federal election Archives - Page 7 of 10

It was probably inevitable, given how wretched our political culture is, but the COVID election could have been about something more than vaccines and vaccine passports.

But it’s a great shame that this is the pivotal issue the leaders — particularly Justin Trudeau and Erin O’Toole — have found themselves dancing around.

The more I think about it, the odder it is to realize that while COVID is still very much a part of our lives, and over the past year and a half has wrought untold havoc across the country, how few waves it seems to be making. We are in the middle of a profound catastrophe, where tens of thousands of people — neighbours, friends, family — have died during a pandemic that is still ravaging the country and the world.

The leaders talk about ending the pandemic, and recovering from the pandemic, but what they’re really talking about is the economy, stupid.

And yet, all we really get in terms of reckoning with that are a roving gang of lunatics swearing at and threatening Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. The tone and tenor of the election is all about economic and other concerns, but they seem to glide effortlessly over the giant elephant sitting on all of us, the pandemic.

Yes, vaccine mandates are being made into a wedge issue, but where is the grappling with how our lives have all changed? Where are the bold pronouncements about changing the way we do things so this doesn’t happen again? Where is the acknowledgement that this is very much still going on?

It’s baffling watching things how little these questions seem to weigh on everyone. There should be profound things at stake, instead it is basically more of the same.

Perhaps we’ve all been so overwhelmed with the profundity of existence, of the slow grind of fear that each and every interaction with a stranger might come with it a death sentence for you or someone you love, that we’ve lost sight of what’s happened to us.

I’ve found myself saying on multiple occasions — including in this space — that I was glad my grandmother died at 94 in Jan. 2020, just before all of this happened. That the last year and a half would have been a slow torture for her, locked away in her room in the nursing home, where who even knows she would have survived without infection. But how ghastly is it to carry around such thoughts? That it’s for the best someone I loved is dead.

We’ll all carrying around some element of this. But because elections now narrowly fought, over slices of fractions of the electorate, depending on specific demographics, that campaigning turns into efforts by different leaders to try and find “wedge” issues that separate the opponents from their voters. There is no room for profundity when you are trying to get suburban, university educated homeowners out to vote with the promise of a municipal pool user fee tax credit.

So we get Trudeau pointing to O’Toole as responsible for the protestors following him around, instead of something meaningful.

“Canadians made incredible sacrifices the past year and a half, and Erin O’Toole is siding with them instead of with Canadians who did their part and stepped up?” Trudeau said, according to one Globe and Mail reporter. “He’s talking about personal choice. What about my choice to keep my kids safe? What about our choices to make sure we’re getting through this pandemic as quickly as we can?”

And yet, as much as this pains me considering everything I’ve just written, the guy does have a point here. O’Toole isn’t the animating force behind these anti-vaccine protestors. But he is willing to play a bit soft with them, realizing to some extent that they are in one sense or another small-c conservative.

There are all sorts of people who legitimately cannot get the vaccine. Age, health conditions, and other reasons prevent them from getting the shot. So it’s necessary for the rest of us who can get it so they don’t die or get ill. There’s also the issue of new variants sprouting up when large numbers of people get infected.

I’m increasingly finding the “personal choice” arguments to be faulty. That some imaginary knowledge is being sought, one final piece of evidence, that would convince people that not dying and not making it easier for others to die is in fact a good thing. It is a strange brand of selfishness, that also makes one more likely to die, that I have difficulty understanding.

And so, look at me, I’ve been wedged.

But see how small this is? And how polluted? We live in a country of wealth vast enough to hoover up many, many more millions of vaccines than we need. And yet we’re still only able to make this narrow slice the focus of the campaigns.

Maybe the reason we’re unable to grasp the more profound and urgent questions the pandemic has presented us, is because we aren’t a country capable of providing profound answers. We have grown so small and so narrow in what we ask of our politicians, they wouldn’t dare giving us anything big to chew on.

That’s ultimately what has made this election so wretched in its opening weeks. The leaders are looking to be the most palatable, not the most bold. The deep trauma of 2020 and 2021 will have to be dealt with another time. This crop does not seem interested in grappling with it.

Whenever net time comes, it will hopefully not be too late.

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.

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As the mobs of anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and general misanthropes continue to dog prime minister Justin Trudeau on the campaign trail, we saw a connection between what they’ve been saying, and what long-time Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant has been putting on her YouTube channel under the unironic moniker of “Gallant News Network.” And wouldn’t you know it, Erin O’Toole has once again turned a blind eye to Gallant and the unhinged things she has been putting out to the world. Granted, she’s not the only Conservative who has been spreading increasingly ludicrous conspiracy theories and general nuttery, and it’s all been happening while O’Toole has pretended that there is nothing to see here, please disperse.

