Election 42 — Post Mortem

Well boys n girls, I was proven wrong and I am very happy about that. I was so sure Harper was going to get that majority again. I believed the Liberals’ campaign would’ve fallen off the rail somehow and it almost did. His name was Dan Gagnier.  I thought for sure, that incident would’ve especially had the Liberals tank in Quebec where Gagnier is from and where the sponsorship scandal is held fast by many Quebecers. I guess as Nik Nanos, the pollster had said on last Sunday’s Question Period it was too late in the campaign to do any damage and also as much as the media was staying on that story, no evidence came out that Trudeau even knew anything or was in any way linked to it.  The ethics commissioner, Karen Shepherd is likely to investigate. We shall see as time goes on what, if anything will come out of this.  I suspect that we have not heard the end of the Dan Gagnier affair.  What ever shit is about to hit the fan, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals better hope they come out sooner rather than later if they expect to win the next election, in about 4 years time.

Voter turn out was signficantly higher than in 2011. About 68.5%.  Despite all the snafus in polling stations like some being closed, Elections Canada understaffing, long line ups, pre-marked ballots and some having received erroneous information about where to vote, folks got out and somehow made it. I honestly hope the new Liberal government will aim to fix those issues in the years to come preceding the next election.

I am very happy with the outcome but should note a few items.

Disappointments over NDP  Losses

For openers, I was shocked and disappointment at the loss of some great NDP MPs. Pat Martin in Winnipeg Centre. Pat Martin was a man who always told it like it was and never euphemized. Known to swear– I found it refreshing. Proves he’s human.  He spoke plainly.  I always enjoyed his style in the House of Commons. It won’t be the same without him. True that the Liberal candidate (now MP), Robert Falcon Oulette ran a great campaign.

Megan Leslie in Halifax. That shouldn’t have happened neither. She was deputy leader of the NDP and had done a great job.

Peter Stoffer in Sackville-Preston-Chezzetcook who had held his seat since 1997 was a big surprise to me. I had always thought that would’ve been a safe NDP seat. Stoffer had done an excellent job speaking up for the veterans and their plight. He was loved by veterans. He was loved by all. He won parliamentarian of the year awards.  Again, another loss that should not have happened. Somehow though, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him. I think he may well go on speaking up for veterans.

Peggy Nash of Parkdale-High Park in Toronto lost her seat to the Liberal as part of a red sweep in Toronto proper. A great finance critic who knew her files very well and was able to go up against the best of them.  Once a leadership candidate, have we seen the last of her? Should Tom Mulcair resign his leadership down the road, will she run again? Remains to be seen.

Paul Dewar in Ottawa-Centre. Foreign affairs critic. He knew his files well. Always a well spoken gentleman. Very bright. He will be missed. Should Mulcair resign his leadership, will we see Paul Dewar make another go of it? I would hope so. Except for the fact his French isn’t that proficient, I think he would make great leadership material.  Like Peggy Nash, I believe he would take the party back to its’ progressive roots.

Other great losses: Jack Harris of St-John’s East.

I was also hoping that Linda McQuaig, the NDP candidate for Toronto-Centre would’ve taken the seat. She would’ve been a great asset to the NDP and a fabulous MP.

I was happy to see that Ruth-Ellen Brosseau won in Berthier-Maskinonge. Her march to parliament is indeed quite a story.  Someone one would least likely to see in politics just a short time before the 2011 federal election. She was a bar tender, was in Las Vegas while the 2011 campaign was happening, never set foot in Berthier-Maskinonge and her French at the time was not that proficient for this predominantly unilingual Francophone riding. She proved her critics wrong during her 4 years  in the House of Commons.  Folks in the riding began to like her.  Watch for her political career to grow. I hope that Tom Mulcair will give her a critic role.

While I am very  happy that Harper is gone, and his party put in the penalty box for awhile, I was hoping the NDP would’ve had a better showing. I am certainly disappointed in the above mentioned losses.

