The election starter’s pistol has been fired
Absurd as it is, the 2019 election campaign began on Saturday night.
The Tories new leader, followed by the NDP’s in a few months’ time, will end the improbable period through which the Liberals have been sailing. Justin Trudeau has yet to face a popularly mandated opposition leader. That happy interlude will soon end. All parties will be revving their pre-election engines and testing campaign lines come September.
Oh, for the days when Canadians could look down their noses at the 18-month U.S. presidential campaigns as so excessively “American . . .” Stephen Harper is to blame. Having bought the nonsense about the democratic nature of a fixed election date, in a parliamentary system never designed to accommodate one, he lengthened the precampaign period to Oct. 21, 2019.
Then he created the “permanent campaign” garrison politics on which he built his fundraising and electoral war machine. Until someone has the courage to roll back this foolishness we are stuck with it, one more of his unfortunate legacies to Canadian politics. What will this mean? A greater distemper in our times, to misquote Peter Newman. More bellowing, less thinking and greater hostility. The new NDP leader will be forced to outshout the new Tory leader in their denunciations of the Trudeau government, on issues great and trivial.
The first flashpoint and battleground will be the House of Commons. The Liberals have installed one incompetent House leader after another, inflicting serious wounds on their own credibility. Perhaps a seasoned veteran will remind the newbies that exceptionally deft and silky smooth House management was always part of the Liberal DNA. From Alan MacEachern, through Herb Gray, to Ralph Goodale and Don Boudria, Liberal House leaders were the gold standard.
Those veterans must wince at the mess Bardish Chagger has made for this government of parliamentary reform, let alone any cross-bench goodwill. The new leaders will grind the Liberals parliamentary agenda into paralysis until this is fixed.
The next collision will be Canada/U.S. relations. The opposition parties will see great potential to whack the government from each side on the challenge of managing relations with a bozo in the White House. The Tories are likely to attack from the “you can’t manage a peanut stand” side as the Trudeau government struggles to keep any NAFTA process on track with such a chaotic negotiating partner. They’ll blame any setback on softwood, supply management, and autos on a trade team not ready for prime time.
The Liberals have done a superlative job in managing relations with the lunatic asylum that is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. today. Chrystia Freeland, minister of Foreign Affairs, deserves an honorary psychology degree for her skill in smoothly dancing with such an footstomping partner.
The harder part will be when negotiations begin, and the erratic president shifts his demands daily. The NDP is likely to polish the “selling out Canada” chestnut one more time — for which there is always a large America-phobic Canadian audience.
How the Liberals stay above the fray, how well they actually deliver on legislation, how much they are seen to still be in charge, matters.
If the opposition leaders can push the Liberals off their policy and message agendas by the fall of next year, it will set up a dangerous frame for the Liberals seeking re-election on their record of achievement.
The NDP leader needs to go to bed, and wake up repeating this soothing mantra: “The path to the PMO runs only through Justin Trudeau,” and studiously avoid Tory taunts, and their likely early lead in the polls. Reminding voters that Liberals have once again broken progressive hearts has always worked, and can again.
The Tory leader needs to devote his summer to rebuilding and reuniting a fractured party. If they come into the fall squabbling, without a tested ballot question to fire at Trudeau, his more seasoned parliamentary team will slowly force open the divisions that lie just under the surface in the still fragile Conservative Party.
For the prime minister the path to re-election is both simple — and hard. Just deliver. Deliver six big popular legislative wins before next summer and the Liberals will enter their pre-election year blooded, confident and with the popular legitimacy to ask for a chance to “finish the job.”
If history is any guide, intervening events will push each leader off these safer paths. Then it becomes anyone’s game — one few Canadians will be watching until Labour Day more than two years from now.
Sigh.