When asked about this latest Gallant video – since scrubbed from her channel – where she warns people that Trudeau is planning a “climate lockdown” as she considered him a con man and that climate change was his “biggest grift,” O’Toole refused to answer as to whether he found it acceptable, even when asked several times. He later put out a press release that said that his plan takes climate change seriously (it doesn’t) and that all Conservatives are running on said plan – which doesn’t condemn the conspiracy theories, Gallant’s comments, or even more generally the increasingly violent mobs that have been following Trudeau around the country. And this isn’t the first time either.

Gallant was previously in the news in February when video emerged from her addressing campus Conservatives at Queen’s University, saying that Liberals want “all illicit drugs to be legal. They want anything goes in every aspect of life. They want to normalize sexual activity with children,” and that “cultural Marxists” have “taken over every university administration” and are silencing free speech on campuses as part of a broader agenda. “The elites call it the great reset or build back better or green new deal. The names change but the goal remains the same: more power for the powerful and less freedom for everyone else.” O’Toole turned a blind eye there as well. His response to questions about it? “Canadians have other priorities and so do I.”

Mind you, Gallant wasn’t the only one peddling the conspiracy theories about the “Great Reset” as being some kind of New World Order plot, as Pierre Poilievre was also doing so on the floor of the House of Commons, and when pressed on it, O’Toole at the time said that he’s the leader and that people should look to him for the party’s message. (For the record the Great Reset is a World Economic Forum initiative about using the economic recovery from the pandemic to address inadequacies in areas like health, energy and education, and is endorsed by figures such as Prince Charles). Other Conservative MPs, including O’Toole himself, have also tried to build conspiracy theories about things like the CanSino vaccine development program, and in trying to connect the unlikely possibility that COVID-19 was a “lab leak” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology with the firing of the two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. He was also pretty silent when MPs John Brassard and Kerry-Lynne Findlay were worrying that Chrystia Freeland was supposedly under the thumb of George Soros.

It also should be noted that Gallant has a long history of offensive and outrageous commentary. Back in 2004, she helped to sink the Conservatives’ election chances by telling the media that “the danger in having sexual orientation just listed [in hate propaganda laws], that encompasses, for example, paedophiles. I believe that the caucus as a whole would like to see it repealed.” Because that had a material effect on the Conservatives’ electoral outcome, by the next election, Stephen Harper enforced message discipline among his candidates, and Gallant was carefully handled so that she was never seen by media during a campaign, nor would she be a participant in any debates. O’Toole knows this.

We also need to remember what happened with Derek Sloan, and how during the leadership contest, O’Toole helped to shield him from caucus censure – including the threat of expulsion – after Sloan’s racist tirade about Dr. Theresa Tam having divided loyalties. Of course, this was O’Toole being crassly opportunistic, because he knew he needed second-ballot support from the social conservatives that were flocking to Sloan’s banner, and he needed to show that his “true blue” Conservatism included people like Sloan. Of course, as soon as he secured the leadership, he found the first excuse to have Sloan dumped from the caucus – and it has not gone unnoticed that Gallant has frequently said far worse than Sloan, but she remains securely in caucus, and as we’ve seen in the current instance, secure in her nomination to run for the party yet again.

This particular selective blindness is certainly part of O’Toole’s pattern, which includes the fact that he has largely spent his time as party leader mired in deception, dishonesty, and outright lies as a strategy. He has spent months openly lying with statistics, and encouraging his MPs like Poilievre, to do the same. In refusing to condemn Gallant or Poilievre, he tacitly endorses their lies and conspiracy theories, which makes it hard to take anything O’Toole says seriously. It also makes it all the more galling that many members of the media have spent the campaign to date trying to put forward this notion that O’Toole is some kind of cheerful policy nerd, but that particular image is as much a lie as anything else he’s been saying, whether it’s that he’s “true blue,” or that he’s suddenly a friend of private sector labour unions, never mind his own voting record of trying to quash them with onerous and punitive legislation. How can you take the policy planks – as incoherent as they are – of his platform with any seriousness if he’s done nothing but lie since he became leader, and how can you believe his supposed progressive credentials if he does nothing but turn a blind eye to the hard-right parts of his caucus, or the increasingly rabid base? He has a record that should be considered in the election, and thus far it’s not.

