As Canadians go the polls today, most indicators point to the re-election of a Liberal government – another minority one, no stronger than the old one and perhaps a bit weaker. The best guess (it’s only a guess) is that Justin Trudeau’s party will fall roughly 20 seats of the required 170 for the majority government the prime minister had been so confident of winning five weeks ago.
The “election about nothing” quickly deteriorated into a nasty, desperately close affair marred by ugly demonstrations against Trudeau, by a boomlet in support for the libertarian People’s Party, by candidates forced from party tickets over allegations of sexual misbehavior, and, as the end neared, by the spectacle of the two would-be prime ministers trading personal attacks of an intensity seldom witnessed in a federal election.
If Trudeau failed to convince voters that he was motivated by something loftier than naked opportunism – or that he needed a majority to reach goals impossible to achieve with a minority government – it can also be said that Conservative leader Erin O’Toole failed to convince voters that Liberal shortcomings were so grave as to mandate a change of government – or to persuade them that an O’Toole government would be able to manage issues uppermost in voters’ minds (COVID and vaccine passports, climate change and child care) as well as, let alone better than, the Liberals have managed them. To put it another way, if the Conservatives built a better mousetrap, they didn’t put in their election window.
It takes a strong public desire for change to overturn a federal government. That desire was not there when the campaign began, and it is not there as it ends. The heavy turnout at advance polls and the demand for mail-in ballots – which won’t be counted until tomorrow – show that the public has been paying attention. But attention is not enthusiasm. Indifference is the word to describe the mood of the electorate.
The most striking finding of the polls by election eve was not that the Liberals and Conservatives are in a statistical dead heat, it is that both parties have lost public support since the last election in 2019. In that election, the Conservatives took 34 per cent of the popular vote while the Liberals took only 33 per cent, but won the election because its support was more efficiently distributed to regions with the most seats. As of yesterday, the Liberals were down by one percentage point from 2019; the Conservatives were down by two points.
These differences are small, but they suggest 2021 will go down as an election with two losers and no true winner. Both main parties seem destined to fall well short of their objectives. Neither has set hearts aflutter. Clearly, many Canadians have grown weary of Trudeau, yet they are not ready to trust O’Toole – the “Man of Rubber,” as the Hill Times, the newspaper for Parliament Hill insiders, called him last week for his ability to twist himself into new positions as he tried to placate his social conservative base in the west while courting votes as a moderate progressive in Ontario and as a born-again Quebec nationalist in that province. Winning the blessing of Stephen Harper, Brian Mulroney and Quebec Premier Francois Legault was no mean feat, but O’Toole managed the trifecta.
The only leader who grew in stature was Jagmeet Singh. The electorate took to his rational demeanor; the polls rated him the most popular national party leader. Not coincidentally, his New Democrats were running five points ahead of their 2019 performance. They stand to add to the 24 seats they won in 2019 and to hold the balance of power in the next Parliament.
The power, it appears, will be gifted, to a new Liberal minority, one not all that different from old one. That’s the old one Canadians seemed satisfied with until Justin Trudeau messed them – and himself – up by calling his unnecessary, pointless election.
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 in October by McGill-Queen’s University Press. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.