Vote ends nasty, brutish campaign
Rivals made the election all about Trudeau and went on the attack
It was never going to be easy.
At least that’s what the Liberals say now.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau called a snap election five short weeks ago hoping to turn his minority hand into a majority government — although he never so much as uttered those words.
Instead, Trudeau, in his third bid for office, insisted the minority Parliament Canadians elected in 2019 had ceased to function, and he now needed Canadians’ backing for the “big consequential decisions” that lie ahead — in other words, the Liberals’ agenda to vaccinate Canada’s way out of the pandemic and to implement an economic recovery plan based on national child care, climate action, and housing affordability measures.
As the bruising campaign wound down, senior Liberals insisted Trudeau knew going into it that this would be a tough campaign, that promising polls earlier in the summer belied the potential strength of the Conservative party, and that its rookie leader Erin O’Toole would “show up to fight” armed
nation to avoid the 2019 mistakes of his socially-conservative predecessor Andrew Scheer.
Even so, O’Toole surprised the Liberals with a disciplined and strategic campaign aimed at centrist voters, the launch of a comprehensive policy platform on day two, and a deliberate pitch for Quebec nationalists as well as working class voters that saw Conservative poll numbers notch up as the Liberals’ public approval numbers dropped.
O’Toole gambled big by running as a “new leader” of a “changed party,” and presented himself as a “progressive Conservative” and safe alternative to Trudeau, representing both change and the stability he said Canada needed. “We are not your dad’s Conservative party anymore,” he said.
But in doing so, O’Toole reversed past pledges to never
(proposing a carbon pricing-consumer ecoreward system); to protect health professionals who object to medical assistance in dying or abortion, and to get rid of a Liberal government ban on “assault-style” semi-automatic weapons — until they can be reviewed by an independent panel — all core tenets for a conservative voting base.
In the past four days, O’Toole’s close advisers were already preparing to face down his internal critics and mount arguments to shore up his leadership.
On the Liberals’ left flank, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and Greens piled on.
The public mood had soured at Trudeau’s early election call, and suddenly the Liberals were on their back foot.
New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh, who had supported Trudeau’s spring budget, TikToked and Instagrammed his way through his second campaign based on good vibes, and ambitious but vague promises to help people, but blasted Trudeau for what he called a “selfish” bid for more power in the fourth wave.
Singh told voters there was nothing Trudeau couldn’t get through Parliament because the NDP would have backed measures that would help people get through the pandemic and nailed Trudeau repeatedly for failing to deliver progressive change.
The Greens’ embattled Leader Annamie Paul turned out to be a devastating Trudeau critic on the national debate stage, and the Bloc Québécois’s Leadae
lanchet got a lift after an English debate that triggered Quebec’s indignation over questions deemed “insulting” and “inappropriate.”
Rising COVID-19 cases forced provinces like Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta to join
g Quebec, in introducing vaccine certificates to jack up vaccination rates among the hesitant.
Protesters showed up at Liberal campaign appearances, screaming profanities, flinging gravel at Trudeau at one event. Anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, libertarians, and disaffected voters from the mainstream parties flocked to Maxime Bernier’s populist People’s Party of Canada.
But when protests spread to hospitals, where doctors, nurses and paramedics faced taunts, Trudeau began to fight back against what he called “antivaxxer mobs” that he said were drawn to the Conservative party. It highlighted a contrast Trudeau was happy to play off.
Trudeau told the Toronto Star’s editorial board he was “comfortable” running from behind — where he had often started many of his political campaigns. He said the election was “not about me. It’s about w people I meet across the country who I know we need to do more for … I gotta win because we’ve got so much to do, and so much to finish doing, or to get to a place where … some future government won’t be able to reverse them.”
But his political rivals made it about him.
O’Toole hammered Trudeau for triggering a $600-million election, saying it was merely a “vanity project,” “divisive” and “un-Canadian.”
And Liberal candidates knocking on doors admitted the shine had gone off Trudeau’s star.
In the past, Trudeau has privately said the prospect of leaving politics is not one that bothers him, that he always considered he would probably be in it for two terms of government, and that when he left, he would do so with no regrets.
That was in his first term, before he lost his majority in 2019, and before the pandemic raced across the globe in 2020, derailing economies, governing agendas and killing 4.7 million people worldwide, including nearly 27,400 Canadians.
Trudeau’s aides say the pandemic did not deplete the prime minister’s energy or desire to govern, rather it fired him up. One of his closest advisers says, “He’s indiscourageable.”
Trudeau admitted on a popular Quebec TV show last week that he gets “fed up” at times with politics and would one day like to move his family back to Montreal, “but not yet.”
When host Julie Snyder asked how he had felt when his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau lost and moved back to Montreal with his three boys, Trudeau shrugged it off.
“Canadians are the boss,” he said.
Campaign 2021 was nasty, brutish and short. And before the final result, few political observers expected Canada’s 44th Parliament to be anything different.