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For the near decade in which the Conservative Party was in office, Canadians were forced to watch as Stephen Harper and his government laid ruin to the country’s global reputation.

Whether it was by reducing Canada’s peacekeeping contributions and shunning the United Nations, to kowtowing to the United States in their hostility to Venezuela, all while offering his unwavering support to apartheid villains (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and human rights abusers (Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah), Harper significantly diminished Canada’s global image through his litany of imprudent, often nefarious actions, while in government.

Eager for a restoration of Canada’s previous prestige (unfounded or not) millions of Canadians cast their ballots for Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party, who vigorously campaigned on a promise to “make a real and valuable contribution to a more peaceful and prosperous world.”

Among other things, the neophyte Liberal leader vowed to “move forward with new investments to support United Nations peacekeeping efforts – with more help to advance the women, peace, and security agenda; support conflict prevention and peacebuilding; and respond to grave human rights abuses.”

It was exactly the type of promise that progressive Canadians yearned to hear from their political leaders, which helps explain why the Liberals’ campaigned on such a message, and why voters later rewarded them with a commanding majority government in the 2015 election.

Fast forward six years, and Trudeau is once again in the midst of a fierce election campaign. This time, though, it is he, not his political opponents, that have a tarnished record to answer for.

And answer for it he must.

After almost six years in office, Trudeau has been anything but the standard bearer of global peace and security that he promised voters he would be. In fact, since becoming Prime Minister, Trudeau has arguably done just as much to undermine global peace and security as he has to advance it.

Take for instance his government’s record on arms sales.

Under Trudeau’s watch, Canada’s arms exports have risen dramatically – eclipsing even that witnessed under the Harper Conservatives – and increasing higher than at any other point in the country’s history. So significant is our export of military equipment, that we now rank in the top echelon of arms suppliers in the world – a most depressing achievement.

And that’s not even the half of it.

Not only is Canada now one of the world’s leading arms suppliers, but it is actively supplying those arms to some of the world’s leading conflict zones.

Among the many destinations that our arms are sold is Saudi Arabia, home to one of the world’s worst human rights abusing regimes – and a key perpetrator in the deadly and devastating war in neighbouring Yemen.

Another is Israel, who continues its illegal expansion into Palestinian territory, all while systemically displacing and disposing millions of Palestinians in an appalling, unrelenting system of oppression and apartheid.

Then there is the Trudeau government’s record on peacekeeping.

After incessantly trumpeting the importance of peacekeeping, and pledging that, if elected, he would re-establish Canada as a leading contributor in the field, Trudeau has completed reneged on his word. Notwithstanding Canada’s one-year mission to Mali, Canada’s global peacekeeping contributions have plummeted under the Trudeau Liberals.

Finally, no account of the government’s record on global peace and security would be complete if it did not include the Liberal’s despicable foray into South American politics.

In contrast to countries like Norway and Mexico, which have tried to facilitate peaceful negotiations between Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his political opponents, the Trudeau Liberals have actively sought to destabilize Venezuela’s UN-recognized government by siding with the U.S. in their undemocratic efforts to depose Maduro and install their own marionette – the military coup leader, and self-declared “interim president” Juan Guaidó. Their actions in “propping up repressive, corrupt and illegitimate governments in Haiti and Honduras” have been similarly deplorable.

Thus far in the campaign, there haven’t been many issues that have stirred the Canadian electorate out of their sleepy, summer complacency. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a totally unnecessary election campaign, built around the egotistical whims of one man’s political ambitions.

Nonetheless, Canadians should not take for granted the opportunity they have at hand to make their voices heard on who their next government should be, and what kind of foreign policy they will pursue.

It is an opportunity that many around the world would eagerly clamber for, as they themselves know better than anyone the long-lasting, often disastrous repercussions of Canada’s so-called contributions to global peace and security.

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One of the disadvantages Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had going into this election is that the media had loudly proclaimed him as the race’s clear front-runner.

Yes, I know, that sounds a little counter-intuitive, since leading the pack is usually a good place to be when it comes to races, but keep in mind, political contests are a little bit different; in politics perception often matters more than reality.

And when it comes to perception, all politicians want to be perceived as possessing that most important of political variables: momentum.

That’s to say, they want to be viewed as candidates who are steadily and inexorably gaining support.

Why?

Well, here’s the thing about a lot of voters: they want to feel like they’re on a moving train, that they’re part of a winning team, which means they’ll be more likely to cast their ballot for a political party that seems to have momentum on its side.

