After less than two years into his four-year mandate, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have pulled the plug on their government and are taking the country into an election.
Along with many other people, we have to ask why. So far, we haven’t heard a particularly compelling answer.
We have been told we are entering a new period in which the government will be taking decisions with implications not just for the next few months but for the coming decades.
Wow, what a shocker. Isn’t that what governments do? Isn’t this what we all assume whenever we vote? Even though none of us foresaw the ensuing pandemic, somehow the collection of MPs we sent to the House less than two years ago more or less got through it together.
What do the Liberals think they could have done better if they had had a majority, unconstrained by the need to maintain the support of the opposition parties? Was it the Conservatives, BQ and NDP that prevented them from listening to early advice on the coming pandemic? Would the government have shut down borders, ordered vaccines or ramped up testing any faster had it had a majority? Was there something about their minority status that messed up plans to provide some form of support to the provinces to help prevent 6,000 deaths from coronavirus in nursing and retirement facilities?
We will no doubt hear that the Liberals feel they need a stronger mandate to meet the challenges that lie ahead. Makes you wonder what they see coming that could be worse than a pandemic. Are they finally going to do something boldly commensurate with the challenges of climate change? Are they going to stand up to Quebec’s discrimination against religious and linguistic minorities? Are they going to push forward on electoral reform or universal income?
Probably not, if history is any guide.
Still, we’re being told that we deserve our say. Well, we just had our say. How often are we meant to revisit these decisions? Especially at a cost of about half a billion dollars a crack, paid by whom? Oh ya, us. So, thanks for the thought, but we’re good.
No, this is just the exploitation of a strategy that has worked in several provinces where minority governments were turned into majorities by elections held during the pandemic, when it is pretty much the premier and a few ministers who get the lion’s share of the air time. With no public gatherings, no burger flipping and no baby kissing, it can be difficult for opposition leaders to emerge from virtual oblivion and cut a profile in the public consciousness.
Yup, it’s a power grab, pure and simple. Seems to be the name of the game. Perhaps it is ever thus. Are we naïve to imagine it could be otherwise?
At the same time, one might wonder how the Governor General reacted to the PM’s pitch for an election.
“You had me at ‘The people have the right to choose a new government,’” she might have replied, as she gave her consent.
Charles Dickson