Ideally, I would’ve liked to have seen a Liberal minority with NDP holding the balance of power. I know it would’ve been fragile at best given the bad blood between Mulcair and Trudeau. However, in the past there had been good governance. The Pearson-Douglas government gave us universal health care, the Canadian flag, and Canadian Pension Plan among others. I would’ve liked to have seen that kind of cooperation again.

Thomas Mulcair as mentioned, is staying on as leader. It remains to be seen how long he will do so. I doubt it will be that long. His party has been grumbling for some time. Also the fact that his party was returned to third place after being in official opposition will not be rewarded.

Bloc Quebecois — More of a Mathematical Miracle than a Come back

The Bloc Quebecois more than doubled their seats from the 2011 election. However, Gilles Duceppe lost his riding of Laurier-Ste-Marie a second time.  I was really hoping he would’ve won. I always enjoyed watching him on the hill with his many zingers to keep things interesting.

I had checked ridings as they came in over the night. It looks to me that the Bloc benefitted mainly from vote splitting in ridings that had very tight races, in some cases, three and four way races, The Bloc simply came up the middle.

I suspect Gilles Duceppe will once again resign as head of the BQ and I believe that leadership will go back to Mario Beaulieu, the previous leader who won his seat in La Pointe de l’isle.  The days of the Bloc Quebecois are numbered. Yet again, they could not achieve party status (minimum 12 seats required for that). I believe it was said in 2011 that separation hasn’t really died, but rather, it is believed that this debate should be held in Quebec City and not in Ottawa.

Quebec

Many tight races here as mentioned above. It became an all dressed pizza where all colours are representing. The NDP had lost their strength in Quebec.  It has proven difficult to please Quebec and the rest of Canada at the same time. Brian Mulroney learned that the hard way, as did the old Social Credit / Ralliement des creditistes in the 60s and 70s.  It goes to show that one cannot count on Quebec to win an election. I expect that Quebec will continue to elect a mixed bag in federal elections to come.

Harper to Resign as Leader

While Harper didn’t officially announce it yet,  he is expected to. President John Walsh will be asking his party to begin the process of leadership selection in short order. He is also planning to stay on as MP for Calgary-Heritage. My question is why would he do that? Harper has proven to behave like a king (putting it mildly).  I can’t see him willingly being led by another leader, let alone sitting in opposition to the son of his biggest nemesis.  I don’t expect him to last long as an MP neither.  What would be the point of sticking around?

Who would be interim leader?  Anybody’s guess.  Tony Clement perhaps? He was once a leadership hopeful in 2003.

Jason Kenney is giggling in his cave somewhere in Calgary. He has been gunning for Herr Harper’s job for some time now.  Something I think we could agree we don’t want to see. He would be as dangerous as Harper. In some respects, worse. He has made his anti-choice views clear. Unlike Harper who tip-toed around the issue, I can see Jason Kenney putting restrictions on a woman’s right to choose tucked away in some big ugly omnibus bill.

Expect more to come out of the woodwork interested in the leadership and a few outside of the new Conservative Caucus.

Will the Conservatives (guess I should stop calling them Harpercons) continue on this far right path a la Reform? Or will they go back to being more like the old Progressive Conservative Party, perhaps electing a red tory to lead in order to bring them back to the fold? That remains to be seen.

What Would a Liberal Majority Government Look Like?

Trudeau made some promises. Some ambitious ones.  Many, I suspect, could be near impossible to keep.  I always found it suspicious that after 9 years of deficits,  Herr Harper and ol’ Joey Oliver suddenly somehow manage to get a surplus just in time for the election. True, it was done on the backs of disabled veterans, senior citizens, the unemployed. However, I can’t help but think those books were cooked pretty good.  Count on some nasty surprises and poison pills left by the Harper administration.