It’s not about ideology, it’s not about policy, it’s about wanting to back a winner.

This is why political strategists will do everything they can to create at the least the perception that their party or candidate is on an unstoppable roll.

I remember, while working on a Republican Senate primary race in the USA, a poll came out at the outset of the campaign showing our opponent had about 40 percent support, while my candidate stood at a lowly 13 percent.

Did I despair?

Nope; in fact, that poll gave me a good opportunity to alter the media’s perception.

What I did was send out a news release saying something along the lines of, “Our opponent has clearly stalled in the polls, while we are gaining support.”

I did that because I knew in the not-too-distant future, we’d gain polling points; I also knew our opponent would lose them.

The fact is, once voters start getting focused, once issues start getting clarified, once attacks ads start circulating, it’s more than likely that any politician who’s ahead at the start of a campaign, will inevitably lose ground, while his or her opponents will inevitably gain ground.

This dynamic creates a scenario where it appears that the guy who’s out in front is losing momentum.

So simply put, I wanted to set the stage where I could say, our guy is gaining steam!

To reinforce that message, we started running what I call “switcher” ads; ads which showed “typical voters” saying something like, “I was going to vote for Candidate A, but I’ve changed my mind, I’m now voting for Candidate B.”

At any rate, this brings us back to Trudeau and his early front-runner status.

As could have been predicted, the Prime Minister is slipping in the polls.

In fact, the conventional wisdom as spouted by many of Canada’s pundits is that the Liberals “stumbled out of the gate.”

Of course, this gives Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole a golden opportunity to play the momentum card.

In addition to pointing out Trudeau’s drop in the polls, the Conservative leader can also refer to the surprise win of the Progressive Conservative Party in Nova Scotia’s recent provincial election, marking it as another sign of the prime minister’s flagging appeal.

On top of all that, there’s peripheral evidence out there to support the idea that the Liberal Party’s brand of left-wing progressivism is also starting to wear out its welcome.

Consider, for instance, how Democratic Governor (and one time media darling) Andrew Cuomo recently resigned from office in disgrace; then there’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom who, right now, is facing a tough recall vote.

More importantly, President Joe Biden seems to be declining in the polls right now, mainly due to his perceived mishandling of the Afghanistan evacuation.

All of these things combined, can help create the impression in the Canadian public’s mind that Trudeau’s train is stuck in its tracks.

Of course, for this to work in his favour O’Toole has to push the momentum narrative quickly and forcefully.

He’s got to get voters to believe it, more crucially, he’s got to get the media to believe it.

To do that, the Conservatives should run their version of “switcher ads”, while other TV spots should show O’Toole surrounded by large enthusiastic and cheering crowds.

His overall message should be — “Join us. Join our winning team!”

If he can pull it off, it’ll help create a narrative to attract more support to his banner, which in turn will mean better polls which in turn will mean more momentum, which means better polls.

It’s a victory cycle.

The reason O’Toole needs to act quickly on this is that momentum is like a TV remote – it’s easy to lose.

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A decision was taken that will have a huge impact on the results of the 44th federal election. I am not talking about Justin Trudeau’s decision to trigger the election. I am not talking about the Debates’ Commission excluding Maxime Bernier. I am not talking about the fact that the Public Health Agency of Canada has gone silent in the midst of the COVID-19 fourth wave.

No, I am talking about Elections Canada’s poor decision to not allow voting stations on campuses across the country. Considering it is already hard enough to get young voters to participate in the democratic process and utilize their right to vote, this is a disheartening decision that risks disenfranchising millions of young voters.

Elections Canada alerted students about the situation via their twitter account.

ATTENTION STUDENTS! Many of you have asked us about whether you’ll be able to vote on campus for #Elxn44. Due to the challenges brought on by the pandemic and the minority government situation, we are not able to run the Vote-on-campus program this election. 1/3 #CdnPoli pic.twitter.com/VI4Z2zmpnn

— Elections Canada (@ElectionsCan_E) August 25, 2021

Elections Canada can’t help students to vote because of the pandemic and… the minority government situation? That explanation deserves scrutiny.

Of course, setting up polling stations involves some planning. But how does the pandemic prevent it specifically from happening on campus? It’s not like Elections Canada is experimenting with a new project, here. It has been done successfully in previous elections.

How is the pandemic preventing Elections Canada from having polling stations on university campuses? How is it more difficult than setting up in Long Term Care facilities and seniors’ homes? I can’t imagine it is business as usual there. Are students seen as more dangerous for Elections Canada workers because they are less vaccinated? Besides, the COVID-19 pandemic has been around for 20 months now. It is not exactly a new thing. We know the measures that need to be taken.

