Just in Time

The Canadian election is over. There is no clear cut winner but Canada has rejected Donald Trump. We can pretend what we want but this election was about Trump and those that support what he represents.  The influence the American media has on Canada is significant and Trump and Obama do make a difference in swaying Canadian popular opinion. Only 36% of the Canadian population voted for the right wing parties and if you include a portion of the Bloq vote then it was close to 40%.  These are the people that in the majority do not believe in climate change, LBGTQ rights, right to choose, letting in refugees or illegal immigrants etc etc. Obviously their votes were not all centered on all these issues and some voters, like those in the western provinces, were more inclined to rally around energy policy and pipelines. Also the Bloq gains was probably an outgrowth of the CAQ victory, but Trudeau still earned the most votes in Quebec. Quebecois nationalism is far from making any realistic comeback.

What we just witnessed was an Americanization of a Canadian election. Scheer‘s conservatives used American style negative ads and personal smearing of Trudeau to influence the vote. There was a time that Robert Stanfield fumbling a football was the main event in a Canadian campaign. Now opposition research featured unearthing old pics and videos of Trudeau in blackface. The liberals responded by exposing Scheer as half-American and releasing a video of Scheer sitting during the Canadian anthem in the House of Commons..

The extremists on social media also left no room for compromise. The alt-right made it clear that they wanted Scheer or the country was ruined and beyond repair. This perception pervaded this group as witnessed by virulent tweets by many including ex NHL'er Theoren Fleury who proclaimed Trudeau will become a dictator. Trudeau, relegated to a minority position in Parliament, could now rule with an iron fist is a ridiculous and absurd notion but that seems to be the general consensus within this bubble. The alt-left was not much better.

I was never a fan of Justin Trudeau. I am sure he is well-intentioned but he is privileged. He is self-admittedly privileged by his family background, by his connections, by the aura of his dad etc. A democracy should be able to find worthy candidates outside of the next of kin of former prime-ministers or an oligarchy will soon rule on a consistent basis. However, Trudeau's politics are certainly not of the privileged sort and he is far from dealing in extremist tribal ideology like Trump is.


Which brings us to the SNC Lavalin affair. The scam in Lavalinscam was the fact this was even an issue. Clearly most of the western world accepts Deferred Prosecution Agreements. Yes the liberals passed this law so they could keep Lavalin afloat. Why did Wilson-Raybould insist on remaining as Justice Minister after she was against the law that had just been passed? Why did she and the prosecutor think that once the law was passed, this law did not apply to SNC? My conclusion is that SNC is a Quebec based company. Would the ex-Justice Minister have been as determined not to apply the new law if it had been an Ontario or BC company? Obviously her stubbornness forced Trudeau and his staff to react and maybe cross the fine line of ethics. However, there appeared to be no personal benefit to Trudeau other than trying to avoid the bad publicity of a Quebec company faltering.


 

I was never quite sure what Pierre Trudeau meant by a Just Society his slogan in his first election campaign. Naming his first- born Justin was not a coincidence. Pierre Trudeau was a man of his times as flamboyant as the 1960’s and as strong-willed a person that you will ever meet. Trudeau the elder was well educated and what few politicians are nowadays an intellectual. Therefore he often said things that went unexpectedly against the current of popular opinion and he rarely tried to appease his enemies. He was not soft and dealt with his foes as harshly as one could. 

If Andrew Scheer had run against Pierre Trudeau it would have been a whole lot uglier campaign. Pierre Trudeau would not have been as passive as his son in responding to the negative ads and personal attacks by Scheer. Scheer, a westerner, has a regional mentality in that the main focus of his campaign was to propose an energy policy based on pipelines. Clearly this went over well in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but it was a head scratcher in terms of appealing to the provinces he had to win, Quebec and Ontario. Since the Harper years are still fresh in everybody’s mind and Trump is omnipresent in our daily lives, Scheer’s regurgitation of the right wing claptrap of reducing deficits and cutting taxes fell on deaf ears. Clearly tax breaks would be given to those that needed it least and deficit cutting would never happen. Worst of all based on past history, if there were any cuts they would happen to vulnerable areas such as health care and the environment, meanwhile defence spending would increase. 


There were many unheralded issues in this campaign that were probably more important to some voters and swayed them. One was the refugee and immigration policy of the liberals. Clearly Canada has nowhere near the illegal immigrants that the US has, but it would be prudent to believe that some voted for or against the liberals because of this issue. Other issues such as a woman's right to choose and LBGTQ rights may have influenced those with a conservative or liberal mentality to vote the way they did. This is not to say that Justin Trudeau would win another election in a few years. A lot depends if Trump survives and succeeds to win another election. A minority government is a precarious position and if Canadians have to vote again in a few years with a newly elected Trump, the right wing fanatics may have one more kick at the can.