A storm is brewing on Parliament Hill. Will this signal the end of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sunny ways?
Political attacks, scandals and significant changes in party support have created a scenario where the result of the upcoming federal election is anyone’s guess.
Although Ontario Premier Doug Ford is unintentionally providing aid to Trudeau through his own deep unpopularity in Ontario, the Liberal Party of Canada has failed to completely counter the narrative painted by Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer.
The opposition leader has capitalized on widespread interprovincial tension to create an us-vs-them scenario between “average Canadians” and those who he calls “Liberal elites.”
Unfortunately for the prime minister, the Liberals appear to be also losing ground on the left.
Trudeau’s disastrous handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair earlier this year soured the Liberal brand in the eyes of many Canadians, tarnishing the prime minister’s feminist image.
The upcoming election, scheduled to take place on or before October 21, has become a toss-up, with a Maclean’s article from last week predicting that no single party will gain a majority of the 338 seats in the House of Commons.
In the months following the 2015 election, many were hopeful that with a strong new leader like Niki Ashton or Charlie Angus, the New Democrats could retake their title as Canada’s main progressive party.
However, the NDP’s selection of Jagmeet Singh has in fact reduced the appeal of the NDP to Canadians.
Under Singh’s leadership, the NDP has fallen in polls to the point where the party is not predicted to win a single seat in Quebec. Their fundraising has slumped and much of what they had fundraised in the past year was put towards Singh’s by-election campaign in Burnaby-South.
The Green Party of Canada is stealing voters from the NDP at an unprecedented rate, overtaking them as the third major party in some polls in several areas of the country, including Atlantic Canada.
The Green Party’s shocking rise is largely tied to the swell of green support surging through Europe and Canadian provincial politics, as well as the party’s charismatic leader Elizabeth May, who was named the most ethical party leader in a Nanos survey earlier this year.
With constant media discussion on the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, Abacus Data now suggests that climate change and environment are ranked in the top three most important issues for Canadians.
Now, that’s not to say that a Tory government would be good at all for our country—far from it. I am committed to electing another Trudeau government, but I believe it is in the best interest of the country to elect a Liberal minority government this fall, supported by the NDP and/or Green Party.
Canada has had two successive majority governments since 2011, yet it often feels as though a vast swath of people have never experienced differently. Minority governments are not something we should fear—European countries have operated smoothly with various minority governments for decades, as have several Canadian provinces and even many of our past federal governments pre-2011.
We can have a strong, stable, and progressive minority government. We can have new voices that will contribute to our political discourse and significantly less partisan debate in the House of Commons.
The outcomes of electing a minority government would involve benefits not only to individual areas, like the economy and social policy, but also national unity as a whole.
Another Trudeau majority would further alienate those living in the prairies, who ally more with the Conservative brand and who feel forgotten by the Liberal government.
This would likely be branded as fear-mongering by Liberal supporters, but many Canadians from all sides of the aisle have grown frustrated with the Liberals holding all of the power in West Block. A minority would allow people to feel better represented and that their concerns are being met.
While I commend the Liberals on passing a national carbon pricing plan, a progressive minority, one that in particular includes the Green Party, could go above and beyond to ensure we are meeting our Paris Agreement commitments.
With experts warning that our planet has only until 2030 to stem “catastrophic climate change,” it’s imperative that we elect a minority government going into the next decade which would encourage the strongest environmental standards possible.
There is no denying the state of political division in Canada is high. A Conservative government is a real threat to the progress we’ve made, especially to the state of our environment.
However, this election should not be seen as a stark choice between handing the Trudeau Liberals another majority and seeing a Prime Minister Andrew Scheer for the next four years.
As Trudeau said in an interview with Jon Ivison in 2013: “Who cares about winning? We should focus on serving.”
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