The minority government situation? What does that have to do with anything? Is Elections Canada saying that they cannot do their job properly unless there is a strong, stable, majority government in place?

More likely, Elections Canada is saying clumsily that because of the minority government situation, the date of the election could not be determined in advance? We’ve only had four minority governments over the past six elections, the situation is unprecedented! Especially considering there was talk of a federal election beginning last spring: Elections Canada couldn’t possibly have seen this coming.

While I don’t think it was a partisan decision, I understand New Democrats who feel they will suffer most from this decision. Looking at the current voting patterns, the NDP needs young people to come out and vote en masse. Older voters are not on Tik Tok and are not buying Jagmeet-mania. But young people are, thanks to the New Democrats outreach efforts. Now, the NDP will need to do more to get these votes out, thanks to Elections Canada.

Elections Canada says they “don’t want students to feel discouraged from voting.” It’s not that they’ll be discouraged, it’s that they won’t bother. You can work with student bodies to educate young voters about other voting options, such as advance polls, special ballots and postal voting. The truth is this is one extra hurdle they may not want to jump over.

Looking at the vaccination rates across the country, you already see a certain apathy with younger demographics. If they can’t be bothered to go the extra mile to preserve their health and the health of others, why would they do it for voting?

Over the past 2 elections, young Canadians have been voting in greater numbers than they did in previous elections. This was made possible through outreach initiatives and additional voting options, such as special polling stations on campuses.

Let’s not let the pandemic create more collateral damage by weakening our democracy. Elections Canada should revise its ill-advised decision and do everything that is possible to allow students to vote.

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All of the major parties laid out housing policies over the past week, and all of them have a particular degree of superficiality about them that is particularly troubling. The housing crisis in parts of this country is a result of a number of factors, but inattention from the Liberal government was not one of them, in spite of claims being made to score points. The markets where it is being felt most acutely, like the greater Toronto and greater Vancouver areas, have some particularly unique sets of circumstances around the supply of housing, which have metastasized and spread over their surrounding regions, but they have nevertheless had a distortionary effect on our entire economy.

We should establish a few of the reasons why the prices have skyrocketed over the past two years – much of which is simple supply and demand. The pandemic created a surge in demand single-family housing in suburban and outlying areas of major cities, because everyone decided that they needed a bigger house and a yard, or that the new normal of working from home meant they didn’t have to factor in commuting like they used to. This then got exacerbated by a combination of near-zero interest rates and increased household savings (because they couldn’t spend on things like travel), and with already insufficient supply on the market, it’s basic economics to understand why the prices would reflect the fact that you have far more demand than supply. While some foreign buyers and speculation does exist in this environment, it’s a very small percentage of the problem of supply.

The biggest problem of all that largely goes unmentioned is the fact that the vast majority of the bottlenecks to increasing the supply of housing – particularly in those key markets – are at the municipal level. The NIMBYism and resistance to densification slows down development while city councillors, eager for re-election, are reluctant to go against the voters in their wards, and even once projects get approved, the process for permits have been known to take up to a year in places like Vancouver, which means that the federal and provincial dollars to increase the supply of affordable housing are being constrained. Promising more dollars into this particular system is a bit of a fool’s errand because it doesn’t actually address where the bottleneck is happening.

To that end, the Liberals have suggested a $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund that they would allocated to municipalities that streamline their processes and make sure that approvals and permitting happen faster. Among their suggestions for how this would work include a target of 100,000 new Middle Class™ homes by 2024-25, and that getting cities to enforce these timelines through use of “use it or lose it” bylaws that would force urban land to be made available for housing and not be kept vacant by speculators. It sounds like an idea to help combat the municipal-side of problems, but there have been suggestions that they might be better off trying to get the provinces to use legislation that would liberalize planning rules to make approvals easier.

By contrast, the NDP have a hand-wavey plan to have dedicated “fast-start funds” to streamline the application process, but I’m not sure that helping “communities get the expertise and assistance they need to get projects off the ground now, not years from now” is actually going to address the bureaucratic processes around approvals and permitting. The Conservatives acknowledge that action is needed from all levels of government – but leave it at that. Their “detailed plan” includes nothing on how they plan to persuade or incent provinces or municipalities to do their part in harmony with the federal government.

