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So I was thinking about the Prime Minister's decision to attend as few debates as possible and delay the start of the election until almost the absolute last second, and I wondered, "Why do we have to go through with this whole messy 'election' thing, anyway?  Wouldn't we all be better off if it just… didn't happen?"

It isn't just that this election promises to be particularly "elbows-up".  It isn't just that the surfeit of useless election related podcasts clogging the air is probably contributing to global warming somehow.  And it isn't just that the Liberals and Conservatives are tied despite it being proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the government can't govern worth a damn.  Doing away with the outmoded and probably racist concept of "elections" would save taxpayer dollars, improve our discourse, and eliminate our archaic first-past-the-post system because nobody would ever get past the all-important post.

Aren't you excited for a campaign where Justin Trudeau promises to campaign against conservative Premiers like Doug Ford because he's already written off his opponents as laughable?  He can get up there and talk about how it's a big problem that people like Doug Ford, who are part of the 1%, and whose father was a politician, and who kind of didn't know what to do with his life until he went into politics are going around pretending to be "for the people" when they're actually part of the elite group of families that run this country.

And then there's the poor abused "hustings" that politicians hit every time they go out on the campaign trail.  (The fact that we still call it a campaign "trail" when we have perfectly good roads in this country is another conundrum I won't get into.)  I've never seen a "husting", and I'm not sure why our ultramodern and hashtag-literate political journalists insist on using the term in the second decade of the 21st century, but I do know that they go through some truly horrific punishment every time some elected official shows up.  We take enough heat for the seal hunt as it is, and people are seriously thinking about a gun ban, so there's no need to have an election if it's just going to give politicians an opportunity to harm a bunch of hustings that are no threat or inconvenience to anyone.

The United States and Britain had elections/referendums in the past few years, and look how that turned out for them.  But how can foreign hacking campaigns hack our election if there's no election to hack?  Check and mate, bots!

Ralph Goodale has been in Parliament for so long that he actually forgot his own opposition to same-sex marriage, and he's probably going to be re-elected regardless.  Why would you force a man who has so clearly taken leave of his mental faculties out into the elements day after day to meet the same people who have been voting for him for decades?  Just let him sit there in the House of Commons for as long as he likes, like part of the furniture.

Come to think of it, the campaign is not just painful for older-than-dirt MP's.  The people who are actually giving up their lives and jobs to run as candidates for the Opposition parties are clearly terrified to face the voters.  How else could you explain that there are entire regions of the country that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has not visited and that he needs stage directions for his speeches?  How else could you explain the fact that Andrew Scheer is pretending he's never met Doug Ford and Jason Kenney?  Or that the commentariat has all but called the election for the Liberals on account of the TRIUSM that vote-rich Ontario will be balancing out a blue provincial government with a red federal one?

Face it: Nobody wants this election, and I can't see us getting excited about any future election anytime soon.  Well, except for the voters who will doubtless be showing up at the voting booth on E-Day loudly asking how they can vote against Trump and then complaining about being turned away because they don't have any valid Canadian ID.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


During the 2015 federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ran on a simple message, so simple it can be summed up thusly: "Vote for me, because I'm an adorable, impossibly-handsome, rock-star-style leader who is also tons of fun!"

With a message like that, how could he not win!?

But thanks to the SNC-Lavalin scandal (which never seems to die) Trudeau's aura of fuzziness and warmth and niceness has more or less evaporated over the past year meaning he can't play that single-note tune anymore.

And he isn't.

As a  matter of fact, I'd argue that over the next few weeks Trudeau will employ not one, not two, but three separate message strategies, each one specifically designed to attack his main political rivals, i.e. Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

You might call it a political "Triple Play."

And since I like to name things, I'm going to give each of these three distinct message strategies a label: "Bad vs. Bad", "Good vs. Good" and "Good vs. Bad".

Let's go over each in detail, shall we?

Bad vs. Bad = Trudeau vs. Scheer

The one person who could topple the Trudeau regime, of course, is Jody Wilson-Raybould. But luckily for the prime minister, Raybould doesn't (yet) lead a political party.  That leaves Andrew Scheer as Trudeau's main opponent.  And given how Trudeau can't derail Scheer with endearing smiles and cute photo ops, he will instead embrace his badness and make a voter pitch along these lines: "Yes I might be bad, but Scheer is even badder."   Indeed, this tactic started months ago, with the Liberals (along with their media allies) branding Scheer as a clone of Prime Minister Stephen  Harper, as a lapdog of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, as a homophobe, as a misogynist and as a possible white nationalist.  And we still have five weeks to go!