It is true that Liberals traditionally campaign on the left but govern from the right.  The same would likely hold true here. However, the path of destruction that Harper was leading this country on should come to a halt. A good indicator  of what direction the Trudeau Liberals will take will largely depend on who he selects as his finance minister.

I believe that slowly but surely, we may cease to be known as bullies and a laughing stalk on the world stage.  We should go back to our traditional roles on the world stage; to more of being peace keepers and giving humanitarian aid than obsessing about  punching above our weight.

Another thing to remember is that dreaded old senate. Even though Harper did not refill many vacant seats,  the Conservatives still have a majority. It will be difficult to get bills and such passed.  Trudeau will likely fill those seats in short order, but it will still come up short. Also, Trudeau did promise an less partisan senate. He demonstrated this by kicking all Liberal senators out of caucus.  A bold move, albeit more symbolic than anything else. Those Senate Liberals still voted as a block in the upper chamber.  I am not sure how many Conservative senators are slated for retirement in the near future.

Also, I don’t think we will see nearly as many legal challenges as the Harpercons faced. We should see better respect for parliament.

Scientists will be unmuzzled. They will be heard after a long period of darkness under Harper.

Also, the House of Commons will be far less adversarial.

It remains to be seen if the long census form will make a come back. Stats Can officials have admitted they can’t get decent data since the long census form’s abolition.

Will he bring the GST back up to where it was?  This was not part of Trudeau’s campaign platform and it would not be a good thing to do politically, however, starving the treasury as Harper and Tony Clement have is more than likely to have left some budgetary shortfalls which must be somehow made up for.

Another rather controversial promise he made was to legalize marijuana and to regulate it– to tax it to pay for programs like health care transfers. He took a lot of critique for it, including the crack smoking Rob Ford and his family. How soon will that happen? He has a few former cops in his caucus. Wonder how that will go over with them? This will take a lot of moxy. There will be pressure for him not to, particularly from the United States, especially if  there is a Republican president come 2016, despite the fact that two states have already decriminalized. Seriously folks, you want to make it more difficult for kids to get their hands on pot? Legalize it just like cigarettes and alcohol. It is a known fact that kids can get their hands on pot more easily than obtaining alcohol or cigarrettes. Decriminalization has worked well in Portugal.

This new government would not likely be nearly as intransigent as Harper was.  It won’t be the one man show Harper made his government to be. I can see Trudeau delegating.  An easy prediction for the new PMO– Katie Telford and Gerald Butts will likely get senior position. I think that’s the easiest prediction.  Building a new cabinet should prove challenging.  He has experienced MPs on his team he can draw on to form cabinet. Speaking of which, that will prove difficult. He has to think of regional representation. I strongly believe  Kent Hehr who narrowly won in Calgary Centre will be in cabinet. What they will be, I don’t want to hazard a guess at this time.  The Liberals have so many from BC, Quebec and Ontario. I expect a few of those newly minted MPs will be disappointed.

Will Marc Garneau make it to cabinet? CBC believes Marc Garnearu could be touted for Foreign Affairs. As far as Quebec is concerned, even though the largest Liberal concentration was in Montreal, he would likely appoint more who won in the traditional separatist regions– ridings that hadn’t been held by Liberals in decades. There are also those veterans who survived the third place finish in 2011 to be taken into consideration. People like Stephane Dion, Caroline Bennett, John McCallum and of course, Ralph Goodale who served as finance minister under the Paul Martin government. According to what I’ve read, he could become Deputy prime minister. Same for Ontario and BC, he will have to appoint ministers from outside of Toronto and Vancouver. It should be noted that Trudeau did  promise gender equality in his cabinet and it is predicted he will only appoint 25 cabinet ministers instead of 40 like Harper had it.  The CBC made some predictions of who could be in cabinet.

Who will be the new speaker? Speaker Andy won his seat in Regina-Qu’appelle, but of course, will not be the speaker in a Liberal majority government. Whoever gets the position will already be an improvement on Speaker Andy. I had never seen such a lap dog for the Prime minister as Speaker Andy. Bad rulings to keep master happy.  If anybody wants to make a guess, as well as potential cabinet ministers, please do so in comments. Speculating can be fun.

