After months of speculation, it is now pretty much confirmed that we are headed into a federal election. A pandemic federal election, at that. Unless Justin Trudeau changes his mind over the weekend or if, unexpectedly, Governor General Mary Simon decides to ignore the advice of the man who just put her on the viceregal throne and chooses instead to listen to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who provided her with a rationale to refuse Trudeau’s request.
Both scenarios are on the outskirts of political fiction, so Canadians will likely have to cast their ballot by September 20th. Opposition parties, along with pundits and columnists, have been saying for weeks that we shouldn’t have an election during this pandemic, especially considering the Trudeau Liberals have won every confidence vote they faced in the House of Commons, giving them the ability to push their political agenda forward despite being in a minority situation.
However, while opposition parties pontificate about the needless election that is coming in the midst of the pandemic`s 4th wave and complain loudly about Trudeau’s power-grab motives, they are wasting valuable time trying to frame the electoral narrative that is before us.
Truth be told, we’ve seen similar attempts made by opposition parties in provincial contexts. While these political pressures perhaps helped Premier Moe to decide to back away from calling a snap election in the Spring of 2020, it was not an issue for Premier Horgan in British Columbia or Premier Higgs in New Brunswick. It doesn’t seem to be an issue for Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin either.
While a pandemic election is a gamble, most voters actually were not deeply offended by those who decided it was time to choose another government. Polls always indicate that voters never want an election anyway, so for political operatives making such a call, voters’ wishes about election timing are usually not a consideration.
However, things can still turn sour for Trudeau. It did for Premier Furey in Newfoundland and Labrador, after he too called a pandemic election. Cases were low on The Rock, and considering how elections unfolded in other provinces, the NL Liberals were pretty confident they were going to surf it too. Unfortunately for Furey, COVID-19 blew up in Newfoundland during the campaign. Candidates had to self-isolate after being exposed and in some cases contracting the disease. Things got so bad that in-person voting was cancelled and the deadline for mail-in ballots was extended numerous times. Andrew Furey saw his Liberals drop almost 20 points during the campaign, from a high of 65% before the election was called to 48% on Election Day.
That’s the cautionary tale for Justin Trudeau: unlike Furey, he doesn’t have the luxury to lose 20 points during a 4th wave campaign – and still win. Which probably explains why Liberal Ministers have been targeting Premiers, mostly Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, to pre-emptively set the blame stage for the 4th wave, in case things take a turn for the worse during the campaign. Surely, the feds can’t be blamed for a 4th wave spreading through schools, since that is a provincial jurisdiction!
Examples of a backlash for calling a snap election are few and far between. David Peterson in Ontario and Pauline Marois in Quebec come to mind. They prove that governments calling an election early without a valid reason can sometimes pay a heavy price.
Opposition leaders can keep trying to demonstrate the foolishness of a snap election, but chances are it won’t work. O’Toole, Singh and Blanchet have taken turns over the past week. Erin O’Toole has been attacking Trudeau by saying that the planned election is a Trudeau vanity project. Thus far, these personal attacks have failed to land. Jagmeet Singh has openly offered to support the government through the pandemic, stripping the credibility of Trudeau’s argument that Parliament is dysfunctional. Blanchet keeps repeating that Trudeau is the only one who wants this “hasty, unnecessary and dangerous election.”
A major flaw in their rhetoric, of course, is that these 3 leaders are making these arguments while being on the campaign trail, actively nominating candidates, announcing policies and even, in the case of the NDP, dropping its entire electoral platform. None of them want a pandemic election, yet they are all out there campaigning. Meanwhile Trudeau has been vacationing away from scrutiny and pesky questions about election timing. He is in effect the only leader currently not campaigning or even talking about the election. When he does, voters will forget about all the noise related to election timing and move on to making up their mind about who should lead the country in the post-pandemic recovery. The sooner the opposition leaders move on as well, the harder it will be for Trudeau to remain above the fray.
