Lessons from an election campaign Canadians didn’t want
With his trademark theatricality, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau called Canada’s 44th federal election the most important one since 1945.
Voters did not agree. After five weeks of watching the party leaders struggle to define what the election was about, Canadians effectively sent gave their MPs a “back-to-work” order, returning them to a Parliament that will look very much like the last one.
It was a risk-averse campaign in a risk-averse time. The party leaders struggled with empathy and with authenticity, universally afraid to admit errors lest they hand more ammunition to their rivals. Their campaigns had one thing in common: they believed they must cater to citizens rather than lead them.
And so, they all told us we could have something for nothing: untold billions in spending commitments, with the improbable suggestion that middle-class citizens — or their children — will not have to pay the bills.
Of course, we did not believe them. And, as we saw on election night, we did not reward them.
Trudeau had hoped to emulate his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, in his six-year path from triumphant majority to chastened minority and back between 1968 and 1974 — precisely the same length of time the younger Trudeau has been in office.
Instead, this campaign will likely be quickly forgotten — a footnote like the elections of 1965 or 2008, when voters denied an incumbent prime minister hoping to trade a minority government for a majority — but allowed him to remain in office.
If the leaders of the four largest national parties are wise, however, they will not forget this campaign. Instead, they may reflect on its lessons. And so should we.
Canadians judged Trudeau the way an employer assesses an employee with a middling performance review who wants a promotion. He’s solid enough, but hasn’t earned it — and you’re annoyed he asked in the middle of a major project.
“We heard you,” Trudeau said in his election-night speech. But did he? Unlikely. While the prime minister has many gifts as a communicator, the empathy seems calculated — a feeling reinforced by his subsequent words talking about his “clear mandate,” and his tone-deaf assertion that “some have talked about division, but that’s not what I see.”
More reflective Liberals will consider:
If the election was Trudeau’s performance review, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was the candidate you secretly interviewed to replace him. He exceeded your expectations, but you weren’t yet convinced.
O’Toole’s strategy was the right one: build a bigger tent. He effectively blunted the Liberals’ attacks with a moderate platform and persona well-targeted at the mainstream urban and suburban voters who decide Canadian elections.
The problem is that the message sounded nothing like the Conservativism of recent years, nor the way O’Toole had to position himself to win the party leadership. The Conservatives were too slow to change. Party members’ ridiculous opposition to carbon pricing — long after businesses, investors, consumers, the country and the world had accepted it — is an example. The conversion to common sense was too sudden to be credible — as the voters showed them on election night.
The lessons for Conservatives:
Since its growth into a national force under Ed Broadbent in the 1980s, New Democrats have often faced an existential question: are they a party of protest or power?
In the job interview, Jagmeet Singh made a good impression: he is a likeable, charismatic leader who polls well among Canadians — a blessing for the party as it softens a message that relies increasingly on divisive identity politics. When it came to the job requirements, though, he was less than convincing, at times struggling to explain the details of increasingly extravagant promises that only make sense if viewed as a wish list rather than a governing agenda.
For New Democrats, the election is less about lessons, and more about strategic questions:
By any measure, the 2021 election was a disaster for the Greens. At a time when the mortal perils of the climate crisis are painfully obvious to all, the party has no reason to be in such a perilous state. But it is.
Green Party leader Annamie Paul is the candidate for the job who got stuck in transit and never arrived. Her fourth-place finish in a poorly chosen downtown Toronto riding suggests that, even more so than the NDP, the Greens were not serious about playing a role in the next Parliament. If former leader Elizabeth May retains ambitions to lead the Greens, officially or not, she may have the chance once more.
The lessons:
The last seven elections have produced five minority Parliaments. One question is whether there is room to change our system — not necessarily to produce more majorities but to inspire better debates, less pandering and stronger leadership.
How often we have seen a modern leader take a truly bold risk, as Brian Mulroney did on his constitutional accords, sales tax reform or free trade, or Jean Chretien did on eliminating the deficit, implementing the Clarity Act, or keeping Canada out of the second Iraq War? The closest we have come is Justin Trudeau’s successful battle to make carbon pricing a reality, notwithstanding the opposition of many and the risks of it being seen as a new tax.
Late in the campaign, the prime minister expressed renewed openness to electoral reform, unhelpfully reminding voters of his broken promise to end the first-past-the-post voting system — or at least to try.
It is a debate we must have now. We have a political system that is too adversarial, an electorate with far more information than attention, and an underfunded, undervalued journalistic profession.
With the combination of both structural and cultural change to our politics, perhaps as a nation we can once more accept common truths, and find the common will to address them.
Daniel Tisch is the CEO of Argyle, one of Canada’s largest public engagement and communications consulting firms. He has advised a long list of private and public sector leaders, including cabinet ministers and heads of government representing all major parties
by Special to Global News
