Justin Trudeau may discover, as his dad did, that the universe will not unfold smoothly

“Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” – Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, quoting the prose-poem, Desiderata, Oct. 30, 1972.

That was election night, 49 years ago, when the first Trudeau was sandbagged by the unthinkable. He had led his powerful Liberals into the campaign, confident they would be rewarded with a second majority government, never suspecting that voters might have a different idea. It was desperately close. No one knew on election night which party had won. It took a several days of challenges and recounts to determine that the Liberals had survived, barely, reduced to a tenuous minority, just two seats (109-107) ahead of Robert Stanfield’s Progressive Conservatives.

History does not repeat itself. Justin Trudeau’s universe may well unfold the way he thought it would eight days ago when he called the Sept. 20 election. His gamble – sending the country to the polls two years early – may produce the majority government he says the country needs. However, as the five-week campaign enters week two today, it is becoming apparent that the unfolding will not be as easy or as smooth as his strategists promised. The polls are tightening.

Most federal elections follow a fairly predictable path. Campaigns are short – this one will be 36 days, one day more than the required minimum – yet they start slowly. Nothing much happens in the first two weeks. Party leaders generally spend the first week shadowboxing, probing for opponents’ weaknesses. In the second week, they become more aggressive, exposing inconsistencies in other parties’ platforms and exploiting any dissension they find, or purport to find, in opposition ranks – anything from differences over climate change to a woman’s right to choose, and from vaccination passports and mandatory mask-wearing to the wisdom or folly of the country’s spending its way out of the pandemic.  

All this argy-bargy will, by the end, amount to less than meets the ear in week two. Scattered political scientists and partisan cave dwellers will write letters to the editor. A few pollsters and pundits will opine. The rest of us will get on with our lives, knowing we will be expected to pay attention soon enough.

That typically begins in week three. The pace picks up, policies are thrashed over at public meetings and in the media; voters discover who their local candidates are and start listening to them.

Week four will be crucial. It’s the week of the make-or-break leaders’ debates. For no valid reason I can think of, there will be only one national debate in each language: two hours in French on Sept. 8 and in English on Sept. 9, each with five leaders: Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc Québécois and Green. Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party, which has no seats in Parliament, is excluded this time.

The debates can change the course of an election and its outcome – witness Brian Mulroney’s knockout of John Turner in their exchange on patronage in the 1984 election. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer never recovered from his ineptitude in the 2019 French debate. Sometimes the winner is not the best debater but the one who exceeds expectations. That’s what happened in the 1979 debate with Pierre Trudeau, Joe Clark and Ed Broadbent. While most critics agreed that New Democrat Broadbent had “won,” Clark, lightly regarded and given no chance in the pre-debate odds, held his own well enough to emerge with momentum that would carry the Conservatives to a minority government.

In the penultimate week, week 5, undecided and loosely affiliated voters – constituting perhaps 20 per cent of the electorate – will be making their decisions on leaders, parties and candidates. That’s not to say they won’t change their minds during the final, frantic sprint to the wire in week seven.

A good many probably will change their vote, as a certain Liberal prime minister and father learned that day in 1972, when the universe did not unfold the way he hoped.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. His new book, Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World, co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, is being published this fall by McGill-Queen’s University Press. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com

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