Unless all the pollsters are royally mistaken, as has happened before, 36 days of campaigning and spending $ 600 million will result in another Liberal minority government. In their own way, Canadian voters wanted to demonstrate the pointlessness of this election.
It can happen that a movement of opinion of last hour passes under the radar. By the end of the 2015 campaign, few expected Justin trudeau succeeds in securing a majority in the House of Commons, but we no longer see any trace of any trudeaumanie.
Brian Mulroney’s exit will probably not convince many people thatErin O’Toole, who presented himself as “a real blue” during the leadership race, is actually what was once called a Progressive Conservative. But he is still less afraid than Stephen Harper or Andrew Scheer.
Unlike Thomas Mulcair, who had moved away from the values dear to the NDP to the point of being overwhelmed on his left by Mr. Trudeau in 2015, Jagmeet Singh Embodies them perfectly and has not been as messy as its predecessor. On the contrary, it is undoubtedly him who made the best campaign.
This time around, the calls for strategic voting launched by Mr. Trudeau are likely to have less resonance. Not only have its progressive claims been too often belied by its actions, but the prospect of a minority Liberal government that will have to rely most of the time on the NDP rather helps the latter to retain its electorate.
Invited to comment interventions by Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien, the Bloc leader, Yves-Francois Blanchet, stressed that these old party leaders were much more interesting than the new ones. Obviously that is what voters think too.
It is true that beyond the programs, MM. Mulroney and Chrétien had infinitely stronger personalities. Each in their own way, the two men exercised real leadership, for better or for worse, while MM. Trudeau and O’Toole seemed to compete in pallor.
The Liberal leader owes the opponents of vaccination and health measures that have heckled him in recent weeks. Perhaps for the first time since becoming Prime Minister, he has given the impression of being safe rather than just an image, while his Conservative opponent will have remained limp from start to finish. “I am the only leader who can replace Mr. Trudeau,” repeats Mr. O’Toole over and over again. This is precisely the problem.
Paradoxically, by championing compulsory vaccination, Mr. Trudeau reminded Canadians daily that the country is far from being out of the pandemic and that it was therefore not the time to plunge it into an election that nothing. did not justify, except that he thought to find a majority. He will likely pay the price.
The success of a campaign often depends on external factors. This is particularly true in the case of a party which must constantly justify its raison d’être as the Bloc Quebecois. Yves-François Blanchet cannot thank enough the president of the Angus Reid polling firm, Shachi Kurl. Without his offensive question during the debate in English, he would probably not have succeeded in raising the bar.
Federal campaigns often have the effect of highlighting the gulf that separates the “two solitudes”. In 1988, it was English Canada that experienced what looked very much like an identity crisis, when the free trade agreement with the United States, overwhelmingly supported by Quebec, was the almost unique issue of the campaign. The then Liberal leader, John Turner, accused Brian Mulroney, whom he had nicknamed the “White House butler”, of selling the Canadian soul to Americans.
This time, Prime Minister Legault wanted to place respect for Quebec autonomy at the heart of the countryside, but it took the intervention of Mme Kurl to give the debate an emotional twist that was lacking if all were to be seen as a simple dispute over skills.
After the 1988 election, English Canada quickly recovered from its emotions. Jean Chrétien, who had been elected by promising to tear up the free trade agreement, quickly changed his mind, and the whole country got along very well. Donald Trump even gave Canada a cold sweat when it in turn threatened to terminate it.
Quebec will also recover from the ramblings of Mme Kurl, but he realized once again how intolerable any assertion of his difference is. This debate will not end, it will simply change the subject.
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