For those who still contend that Trudeau is too young and his caucus is full of neophytes (this is true, approximate 140 of them have no federal experience), we must consider that John F Kennedy was the same age as Trudeau when he won the presidency.  Joe Clark was even younger than Trudeau when he won prime minister in 1979. Harper, himself, wasn’t all that much older when he first became Prime minister.  We also have to remember that Trudeau actually has more experience as an MP under his belt than Harper did when he became PM.  Harper’s caucus was also a bunch of neophytes when they took office.  Only a select few who served under Mike Harris’s Conservatives in Ontario actually had political experience back then.  We must also remember that one political neophyte in 2011 under Jackmania in 2011, Ruth-Ellen Brosseau, as mentioned above, proved her critics wrong.

Trudeau ran a campaign on hope and change as President Obama did in 2008.  That won’t work the next election campaign. He will be defending a record at that time. It should also be noted that there were such low expectations of Trudeau.  Now the bar will be set much higher.  His ballot question was about change. Folks will be expecting change. There will be. Though probably not as much as expected. Like I mentioned above, two major issues are likely to hamper that despite the best of intentions. The majority Conservative Senate and nasty surprises from the treasury and the last budget handed by now defeated finance minister, Joe Oliver.  A Tom Mulcair government would’ve run into those very same challenges.  Given that he himself was seeking to reassure folks on Bay Street, I suspect that the business community would’ve had his ear too.

Overall, I think we’ll see some improvements. Look at it this way, boys n girls, anything would be an improvement over ol’ Stevie Harper.  Could be worse. We could still be stuck with another Harper majority.

 

In the End, We, as Progressives are Going to Have to do Better and More Need to be Engaged Politically

I know that many, particularly NDP supporters are disappointed, but really, this was a win for Canada.  I personally never believed that those Harpercons would’ve been voted out before I became a senior citizen, at least.  It was too easy for Harper to take the masses on his hard right shove.  As progressives we need to have better messaging. Something we haven’t been proficient at.  Some good reads would be Warren Kinsella’s book, Fight the Right.  You can disagree with Kinsella’s politics, but this book is a must read if progressives want to win the messaging war. There is also a great article on an interview with American linguist George Lakoff.

We must go beyond preaching to our own choirs and start engaging with Jane and Joe Six-pack. As I’ve mentioned many times, they’re really not hard to find. They’re your neighbours, family, friends, colleagues.  The right has won the messaging war on the a-political masses.  I’ve always said if you want to beat a rival, you learn their game and play it better than they do in order to win. An uphill climb to say the least. It’s a safe bet that many have embraced neo-Liberalism with gusto. As long as they think their taxes are lower, they still have their jobs and ability to maintain the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. Selfishness has been embraced. We are far less empathetic than we used to be.

Folks have proven not ready to have an NDP government. Even when Tom Mulcair dragged teh party to the centre, a la Tony Blair,  albeit kicking and screaming.  Many had thought their leader had taken them too far to the right, allowing Justin Trudeau to outflank him on the left during this election campaign.  The NDP moving to the centre did not help them. Also, nor does remaining with their social democratic roots. Especially now.  It is my hope that one day we can have a social democratic government similar to that of Iceland, Norway and Denmark. Folks, unfortunately, only hear poor stereotypes. The only thing they hear is high taxes which tends to scare them silly.  How to convince folks the benefits of social democratic governance that appeal to the heart as opposed to the intellect.

As for folks who say no government does anything for them. Perhaps it’s time to find the time to engage more. Write to your MPs, write up petitions, etc.  If most of us engaged a bit more, maybe they would start listening to us.  Don’t know until you try, right? Let’s put it this way, doing nothing certainly isn’t productive. Only then we might be able to see real change.