The Conservatives hope to use the (minimal) leverage of federal infrastructure dollars when it comes to housing to ensure that public transit infrastructure is built to where people are buying homes, and requiring municipalities getting these transit dollars to increase the density near the funded transit. While it makes a certain amount of sense to incent building near rapid transit lines and hubs (and municipalities would need some forward-thinking coherence to start putting in the gas and electrical infrastructure in at the same time as they build the mass transit lines), anyone who has taken a mere thirty seconds to think about building transit to where people are buying is that our habit of building winding, cul-de-sac-heavy suburbs makes transit unusable. It’s not something the federal government can really do anything about, but simply tying dollars to extending transit to these developments doesn’t solve any problems around housing or affordability – or transit ridership, really.

All three parties’ plans contain plenty of other incoherence – the Liberals propose a tax credit to build secondary suites for multi-generational families, but most municipalities ban such suites. Both the Liberals and NDP pledge to ban “renovictions,” when landlord-tenant legislation is provincial jurisdiction (and the Liberals absolutely should know better, but the inclusion seems to have simply been to match the NDP’s promise). All three parties have policies to help first-time home buyers which will simply pour gasoline on the fire that is housing unaffordability.

While it’s great that all of the parties recognize that supply is a big part of the problem and promise to build more – 50,000 units in ten years for the NDP, one million over three years for the Conservatives, and 1.4 million homes in four years to be built, repaired or preserved by the Liberals – they largely omit the bottleneck issues, or the fact that the labour to actually build that many houses in that period is going to be hard to come by – especially in the GVA and GTA. Trying to attract it from other parts of the country when there isn’t anywhere for them to live is going to be a major challenge that all parties shrug off, especially the NDP boasting that they will create “thousands of jobs,” apparently out of thin air.

Housing is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of moving parts, and not something the federal government can tackle on its own. By insisting that the Liberals didn’t do anything over the past six years (in spite of all evidence to the contrary) simply sets up false expectations. It’s great that the federal level has re-engaged on this file in a significant way, but none of the parties are being honest in fully addressing the problems, and are only setting themselves up for future failures. We need them to do better.

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What is Elections Canada thinking?

This week, they put out a series of tweets saying: “ATTENTION STUDENTS! Many of you have asked us about whether you’ll be able to vote on campus for #Elxn44. Due to the challenges brought on by the pandemic and the minority government situation, we are not able to run the Vote-on-campus program this election…Students have several options. We encourage you to apply early to vote by special ballot – either by mail or at an EC office – these options offer flexibility for your schedules and circumstances. Learn more about voting for students… We will continue our communications and outreach efforts to be sure students have what they need to vote, and we look forward to offering vote-on-campus at future elections.”

This is utter nonsense and needs to be fixed immediately.

Elections Canada is running seniors’ mobile polls at long-term care homes and retirement homes across the country; campuses involve less coordination, not least because of COVID-19 concerns.

More to the point, voting is a habit, one that if started young can become lifelong.

For myself and millions more, our first vote was on campus. I remember voting for the first time in the 2008 election, having received a letter from my Dean of Students to prove I lived in residence. I walked across the street and cast a ballot. A few years later, I got involved in politics through my campus, as friends insisted I join them for an event in the basement of Victoria College with some Montreal MP named Trudeau.

Indeed, in the 2015 federal election, I was one of the Young Liberals of Canada’s youth campaign co-chairs. Our main youth strategy in that insurgent campaign involved mobilizing young people on campuses. The youth vote increased from 55% turnout in 2011 to 67% turnout in 2015. There were over 300 campus events in the lead up to the election, with over 2000 on-campus volunteers. We targeted 80 constituencies with significant student populations; we won 69 of those target seats, a success rate of 86%, and often by narrow margins.

As my co-chair and I wrote in The Huffington Post at the time, “In Ottawa Centre, for instance, the Environment and Climate Change Minister, Catherine McKenna, credits an increase from 150 votes on Carleton University’s campus in 2011 to 488 votes in 2015 with helping her pull off an underdog victory on election day”.

But more than this trip down memory lane – for, as I go out canvassing for friends running in the GTA this time, it is decidedly clear that seven years on, as a Millennial, I’m no longer one of the “youths” – the point I am driving at is campus politics is vital to engaging this new Gen Z generation in the political process. The same fond stories I can recall are shared by Tory and NDP friends who also cut their teeth in politics through campus involvement.

Voting is a habit like any other. Those who vote once are more likely to do so again, and those who miss elections in their youth are less likely to become voters in adulthood. This isn’t complicated; it’s basic psychology.

