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Opinion
Election 2019
Federal Politics

Five Lessons from a ‘It Could Have Been Worse’ Election

On prickly premiers, the NDP’s limited power, electoral reform and more.

Paul Willcocks 23 Oct 2019TheTyee.ca

Paul Willcocks is a journalist and former publisher of newspapers, and now an editor with The Tyee.

Call it the “well, it could have been worse” election.

Conservatives can give thanks the campaign didn’t go a week longer, which might have given Andrew Scheer and his strategists enough time to hand the Liberals a majority.

New Democrats can be relieved they managed to wind up with the balance of power despite getting 600,000 fewer votes and 20 fewer seats than in 2015.

Liberals can be happy they’re still in power.

The Greens, I suppose, can be thankful they managed to pick up 600,000 more votes and three seats. Though even at their election night rally, the fact they remain largely peripheral seemed to be sinking in.

And Canadians can be glad the People's Party didn’t even rise to fringe status, capturing 1.6 per cent of the vote.

Beyond the somewhat gloomy “it could have been worse” observation, here’s five takeaways from this election.

First, get ready for much posturing from some premiers. Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe was first off the mark, warning of western alienation and calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to scrap the carbon tax, rewrite the equalization formula to improve the deal for his province and get pipelines built. He notes that the Conservatives won 47 of 48 seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

But across the country, 63 per cent of Canadians voted for parties that wanted to keep the carbon tax, or raise it. The notion that Trudeau should ignore them because many voters in two provinces disagree might play to Moe’s base, but it’s goofy. Even in Saskatchewan, one-third of voters supported parties that want a carbon tax.

And Moe knows no federal government can magically change the equalization formula or build pipelines. Equalization is set out as a principle in the Constitution, and changes would require the agreement of other provinces, most of them benefiting under the current deal. Pipelines face economic and legal challenges — including First Nations’ rights — that can’t simply be wished away.

Second, and closely related, the election should — but likely won’t — renew serious discussions of electoral reform. Based on a crude application of proportional representation principles, the big winners would have been the Greens, with 22 seats instead of three, and the NDP with 54 instead of 24.

The Liberals would have won 112 seats, not 157. Which means we would now have a Liberal-led coalition with NDP and Green participation, or at least an alliance with written agreement on key principles. That government would come much closer to reflecting the priorities of the majority of Canadians.

And rather than Alberta and Saskatchewan being shut out of government, they would have Liberal and NDP MPs advocating for their province’s interests.

Third, any hope that Singh’s New Democrats will be able to force the Liberals to move forward with electoral reform — or any other major issue — is misplaced. This isn’t like the 2017 B.C. election when the Greens had enough leverage to negotiate an agreement with the NDP. For starters, the Greens could at least feign willingness to support the BC Liberals, increasing their bargaining position. Singh is not going to support a Conservative minority government.

And the Liberals know any NDP threats to force a quick election are empty. The NDP is broke; funding another campaign would be a challenge. And the party is aware of the big risk of being crushed if an election turns into a vote on whether the Conservatives or Liberals should govern.

An early election will only come if the Liberals decide they have a chance to win a majority.

Fourth, election night showed the Liberals and Conservatives are not much interested in listening to voters.

If you listened to or read Trudeau’s acceptance speech, you would probably think the Liberals had won a great victory. The reality was that they attracted one million fewer votes than in 2015 — and fewer than the Conservatives — and lost 15 per cent of their seats. Two out of three voters rejected them.

Scheer’s speech evoked the platitude-rich, content-poor platform that was rejected by 65 per cent of voters and resulted in just 121 seats. The party ran an “excellent campaign,” he argued, despite the evidence voters didn’t agree.

Sure, leaders want to keep the faithful encouraged. But election night — and campaigns — are a chance to reach out to all Canadians, not just the base.

And fifth, it seems Canadians are no longer prepared to support a party that doesn’t have some sort of plan to deal with the climate crisis. Scheer’s pretend climate plan, with no targets or timelines, was aimed at people who don’t actually believe climate change is a threat. That appears to have been a costly misjudgment.

Trudeau’s Trans Mountain pipeline purchase might have weakened his claims to climate activism, but the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens all acknowledged the seriousness of the threat. And they were supported by a clear majority of Canadians.

The biggest takeaway might be more general.

Do we really want “it could have been worse” to define our elections?  [Tyee]

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