Some people I know, even some Liberals from an earlier age, were unimpressed by the triumphal tone of Justin Trudeau’s victory speech on Monday. But if you’re a Liberal who got re-elected, where’s the evidence the party’s done anything wrong? Sure, the caucus is smaller, but it’s more…concentrated. More Liberal-y. Julie Dzerowicz’s vote went up. Marco Mendicino’s vote went up. Marc Miller’s vote went up. In all of those Liberals’ big-city ridings, the first two in Toronto and the third in Montreal, the Conservative vote went down. It’s not hard to find Toronto ridings where the only large party whose vote declined was the Conservatives.
University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe points out that the Conservative vote went down in a lot of urban ridings east of Manitoba, and not just in Toronto and Montreal, but in London and Kitchener and Ottawa. Urban-rural distinctions in voting behaviour are ancient and universal and not shocking, but even as Andrew Scheer pushed the Conservative vote up by half a million votes, he lost large numbers of thousands of urban votes.
I don’t yet know how many Trudeau Liberal MPs will walk into the next national caucus meeting with results similar to the three I listed above, but even if you have an intellectual understanding that the last year was hell for Liberals compared to the first three, and I know many do, it may be hard to maintain any fire in the belly for change against the worst habits of the leader and his office if, after all, the net result of losing Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould and Andrew Leslie and Scott Brison and Celina Caesar-Chavannes and Leona Alleslev and then —whoopsie!—two dozen more, all in one night, is that your own margin of comfort at home increased.
In their first mandate, the Trudeau Liberals developed a knack for paying less and less attention to the parts of the country—geographic, demographic, socio-economic, ideological—where they could not expect a warm welcome. They are hardly the first party to do so. It’s a difficult urge to resist. It’s not obvious to me that the election results will discourage that urge. If this caucus could muster no empathy for Jane Philpott, who expects it to try harder with Alberta?
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See Also:
(1) What does the new Bloc wave really represent?
(2) The big election winner? The carbon tax
(3) Wilson-Raybould should use media to amplify her voice as Independent: experts
(4) How will Justin Trudeau navigate the choppy waters ahead?
(6) How Justin Trudeau held on: The story of a gruelling, messy campaign
Something has got to change if our nation is to survive. The tail (Ontario and Quebec) have wagged this dog for many decades. Perhaps even since Confederation. They will continue to wag this dog (likely eventually ‘to death’) unless/until something drastic changes. The Maritimers it appears have begun to slowly awaken from their generational stupor of devotion to handouts, bailouts, the nanny state….socialism. But having lived in Halifax for a decade I harbour a genuine fear that all it will take is the LPC dangling a few ‘carrots’. And this…wow, even a 30% drop in support for the Libs in Nfld since 2015. Same carrot theory there as well. But the simply reality is that when it comes to politics Ontario and Quebec hold the hammer and the ROC is the nail.
The fact that Scheer blew it big time is not in dispute. Any other leader of the Conservatives would have pounced on the Liberals after the scandals of SNC-Lavalin, the blackface pictures and the lies that followed. Lisa Raitt, Rona Ambrose, hell even Doug Ford would have eaten Trudeau alive, but not Scheer. He and his baby face let the prey off the hook in an act of incompetence that required admission and then stepping down.
To borrow half a dozen words from a famous speech by Oliver Cromwell and apply them to the results of this election. Andrew Scheer…. ‘In the name of God, go!’
Only the Bloc won – rest of Canada lost
Any other leader of the Conservatives would have pounced on the Liberals after the scandals of SNC-Lavalin, the blackface pictures and the lies that followed. Lisa Raitt, Rona Ambrose, hell even Doug Ford would have eaten Trudeau alive, but not Scheer. He and his baby face let the prey off the hook in an act of incompetence that required admission and then stepping down.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/fatah-only-the-bloc-won-the-rest-of-canada-lost