On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!
The Federal political parties in Canada have been anticipating this moment since the SNC-Lavalin scandal exploded in February. The Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) won a majority government in 2015, with Justin Trudeau as it’s leader, and may have difficulty repeating the win.
The campaign has just started, and the stakes have never been higher. The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) want to show that they are the more fiscally responsible, the LPC want to redeem themselves from some broken promises, including electoral reform, and some controversies along the way.
The New Democrat Party (NDP), who has plummeted in the polls, now has nothing to lose. They sure won’t be expecting an orange wage in Quebec as was the case in 2011 under Layton’s leadership. With Layton at the helm, the NDP became the Official opposition in the House of Commons, winning 59 out of 75 seats in Quebec.
The scandal of the year involving the Quebec engineering firm (SNC-Lavalin) will probably resurface. SNC is accused of bribing the Libyan authorities for more than $45 M and defrauding multiple organizations for about $129.8 M between 2001 and 2011.
To save Canadians jobs, the Trudeau government pressured the government’s judicial branch to obtain a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC. The argument was that this practice is already being used in other democratic countries. But, let’s be clear, it is only in authoritarian regimes where there is no separation between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of powers.
Even inside the ranks of the PLC, not everyone has been pleased by Justin Trudeau’s leadership. Mid-August, the Federal Ethics Commissioner of Canada, Mario Dion, ruled that the Prime Minister had broken the Conflict of Interest Act. Under the section 9 of the Act, public office holders can’t be using : “[…] his or her position to seek to influence a decision of another person so as to further the public office holder’s private interests or those of the public office holder’s relatives or friends or to improperly further another person’s private interests.”
Jody Wilson-Raybould, ex-justice minister and general prosecutor, and Jane Philpott, MP for Markham-Stouffville, were expelled from the liberal caucus in April.
Both are now independent candidates in the upcoming elections.
The argument voiced by the CPC is simple. Nobody is above the law and corruption must be denounced vigorously. “We know that Justin Trudeau has broken the law, now we need to know if he has committed a crime,” said the Conservative Party leader few weeks ago.
Which Trudeau replied: “what we did over the past year wasn’t good enough, but at the same time I can’t apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs.”
SNC employs roughly 9,000 workers in Canada.
The federal election campaign, which promises to be one of the dirtiest ever, was launched today. The main polls by Léger, Ekos, Abacus Data and Campaign Research are placing the two main parties in a race to win a minority government.
For five weeks, the leaders will be travelling across the country, meeting Canadians; trying to understand what’s most important to them.
For now, it should be a race between the CPC and the LPC, who hold a majority government since 2015.
Andrew Scheer promises that if Canadians do give him their support, he will lower the taxes, put more money in their pockets and fight strongly, with the help from the premier of Alberta Jason Kenney, against the carbon tax. As the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, said, “The people will decide, when the election is held. Once the people decide, I believe in democracy, I respect democracy, we move on.”
Put forward by the federal government, the carbon tax on greenhouse gas-emitting fuels, was designed to lower the country’s carbon emissions to respect the Paris climate summit agreement. The federal government intervened because four provinces (Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan) did not meet the criteria of addressing their share of actions to fight climate change. Since April 2019, the four provinces have seen an increase in cost of fossil fuels- $20 per tonne of green house gas emissions (GHG).
For the average car user, this policy translates into an additional 4,4 cents per litre of gasoline.
As said in a CBC article “The government projects the pricing plan will reduce carbon pollution by 50 million to 60 million tonnes by 2022 — the equivalent of taking 12 million cars off the road, or closing 14 coal plants.”
“As prime minister, I’ll run a government that will live within its mean”, said Scheer in a publicity launched on September 4. This is not surprising since he has been openly criticizing the liberal’s huge deficits for the past four years; “Trudeau not being prioritized with balancing the books.”
Conservatives are proposing a single tax return for Quebecers to “eliminate unnecessary paperwork for families and businesses.” Also, if they form the government after October 21 they intend to move Canada’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, as the United States has done.
Scheer has been able to attract key star candidates in Philippe Gagnon, Paralympic Olympic swimmer, Sylvie Fréchette, ex-diver on the international scene and Angelo Esposito, who played for the Quebec Remparts, in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NPD, doesn’t seem to be gaining the support he needs to even have a slight chance to form the Official opposition in Ottawa.
The NDP is trying to frame themselves as the left and truly green alternative to the LPC. They want to increase minimum wage to 15$/h, which has already been implemented in some cities over the globe, including in New York (end of 2019) under Mayor de Blasio.
“New Democrats know where we stand — on the side of workers. If you’re working full time, you should be able to make ends meet,”, said Singh, during Toronto’s Labour Day parade. The raise would immediately help 67,000 Canadian workers, says an NDP report on the matter.
The progressive leaning NDP party has a plan to tackle the housing crisis, student debt (capping all interest on existing and future student loans) and the taboo which is the opiode overdose epidemic. On the environment, transition to 100% non-emitting electricity by 2050 and cancel the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline project.
The party is also committed in creating a national pharmacare program that provides “universal, public, comprehensive coverage to everyone in Canada” by 2020.
The fact that Canada is the only country in the world with universal health care that doesn’t cover medication is a big part of the NDP platform on health care, that would help families save more than $500 a year, according to the NDP website.