Good vs. Good = Trudeau vs. Singh

Yes, I know given how it doesn't have any money, given how it's floundering in the polls and given how its leader is basically irrelevant, the NDP is not much of a strategic threat to the Liberals.  Yet Trudeau, who needs every vote he can get, likely covets NDP seats and who knows, maybe Singh's personality will finally catch fire.  So Trudeau will have to expend at least some effort degrading his socialist competitors.  But, given the ideological affinity between the NDP and the Liberals and given that Singh doesn't come across as that threatening, Trudeau really can't go negative against this particular foe.  Hence, Trudeau's approach will be to kill the NDP with kindness, by saying stuff like, "Singh is a good guy, I'm a good guy too, we believe in a lot of the same things.  But here's the difference: I'm the only one who can stop the barbarian hordes of Scheer, I'm the only one who can put in practice what Singh believes."   This approach may even charm Singh!

Good vs. Bad = Trudeau vs. May

Elizabeth May is usually perceived as simply a quirky politician who espouses a trendy issue.  But now she's being taken more seriously, since, at least according to some polls, May is eating into Liberal Party support.  This clearly presents a problem for Trudeau.  So what can he do?  Well, I think Trudeau will present voters with a stark contrast, defining himself as a responsible environmentalist who embraces a balanced approach, i.e. he will impose a steep tax on gasoline while also destroying pristine environments with oil pipelines; whereas May will be portrayed as an irresponsible environmentalist who will force everybody to buy windmill- powered cars.  Oh and Trudeau might also mention how May possibly harbors within her Green ranks (horror of horrors)a few pro-lifers.

So there you have Trudeau's three main message strategies for his re-election campaign.

Sure, it's a little more complicated than his last campaign, but it could be just as effective.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Over the weekend, Justin Trudeau was campaigning mostly in Quebec, where he elected not to take any questions from journalists.  This is the same Justin Trudeau who claimed in 2015, that he was taking more questions than anyone else.  How things have changed!  Is it just the classic front-runner strategy?  Was it to avoid more questions on Bill 21, which has caused the Liberal lead in Quebec to shrink by more than half, according to Mainstreet?  Or is there something else amiss?

In a piece published in French in Policy Options, I explain what is behind these kinds of decisions.

Simply put, news media are becoming more and more irrelevant to political parties.  Around the world, mainstream news media are losing momentum and Canada is no exception.  At the local level, newsrooms are far and few between.  When they exist, they are smaller and smaller!

In fact, over 200 Canadian communities have seen at least one local media shut down in the past 10 years.  Dailies, weeklies, radio and tv stations, they all face growing competition from social networks, which publish their content without royalties while capturing more than 80% of advertising revenue and not paying their fair share of taxes.

This decline of the fifth estate has an impact on our democratic and political life.  Electoral planning is no longer centered on the news cycle.  While political parties cannot fully do away with news organisations to get their messages out and their candidates known, they know full well that the media is not the necessary tool it once was.  In a democracy, this presents a certain danger, as illustrated by Trudeau this weekend.

This new media reality has triggered a political transformation though access to direct communication with the voters.  Since news organisations are less and less important, the political parties have refined their communication techniques to avoid the filter of the media.

Since people are consuming less and less hard news, political actors can now increase the reach of their message by surfing on superficial journalism while micro-targeting voters.  Why?  Because voters often deprive themselves of credible and diversified political information for the benefit of news (or even fake news!) that reinforces their preconceived opinions, helped by the algorithms set up by multinationals who live, and profit, by the click.

Still, local media remains a priority for political parties to convey their message.  The reality however, is that regional newspapers, in particular, suffer from a lack of staff and a chronic inability to generate original content.  This provides another opportunity to manage messaging, as it is quite common to see news articles published by small outlets lifting entire paragraphs from communiqués issued by political parties.  A real boon for political operators, especially when the content is then put online, allowing parties to amplify the news by appealing to their armies of trolls and other bots.

National media also have less and less resources.  The space devoted to politics is decreasing.  The number of journalists compared to columnists, polemists and analysts is down.  Media outlet budgets are always being cut, while the costs of election campaigns are on the rise, which discourages the mainstream media when it comes time to reserving seats on the aircraft of party leaders.  At thousands of dollars a day, why bother if they won't take questions anyway?

Given the situation, the calculation is simple: participating in the leader's tours is an unprofitable operation, especially since most of the events are broadcasted live by news networks, webcasted by journalists, or even distributed directly by political parties.  No need to be there in person!

Political parties have taken note of this reality.  Why be available to journalists at all?  Most do not go on tour.  Those who do may derail the message of the day.  Parties know that it is easier and less risky to convey their message directly through their own dissemination tools.  Especially since, by necessity, there is a good chance that the media will report it anyway!

By their consumption habits, voters have made their choice: traditional media is no longer their primary source of political information.  The media has been unable to adapt to keep these consumers.  The political parties understand this more and more.

Photo Credit: Reuters

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.