memory of my own dear province, run by a doctor no less, which held an election in February, and that doleful, embarrassing experience.

A sudden surge in COVID, some inept attempts to continue the election as case numbers grew, a stay in the vote, confused efforts to set up mail-in votes, and then a stalling in the whole business. It was a mess even by the challenging standard we set for messes in Newfoundland politics.

From that, and experiences in other provinces that called out their citizens to vote during pandemic lockdowns, I devised the above rule — the political science equivalent of E = mc2.

It may also have emerged as a result of reading so many sage articles before and after the recent budget that observed the federal Liberal party seems to be setting the stage for an early election call. Now the Trudeau government has spent the best part of a year and a half hectoring the nation to be alert, ever-cautious, super-sensitive about any activities — any and all activities — that might, even to the smallest degree, assist, amplify or accelerate the spread of the virus.

Any activity that involved contact, any large gatherings, any outside mingling for whatever reason — even prayer — should and must be avoided at all costs. Stay in, stay alone. In the same spirit the country, save for absolute reasons, was locked down, with businesses ruined and people made to endure anxiety as a result of lack of social contact.

So the thought of something so, let me try this phrase — magnificently crowd-gathering, crowd-summoning, crowd-ripe — as a national election, is, would you agree, be a conundrum and a perplexity? Why then have we not had an absolute declaration that an election will NOT take place, till COVID and its mortal miseries abate?

Curious. Why on any grounds would Justin Trudeau even consider, so early in his second mandate, a premature gallop to the polls?

The question is even more poignant when he already has, as a minority government, more sway, more latitude, and more security to do what he wants, without stay or let, than perhaps any other minority government in our history. There have been coalition governments before, but these were time-limited, bristly with conditions to coral the larger party, and guarantees of what would or would not be put before Parliament.

But that is not the case now. Where are the conditions, the terms of endearment, between the NDP’S Jagmeet Singh and Mr. Trudeau? Does anyone know, or know if one even exists? It does not seem there are.

Mr. Singh has bound himself to Mr. Trudeau “with hoops of steel,” and meshed with the Liberal leader with something close to a Spock-like “mind-meld.”

The two of them could not be closer if they had fallen into a vat full of super-glue. It is this immersive compact that has given the Liberals the licence to act as they wish without any boundaries. To ignore scandals, to spend as with a high-pressure fire hose, to eviscerate Parliament, and to ride for two whole years without a budget. Name the majority government that had that ease of governing?

So what advantage could the prime minister hope for in a new election, even should he win a majority? Governing then might actually have more limits imposed upon it.

One reason is to get a new and fresh mandate might be to go now, because in a year or two, the real costs of his financial recklessness, the “bill” to be paid for all those billions in debt and deficit, will be known. And POST-COVID the demolition of the Canadian economy will be revealed in its true measure.

So go now, while you can, could be the imperative to chance an election while COVID is still active, despite all the contradictions that such an election call would entail.

Perhaps, too, there is even a stronger, even more tactical motivation. Long ago Jean Chrétien called a premature election, because a then freshman Opposition leader, Stockwell Day, was so new to Ottawa he couldn’t find the Chateau Laurier.

Day was a pure novice in his early days as leader, and not much helped by an early appearance in a wetsuit on a Jet Ski. It was of great appeal to water sports enthusiasts, but failed to excite the country’s many aquaphobes (i.e. Liberal land dwellers).

Chrétien pounced and Chrétien wiped him out.

Trudeau and all his dark emissaries in the PMO also look across the aisle at Erin O’toole. They see a Conservative leader ineffective at challenging the government, allying himself with causes and issues that are Liberal priorities — carbon emissions — and dipping so low in party esteem that some who supported him in his leadership bid now (tepidly) wonder why they didn’t stick with Andrew Scheer.

There is nothing so seductive to a politician as the spectacle of a weak and flailing opponent. Nothing more alluring to issue a call to press the button, haul down the lever, or “drop the writ” for a quick election, than the prospect of easy victory.

However, it remains a verity that, as my axiom establishes: Pandemics are never an ideal time to hold elections.

PANDEMICS ARE NEVER AN IDEAL TIME TO HOLD ELECTIONS.