Elections Canada has a duty to democracy to ensure youth can vote, that the process is fair, simple and close to home, including on campuses. To put a firm point on it: students, living away from home for the first time, deserve the same accommodations as do seniors living in retirement homes. In both cases, the central issue is that the voter is essentially away from home for the first time, and this creates complexities in terms of proving addresses, and whereas seniors are older and might have cognitive or physical issues requiring assistance voting, youth are voting for the first time and need another form of assistance.

This is Elections Canada’s job: to facilitate the democratic process, not to impede it. They need to allow youth to vote on campuses. I’m shocked this even needs to be said in Canada.

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The Liberals have no idea what they’re doing, or why they’re doing whatever it is they’ve found themselves doing. With less than a month to go until election day, will they manage to figure out a reason they called one?

You would have thought that at some point over the last several months of speculation that there was going to be an election at the end of summer, some of the people planning to spring that election might have figured out what they might do during the thing they were in the process of starting.

Look, I get they were massively ahead in the polls, and big polling leads tend to make incumbents — how should I put this — extremely stupid and arrogant.

But for not one moment so far has Justin Trudeau been able to articulate what the point of this is.

He’ll do something like promise to bring in 10 days of sick leave, which is a great idea it’s genuinely something the feds should lead on when the province won’t, but the question is: where the hell were you on this months ago? This would have sailed though parliament if it had been proposed earlier.

That’s probably the most galling one, because it’s not some policy with down the road effect, it’s a concrete thing that would have had benefits for people in the middle of a COVID wave. It also would have put pressure on the provinces to start mandating sick pay in their jurisdictions. But it didn’t happen then, it was just a shiny bauble to hold back for when the election came around.

Where the party has shown some glimmer of knowing what it was doing is in the day-to-day tactics of campaigning. They’ve done things to try and pin down Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole on mandatory vaccines, or some farcical-yet-ultimately-effective shenanigans to put the privatization of health care on the ballot.

But this is just tactics, a campaign is about more than winning the day’s news cycle. You have to be winning the news cycle with some purpose. There has to be some strategy you’re trying to achieve with what you’re doing.

It’s been more than a week now, and still this election drifts along in some ephemeral cloud. Why is it happening, what’s the point? Nobody seems to know, especially not the people who got us here.

It’s not that it’s expensive to run elections. What ever the cost is, I genuinely don’t care. I don’t think it’s a waste to hold a vote, elections genuinely do matter, even when they’re dumb as hell. And if it costs tens of millions of dollars to hold an election, so be it, pay the man and let’s go.

It really does help to have a compelling reason to call the election, though. Especially this time around. Trudeau had the misfortune of getting parliament dissolved on the very day the Taliban retook Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. I think this matters very little in terms of the response — a government created by an invasion collapsed after a 20-year occupation packs it in, chaos is just about the only possible outcome — but it might be a little easier to swallow if there was some over arching reason for the plug to be pulled on parliament that particular day.

“We would like a majority government please,” does not count. But that seems to be all there is.

Wanting a majority might seem like a good enough reason when you’re on the inside, especially when your main opponent seems to be on their back foot. But why exactly should these people get a better position in parliament, just because they want one?

I argued previously there was an avenue for Trudeau to take that he could have said he was calling the election to really solidify what post-COVID Canada would look like. There was a way to talk about going to the vote as, essentially, a referendum on social supports post-pandemic.

But instead we’ve gotten a smattering of housing policy . It’s a mishmash that seems more likely to have come out of a political consultant’s report labeled “This stuff polls real good,” rather than a coherent vision for the future.

Despite when the Liberal braintrust may think of itself, they’ve never really been the smartest people in the room. Cunning, perhaps, but never de facto smart. Six years of their governance is all the proof we need of that. A smarter group might have followed through on some explicit promises made during previous campaigns. A smarter group might not have called an election until they were ready.

But these are not the smartest people. They don’t want to do things, they want to keep power. The reason they can’t articulate what this election is about is that to do so would to be too gauche. The reason they called an election when the did is because they were on an upswing, and O’Toole was on a slide. That’s it, that’s the reason. The seem to have figured they could wing the rest and the public would come along with them.

Unluckily for them, the public isn’t quite so easily led around. People actually do want something out of elections. That’s why in their quest to grab a majority, without knowing why they deserved it, the Liberals may just let government slip away.

