A consequential election ends with a stark choice and an uncertain future
John Duffy, the late political strategist and author, began Fights of Our Lives, his lively and encyclopedic account of the federal campaigns that shaped this country, with a simple premise — one always worth returning to at moments like this.
"Elections matter," he wrote.
Writing in 2002, Duffy was pushing back against what he saw as the lazy cynicism of "academics, journalists and political dissenters of various stripes" who had "worked very hard for many years to convince voters in democracies that elections are inconsequential or, even worse, rigged, so that this or that social group maintains dominance no matter what happens at the polls."
Duffy's view was that elections — fundamentally human endeavours — are precarious and dynamic, and the choices that leaders and voters make are consequential.
If anything, the last decade of global politics has made it much harder to be complacent. With the future of Western democracy newly uncertain, the climate crisis bearing down and polarization on the rise, it can now feel like elections almost matter too much.
In Canada, even before this spring, the notion that any given election was possibly the "most important" to have ever occurred was in some danger of becoming a cliché. But it is at least much harder to dispute this time.
"We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes," Liberal Leader Mark Carney said at Rideau Hall last month, moments after asking the Governor General to trigger this election.
Two weeks later, former prime minister Stephen Harper appeared at a rally in Edmonton with Pierre Poilievre and thanked Conservative supporters for being a "positive part of the most important decision that this country is going to make in decades."
Not to be outdone, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning emerged mid-campaign to warn that, above and beyond everything else, the unity of the country hung in the balance — and that a Liberal victory would drive Western provinces to secede.
Carney has stated repeatedly that this is the "most consequential election of our lifetime." That is perhaps a judgment that can only truly be made in hindsight, once the exact consequences are known. But given the choices and the circumstances, it certainly seems possible that the 45th general election will come to deserve that title.
Stewart Prest, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, wrote this week that Canada's domestic challenges are "multiple and significant." But from watching the leaders' debates last week, Prest said it was clear that "Canadian voters, journalists, debate moderators and politicians alike are all still coming to terms with the depth of change in the world around them."
That is almost certainly true.
But this campaign was probably only ever going to be about Canadians starting to wrap their minds around the challenges in front of them — and, crucially, choosing who will lead the country's initial response.
Unlike the "free trade election" of 1988 — the last time Canada's relationship to the United States was so central to a federal election — this one is perhaps less easily reduced to a yes-or-no question on a specific, tangible thing. While it may come to be remembered as the "Donald Trump election," this vote concerns a stack of questions about how and what Canada should be at the start of this new epoch.
It has been noted that, on some matters, the difference between the two leading parties has shrunk over the course of the last two months.
Carney has abandoned the federal government's carbon tax, nixed planned changes to capital gains taxes and opened the door to approving new pipelines to transport oil and gas. The Liberals and Conservatives agree on the need to impose retaliatory tariffs on American products in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canadian products.
The two parties are proposing broadly similar increases in defence spending. They are both promising income tax cuts. They would both hope to use federal spending power to persuade municipalities to eliminate regulatory barriers to housing construction.
But the Liberal and Conservative leaders still offer Canadians a stark choice of personalities, priorities and biographies.
Poilievre starts from the premise that the biggest problem facing this country is the broad set of policies implemented by Justin Trudeau's government over the last nine years — and that he is the person to lead great change. Carney starts from the premise that the biggest problem facing this country is Trump and the agenda and politics that he represents — and that he is the person best suited to lead the country through this precarious moment.
Poilievre, an experienced and combative parliamentarian, is a populist conservative who has promised to fight "woke ideology" and who jokes that "income tax is the fine you pay for the crime of working hard." Until recently, he seemed to be riding the wave of frustration that has toppled incumbent governments across the Western world.
Carney, a former central banker but a novice politician, is a technocratic progressive who is comfortable with the word "catalyze" and who believes the government needs to "step up" and act amid the uncertainty of the present crisis. His presence has reset the political playing field, but he is still leading a party that has been in power for more than nine years.
On the crisis of climate change, the two parties are possibly as far apart as they have ever been, with the Conservatives no longer committed to a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
With governments still struggling to contain the opioid crisis, the Conservatives would move away from the harm reduction policies the Liberals have opened the doors to, ending safer supply programs and putting new limits on supervised consumption sites.
The Liberals believe a new public agency should be charged with building new affordable housing; the Conservatives believe the Liberals will only succeed in wasting more money on bureaucracy. Poilievre says he would use the notwithstanding clause to overrule judges on sentencing decisions; the Liberals argue that would set a dangerous precedent.
Both parties have promised to reduce the cost of government operations, but the Liberals would be willing to run slightly higher deficits for the next four years.
The Conservatives have stopped short of fully embracing Liberal-designed social programs like child care, dental care and pharmacare, saying only that they would honour "existing" agreements and coverage (only three provinces and one territory have signed pharmacare agreements with the federal government).
The two parties fundamentally disagree about the future of the CBC.
Both leaders broadly speak about the value of economic sovereignty, but seem to view the challenge of Donald Trump differently.
Poilievre has framed the Trump challenge as a tariff fight that should end with a renegotiated trade deal (and perhaps even expanded trade with the United States). Carney frames the Trump challenge in terms of a changed relationship and a changed world which will require Canada to act differently, forge new alliances with "like-minded countries" and renegotiate its terms with the United States.
Some of the difference in framing might be explained by each leader's political interests. But their different frames also speak to real choices this country will have to make in the weeks, months and years ahead about its relationship with the United States.
In an interview with National Public Radio this week, Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, opined that Americans were "no longer living in a democratic regime."
That statement might contain two warnings for Canadians — one about the immediate future of the behemoth to our south, and another about how little can be taken for granted when it comes to the health of any democracy.
After five weeks of official campaigning, and four months of remarkable change, the Canadian electorate has clustered around two options.
Drawn by the populist message, the conservative ideals or their unhappiness with the state of things after nine years of a Liberal prime minister, something like 38 per cent of voters seem pledged to Poilievre's Conservatives — nearly as large a share of voters as Stephen Harper's Conservatives received when they formed a majority government in 2011.
Driven by concerns about Trump, opposition to Poilievre or their preference for progressive values, a little more than 40 per cent of voters are inclined to unite behind Mark Carney's Liberals — slightly more than Trudeau's Liberals received when they formed a majority government in 2015.
If the polls match the result on Monday night, it would be the first time since 1957 that two parties have each received 38 per cent or more in a federal election. In that case, two-fifths of those who voted will wake up disappointed Tuesday morning. The winners will have to contend with that.
Whoever is prime minister after Monday will inherit all the challenges that were present before Trump returned to the White House — from the cost of housing to the climate crisis to the opioid crisis to the various forces that threaten democracy in the 21st century — and they'll have to lead this country through a moment of incredible stress and uncertainty.
They'll have to contend with a president taking unprecedented actions. The global economy may tip into a recession. The prime minister will have to make a dozen major decisions that we can currently only guess at.
This moment in Canadian history has been cause for reflection and patriotism. It has inspired a competitive election and may drive a higher-than-usual rush to the polls. One way or another, the result will be consequential.
But the winner will carry a heavy burden.
cbc.ca
