The “election about nothing,” as it was called in the beginning, has turned into a cliff-hanger – a desperately close affair with voters asked to choose between competing approaches to fundamental issues and to the role of government in the years ahead.
The Conservatives under their new leader Erin O’Toole began five or six percentage points behind the Liberals in national polls, but they parlayed disapproval of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s calling of the snap election into a lead of four or more points in the early going.
Last week, week three of five in the campaign, the Conservatives lost momentum as more voters turned their attention to the election and the policies on offer from the two major parties. Their lead narrowed to two or three points – a statistical tie in the polling business. Heading into crucial week four, with the major French debate tomorrow night and the English one tomorrow, the CBC Poll Tracker was projecting a reduced Liberal minority government while a second poll aggregator, 338 Canada.com, forecast a Conservative minority – both far short of the 170 seats required for a majority.
This week’s two-hour debates, the only ones sanctioned by the Leaders’ Debate Commission, headed by former governor general David Johnston, could be decisive. Trudeau urgently needs to recover ground lost since he called the election, confident that the Liberals would regain their former 2015-2019 majority. O’Toole has to persuade voters that the less-government approach of the Stephen Harper era will better serve the country post-COVID than a continuation of the activist, big-spending government of the Liberals during the pandemic.
Sharp policy differences will be on display, as they were in a French debate organized by Quebec’s TVA network last week. For example, the Liberal government has announced will make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for the public service and federally regulated business, as well as for travellers by air and rail; all Liberal election candidates must be vaccinated. Conservative candidates are not required to be vaccinated, and, while O’Toole encourages Canadians to get the jab, he says the decision must be voluntary.
On childcare, Trudeau’s Liberals are promising a $30 billion national daycare plan, to be phased in over five years, funded by Ottawa and operated by the provinces, that would lower fees to $10 per day and create new spaces for 250,000 children. Seven provinces and one territory have signed on. The Conservatives say they would rip up those agreements and replace them with a refundable tax credit that families could spend as they choose.
Freedom of choice is also an issue with medicare. O’Toole says he supports universal health care insurance, but he would tweak it to accommodate private medicine; individuals with the ability to pay would be able to purchase priority access to certain medical diagnoses and treatments.
The Conservative leader was a late convert to the global warming cause. At its last convention, his party voted down a motion declaring that climate change is real. O’Toole now says he accepts the reality of climate change; his plan to reduce carbon emissions has received reasonably favourable reviews, although O’Toole may have undermined it by his pledge to build more pipelines from the Alberta oil sands to markets.
A women’s right to choose has long been a divisive issue in the Conservative party. O’Toole incurred the ire of social conservatives recently when he declared his personal support for the right to choose. He would not, however, go as far as the Liberals, who are withholding a small portion of New Brunswick’s health transfer on the ground that the province’s Progressive Conservative government is restricting access to abortion by refusing to fund procedures at clinics that are not part of a hospital. O’Toole says this is a provincial, not federal, issue.
There are other matters worth airing. In an election marred by ugly disruptions from anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy-fueled protesters, a couple of hours of debate on legitimate issues would be more than welcome.
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