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As is inevitable in any federal election in this country, we have all of the major parties making promises around healthcare, and they can be very curious promises indeed. Because the delivery of healthcare is a provincial responsibility, there are very few levers at any federal government’s disposal to influence it, unless there are dollars attached. Lots and lots of dollars. And lots of dollars are what every party seems to be promising, some of them with very specific wish lists attached to those dollars, and some of those very same parties are also promising that they won’t attach strings to the dollars that they are pledging, while also hoping for the outcomes on their wish lists. It’s a very curious phenomenon that seems divorced from reality.

Throughout the campaign, you will no doubt hear rhetoric that once upon a time, the federal share of healthcare spending was 50 percent, and it was 23.5 percent in 2019, and lo, there is a redress that the federal government must make to restore its promises. Except that’s a load of bullshit. Yes, the initial share was 50 percent, but in April of 1977, the provinces and the federal government all came to an agreement whereby the federal share of that spending reduced, but in return, the federal government moved a bunch of tax points over to the provinces, so that they had greater flexibility over their own spending. Most premiers have conveniently forgotten about this agreement, as have federal politicians who are looking to score points on the healthcare file (or to suck up to premiers like François Legault), but it can’t be overlooked among their demanding rhetoric.

The 2017 change to the health transfer escalators has once again become an issue in this election, but in a surprising way. While the NDP will continue to insist that the change in escalator from six percent per year to three percent or the three-year average of GDP growth (whichever is higher) was a “cut” – in spite of the dollars increasing every single year – the Conservatives also joined in with that rhetoric this year when it was their government that unilaterally made the change to the transfer that would come into effect in 2017. While the Liberals maintained this lower escalator, they also came to other agreements with the provinces for higher transfers that were to be directed to areas like home care and mental health, so again, the amount of money kept rising.

What keeps being overlooked in the rhetoric around changed escalator was not that the six percent was unsustainable – because it was – but rather that provinces weren’t spending it on healthcare. The average increases in provincial health spending were between two and three percent per year at a time when they were getting six percent per year increases, so the money was going somewhere else, while things like wait times didn’t end up improving by any measurable degree. For example, Ontario’s healthcare spending increases from 2011 to 2017 were 2.2%, which is certainly not the six percent increase they were receiving in transfers. Mind you, that figure has since doubled to 4.4%, but at the time, the math was sound, and we can’t brush that off.

This is why I think we need to have a better conversation around health transfers in this election. Both the Conservatives and NDP are promising to restore the transfer escalator to six percent, without any strings attached, meaning that those provinces will once again be able to use money earmarked for healthcare on other things if they so choose. At the same time, the NDP are pledging to “work with the provinces and territories” to tackle wait times, improve primary care, create virtual healthcare, and address human resources issues with plans to recruit more doctors and nurses – all things that are explicitly in provincial jurisdiction, but they don’t plan to attach strings to their funding promises. This is on top of their plans for universal pharmacare and dental care, and even more funds for provinces to nationalize their long-term care homes (but this funding does appear to have strings attached. Funny that).

The Conservatives also have their own wish list that includes plans for a Canada Mental Health Action Plan, wherein they “propose to the provinces that they partner with us by dedicating a significant portion of the stable, predictable health funding to mental health to ensure that an additional million Canadians can receive mental health treatment every year.” So, no strings, but a suggestion. Their own plans for long-term are include boosting the number of workers by way of immigration (so that we can exploit more women of colour), but they don’t seem to have much in the way of federal dollars attached to that either, with the exception of diverting some infrastructure dollars to upgrading the homes themselves.

The Liberals, meanwhile, have made some fairly specific promises around healthcare that are also contingent upon “working with the provinces,” but these very much appear to have strings attached – $6 billion on top of an existing $4 billion commitment to eliminating waitlists; $3.2 billion for hiring 7,500 doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners over four years; and $400 million over four years to expand virtual healthcare services. They’ve also made specific promises around long-term care, including minimum wages of support workers, that are also contingent on “working with the provinces.” But we also have to remember that provinces have been balking at the long-term care funding with strings attached already, just as they’ve balked at the implementation of universal pharmacare (with the exception of PEI, who signed on at the very last minute before the election).

We should be asking ourselves whether we think it’s better to simply promise $60 billion over ten years to the provinces with no strings attached, and let them spend the money where they want with no guarantees for outcomes on waitlists or mental health, or hiring doctors and nurses, or whether we think it’s important for there to be accountability and strings – and if we’re willing to entertain the possibility that these promises may not happen because of recalcitrant premiers who would rather spend the money on other things after they get it. Those are real choices that we need to make in this election, and we should be asking these questions rather than simply nodding along while the promises get more extravagant – contingent upon “working with the provinces.”

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