On Oct. 21, 2019, shortly after 10 p.m. ET, CBC’s chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton announced that Justin Trudeau had been re-elected prime minister. Soon after, she reported that Trudeau’s Liberal Party would form a minority government, falling short of the 170-seat threshold needed for a majority.
This past Monday at around the same time, Barton projected that once again, Trudeau had won re-election, and the Liberals had fallen short of a majority.
For thousands of Canadians casting their ballots and tuning into the CBC “Canada Votes 2021” broadcast, it was deja vu. Indeed, as of Wednesday night, Liberal candidates are elected or leading in 158 seats, only one more than the party won in 2019, while Conservative candidates are elected or leading in 119 seats, two fewer than their party’s total two years ago. As Canada’s electoral system is prone to large swings (the Liberals, for example, gained a whopping 148 seats when Trudeau became prime minister in 2015), the overall results of the two elections were remarkably similar.
Thus, when Parliament resumes in Ottawa, the overall dynamic between the parties will not have changed. Trudeau, who called this snap election in mid-August as an opportunity to regain a majority, will still have to grapple with the difficulties of leading a minority government. And the Conservatives will be forced to consider whether to stick with their leader, Erin O’Toole, after he failed to capitalize on Trudeau’s many mistakes.
The optimistic takeaway is that this election was a vote of confidence in the status quo. But perhaps the more realistic reading of the results is that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives made a compelling case for why they deserved greater legislative control, as both parties made the same errors that hindered their campaigns last cycle.
A Failure of Ethical Leadership
In the Liberals’ case, Trudeau’s repeated ethical lapses doomed his chances of returning to Parliament Hill with a majority. In 2019, the SNC-Lavalin affair hung over the Liberal campaign: the federal ethics commissioner found that Trudeau had violated ethics law by pressuring Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to seek civil rather than criminal corruption charges against Montreal engineering firm SNC-Lavalin. Trudeau expelled Wilson-Raybould, the nation’s first Indigenous Attorney General, from the Liberal caucus, drawing condemnation from Indigenous groups and the opposition parties.
Trudeau survived this scandal, winning a minority government in 2019, but questions surrounding his apparent “blind spot” on ethics — as the former federal ethics watchdog put it — have persisted. In 2020, Trudeau’s government announced a major contract with WE Charity, formerly known as Free the Children, to administer a COVID-19 relief student grant program. It was revealed that although the charity paid members of Trudeau’s immediate family for speaking engagements, and Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s daughter worked for the organization, neither minister recused themselves from cabinet discussions about the contract. Morneau later resigned, and Trudeau faced significant criticism and calls for his resignation from the Conservatives for ignoring this conflict of interest.
Even Trudeau’s decision to call the 2021 election brought into question his ability to lead ethically. Attempting to ride a wave of post-pandemic optimism and the broad support he’s received for his handling of COVID-19, Trudeau clearly intended for this early election to be a ploy to regain his 2015 majority or at least expand his government bench. As a result, Canadian taxpayers footed a bill of 600 million Canadian dollars for Trudeau’s (would-be) self-serving election, which has now come under even more criticism given its pointless results.
The message for the Liberals is the same as it was in 2019: voters aren’t happy with the party’s attempts to game the system and Trudeau’s abuses of powers. To be sure, Trudeau’s scandals are not the only barrier to greater Liberal electoral success. For example, broken promises on electoral reform, Indigenous access to drinking water, and climate action have not only weakened the party’s credibility but have also fed the larger narrative that Trudeau is irresponsible and even two-faced. If Trudeau and the Liberals ever hope to regain their 2015 coalition, they have to rebuild trust with the electorate. And in both the 2019 and 2021 campaigns, the Liberals failed to prove that they could responsibly govern with a majority.
The Conservative Identity Crisis
Conservatives’ troubles run far deeper than questionable ethical choices. For two consecutive elections, Trudeau’s gaffes and policy failures have left the door wide open, and yet Conservatives have been unable to take advantage. It seems the Conservatives are trying to do too much: at once attempting to frame themselves as the true moderates of the party system (with the Liberals having pushed further left of center), while at the same time appealing to their solidly socially and economically conservative base in the Prairie Provinces. Put another way, in both 2019 and 2021, Conservatives were unable to provide a unified vision for where they wanted to take the country.
In 2019, then-party leader Andrew Scheer’s record on LGBTQ rights likely alienated moderate voters seeking an alternative to Trudeau. A resurfaced speech of Scheer denying the legitimacy of same-sex marriages in 2005 became a key political weapon for the Liberals. Meanwhile, Scheer tried to have it both ways on abortion, saying he was opposed to the practice but wouldn’t officially re-open the abortion debate in the House of Commons if elected. The strategy likely backfired, as both pro-choice voters, wanting a firmly pro-choice candidate, and pro-life voters, wanting a candidate willing to take on abortion in Parliament, were dissatisfied.
During the 2021 cycle, party leader Erin O’Toole appeared to push the party further in the moderate direction, announcing he was pro-choice and supporting carbon pricing and safe injection sites — issues that were major flashpoints during the Harper era. But O’Toole appeared to flip-flop on gun control, drawing attention to his party’s hard-right stance on the issue and likely hurting his chances with key Ontario voters. Though O’Toole may have done a better job articulating his platform than his predecessor, the Conservatives are still far from being a united front with a clear vision for the future of both their party and the country. And like Scheer after his defeat, O’Toole will likely face questions about stepping down as leader, further preventing the Conservative platform from developing a sense of coherence and continuity.
Adding to Conservatives’ dilemma is the rise of the far-right, anti-vaccine People’s Party, which increased its national popular vote share from 1.6% in 2019 to 5.1% this year, despite again failing to win a single seat. If Conservative leadership continues to push leftwards, there may be ideological room on the right for the People’s Party to grow into. And should Conservative and People’s Party candidates split right-leaning voters in key ridings, the NDP and the Liberals stand to benefit given Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system.
Overall, both Liberals and Conservatives find themselves in the same position they were in two years ago: the Liberals questioning how they can regain voters’ confidence after Trudeau’s blunders, the Conservatives wondering which direction they should go and who should be the one to lead them there. With four years until the next election (presuming Trudeau has learned his lesson about snap polls), both parties have time to reflect. Canada needs a government that leads ethically and an opposition party that knows what it wants, so here’s hoping “Canada Votes 2025” isn’t deja vu all over again.
Image Credit: Photo by Jason Hafso is licensed under Unsplash License.