The only discordant factor is knowing how all these wonderful policies will be financed and which Canadians will pay for them.
Singh tries hard, but like Scheer, Canadians don’t really know him well. It may also seem that there is a chance that small rural municipalities in Canada may not be inclined to support him as he is a part of a visible minority (sikh) and that his religious beliefs are very transparent.
Even if some Canadians hold social-democratic values, can they overlook his very visible turban
People are, unfortunately, judged based on their appearance, colour of their skin, their sexuality, their gender, where they come from and the language they speak or don’t speak.
“These are things that people face every day and I’m a leader of a party that experience some of it but I’m hoping to represent all those people who face it in their day-to-day life and I want them to know that yes you can”, said Singh.
Singh recruited Svend Robinson, who was the first openly gay MP serving in the House of Commons in 1988. Robinson is running in Burnaby North-Seymour, British Columbia.
Earlier this year, the NDP leader published a touching memoir, Love & Courage, where he opened up about sexual abuses he endured as a young kid by a martial arts instructor. He talked, without filters, about his father’s struggle with alcoholism and the difficult time he experienced growing up in Canada as a visible minority.
Originally a lawyer, he was a provincial Ontario MP from 2011 to 2017. His brother is also in politics, representing the NDP at Queen’s Park, Ontario.
Canadian politics has a different makeup than U.S. politics. In Canada, we observe less of an ideology gap between the left and the right. Even if the past stands of Andrew Scheer on social issues in the 90s and beginning of 2000 seemed right-wing, the CPC are not extreme right-wingers. The CPC is right leaning yes, but can’t be compared to the United States republican party.
Scheer was criticized earlier this month for never having participated in a pride event since he has been in politics. The criticism was fuelled by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Ralph Goodale, who himself opposed gay marriage in 1999, through the resurfacing of a video of Scheer back in 2005 debating against same-sex marriage.
Scheer now admits that his views on social issues won’t be dictating the CPC future policies. As the new prime minister, he promises not to put forward policies on abortion.
“This issue is settled since 2005, the Parliament had a vote, Canadians had their say in two elections, and the society has moved on past from that”, reaffirmed Scheer in a press conference.
“I accept that and as prime minister I will always uphold the law as it stands which grants that rights for LGBT Canadians.” But he didn’t want to specify his personal stand on the issue. Still, “[…] individual MP’s have the right to express themselves on matter of conscience”, said Scheer.
The LPC isn’t presenting any bold promises. “Keep moving forward and build on the progress we’ve made, or go back to the politics of the Harper years. I’m for moving forward — for everyone,” said Trudeau.
People know what to expect from the liberals. They want to make themselves as the best option for the middle class, like it was the case going to the elections in 2015. “ When we raised taxes on the wealthiest 1% so we could cut them for the middle class, they [the conservatives] tried to stop us,” said Trudeau in the new LPC TV ad.
“When we created the child benefit that gives hundreds of dollars a month tax free to regular families across the country, they tried to stop us too.”
In a near futur, the party wants to ban “harmful” single-use plastics for 2021 and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as Canadian law.
Domestically and abroad, the present government is well known for legalizing recreational marijuana on October 17,2018, becoming the second country after Uruguay to do so.
This election cycle brings a new actor on the political map. Maxime Bernier, considered a libertarian, who came second in the CPC leadership race in May 2017, launched the People’s Party of Canada last year.
Well known on the Hill, Bernier has been an MP in Ottawa since 2006. He’s trying to apply a familiar strategy to activate his populist movement; tackling “mass immigration”, praise free speech/religious liberty and calling climate change a hoax. Via Twitter, he even attacked the young climate activist Greta Thunberg on her “mental health” last week.
He won’t form the next government, but the future will tell us if the party can obtain some seats in parliament. He has candidates from coast to coast to coast, not only in Quebec.
Elizabeth May is still the backbone of the Green Party of Canada, who will try to steal votes from Singh. Last week, in protest, 14 former provincial NDP candidates of New Brunswick defected to the Green Party, claiming that Singh didn’t visit the province once since becoming leader.
It will feel strange to see a federal election without Gilles Duceppe as the leader of the Bloc Québécois. Yves-François Blanchet, who was minister for a short period of time under Marois government in Quebec, will try to keep the party alive. Sovereignty in Quebec is almost a distant memory, not being an option for younger generations (like it was in the 80s and 90s).
It seems like Blanchet will have better results than Duceppe had in 2015.
He will also try and erase the infighting that occurred within the Bloc Party during the last few years under the leadership of Martine Ouellet, who was also an MP at the Quebec National Assembly. She resigned after a vote of non-confidence from members in June 2018.
Get set and ready for five weeks of interesting campaign ideas and proposals. Issues that we may hear about will be climate change, job creation, the future of journalism, trade and relations with the U.S. and China, international anxiety towards wars in Middle East and the future of Brexit in Great Britain.
Policy-wise, as with each election cycle, the parties will release their full platforms during the campaign.
The English debate will be held on October 7; the French debate on October 10. Both will be televised by a consortium of major television broadcasters, including CBC/Radio-Canada. On October 2, TVA will televise a debate as well.
Canadians will go to the polls on October 21.
