In her speech Monday night, after her dreams were thwarted, Erin O’Toole said she would work to make sure “reconciliation is more than a box to check.”
“It is the cornerstone of Canada reaching its potential. And it begins with drinking water as a basic human right, which is still denied to indigenous children born today ”.
It was one of the biggest lines of applause in his speech.
Now there is a consensus in Canada on this. During the campaign, Justin Trudeau had to eat dirt repeatedly when asked about his broken promise to deliver clean water to all First Nations in Canada. You will want to have a better answer next time.
It’s a shame for Canada that many First Nations children are still unable to drink from the tap, which the rest of us take for granted, but I think something has changed over the last decade – we no longer ignore it.
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Due to racism, we have long accepted a lower standard of living for indigenous peoples as a fact of life, like the winter wind, something beyond our power to change. I think that has changed. Increasingly sophisticated indigenous leaders, fighting in court, in the media, with rail blockades and in election campaigns, have succeeded in convincing Canadians that the status quo is unacceptable, and while we may regret the slow pace of change, We must not pretend that it is not happening. Is.
I thought this choice was a bad idea, but several things are clearer now that it has been made. Everything is a little sharper.
In governmental terms, it may end up being, as Lisa Raitt put it on television, a “$ 600 million cabinet change,” but elections allow us to better read what the public wants, far better than any public opinion poll, because people who normally prefer sports or reality TV force themselves to pay attention, listen to the arguments, order the priorities and mark with an X.
The result makes it clear that Canadians want more of the same. In fact, it is almost shocking how little has changed since the last election. Conservatives got a little support in Atlantic Canada, they lost a little in the West, the result of a reversion to what looks a lot like progressive conservatism. They took some seats from the Liberals in rural areas, lost some in the suburbs. The Green Party, consumed by a mad-looking leadership struggle, lost ground. The Popular Party won five percent of the vote, probably a high mark for them, enough to hurt the Conservatives but win no seats of its own.
Otherwise, most people seem to have voted as they voted last time. Non-prairie cities and suburbs like what the liberals and the NDP are offering and want more.
What is noteworthy, however, is that what they are offering this time around is more to the left. If you put aside the narcissism of small differences, the Liberal and NDP platforms are more alike than in any past election. During the campaign, Jagmeet Singh delivered a relentless message: Trudeau is a phony who lets people down, probably because if he took the person’s attention away, it would be more difficult to argue about politics, since the two sides are now so close.
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This could be the most left-wing government in Canadian history, which may explain why the NDP, with its popular leader, failed to increase its vote.
Liberals have finally given us a childcare plan, having torturedly promised it and failing to deliver on it in many elections. After years of inaction on climate, they have introduced a carbon tax and raised targets. On reconciliation, they have approved the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which seeks to offer the best possible route to build a new relationship with First Nations, replacing Indian Law little by little.
As for inequality, they have already shifted the tax burden to the top earners and vowed to take steps to get more out of the rich, which is what Singh wants. (There are reasons to think that this may be easier said than done.)
On top of all this, the Liberals massively increased transfers to individuals with short-term pandemic measures that the Conservatives were not very enthusiastic about.
More than the political goals that have been shifting to the left side of the field, it is the nuanced responses from conservatives that tell us something about the public’s mood.
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Canada is becoming increasingly urban and more diverse; in American terms, we look like the blue states. The immigration culture war that produces so much heat in the American discourse appears to be an electoral dead end in this country. There is no constituency linked to a military-industrial complex, no angry imperial ghosts.
Instead, we can observe an increasingly harsh consensus in favor of the nanny state, a slow and steady transformation into something akin to a northern European social democracy. Given that those countries have the best standard of living in the world, the best health outcomes, the highest levels of gender equality, you can see why people might like it, especially diverse urban youth whose path to uncertain futures in the gig economy was disrupted. by a global pandemic.
None of this is set in stone. The Conservatives could turn it around in an election, but you can see why O’Toole said Monday that his party needs “the courage to change, because Canada has changed.”
Conservatives are at a crossroads. Their leader, who was chosen as a “true blue” Tory, behaved like a red Tory, moving away from the political positions that many of his candidates wanted him to defend, without consulting them.
But they better protect themselves from the urge to become a rearguard party, retreat to policies that appeal to rural areas, and forego the diverse and fast-growing suburbs where Canadian elections are won and lost.
Canada appears to be shifting to the left. O’Toole has tried to move his party with him. It didn’t quite work, but I don’t think I had any choice but to try.
Reference-www.macleans.ca