October 22nd, 2019
BURLINGTON, ON
There is little doubt where the people of Halton sent their vote.
It was a solid Liberal vote in Burlington, Oakville North Burlington and Milton where Karina Gould won the seat. Pam Damoff did much better than we expected in Oakville North Burlington and Adam van Koeverden got more than 50% of the vote to send Lisa Raitt home for a long rest.
The Liberals didn’t do quite as well nationally. They will have to work with the New Democrats who took 24 seats 7.1% of the vote if they are to succeed in keeping the confidence of the House of Commons. The country can expect another election within two years – 36 months at best.
The Liberals needed 170 seats to form a government – they won 154. They need 16 seats from somewhere. They aren’t going to get anything from the BLOC who won 32 seats in Quebec.
Where to from here? Expect the government to come though with a change in the way we choose the winners – we may have seen the last First Past the Post election in this country.
The Trans Mountain pipeline extension will get built and we should see some changes in the way health care is covered.
So happy Minister Karina Gould (L) won in Burlington and won big. Watch her, this young, brilliant and incredibly affable non-typical politician is Prime Ministerial material one day.
I was saddened to see Minister Ralph Goodale (L), veteran of 10 elections and the only Cabinet Minister to have been in both Pierre Trudeau’s as well as Justin Trudeau’s Cabinets be defeated. His skills will be missed, even more so now.
I was also surprised former Cabinet Minister Conservative Lisa Raitt (C), leadership contender who lost to Scheer, got defeated. I wish her well as I worked several times with her husband Bruce Wood former Hamilton Port Authority President & CEO who is ailing.
I think Lisa was one of the better, and one of the few progressives, in the CPC.
As a Tory it pains me to say this but the Conservatives ran an abysmal campaign.
Phillip is absolutely right: Scheer needs to go, and the sooner the better! He has neither the depth nor the persona to carry the party through to the next election. Michelle Rempel or Rona Ambrose would be much better choices. Paramount consideration in a new leader needs to be someone who can engage voters and communicate.
The Party also needs to blow up its policy platform. Boutique tax credits, coupled with a lack of meaningful, imaginative policies on a range of issues from the environment through to the economy didn’t help.
The brain trust in Ottawa needs to be dispatched posthaste. The overt “command and control” mentality which now permeates the upper tier of the Party, and in which the express will and interests of local riding associations are subsumed, is not conducive to promoting involvement or engagement. The back-room geniuses who developed the negative ads should have realized back in 2015 that this tactic didn’t work. Why they trotted out this failed strategy again is anyone’s guess.
Finally, the way in which candidates are nominated and vetted is rife with shortcomings. Looking at the candidates who stood for election across the country three things struck me: 1) they have had little previous involvement in the party; 2) they have little in the way of education, career or life experience; 3) they don’t have particularly strong attachments to their communities either in terms of community involvement or length of residence. In addition, judging from the litany of bizarre and asinine comments posted on social media previously one has to wonder how some of them got past a background check…assuming, again, that one was ever done.
The Conservatives need to do better…much, much better!
Very sad day in Burlington and surrounding areas when people voted for corruption and unethical dealings by a Pathetic PM . Thank God it is only a minority government and won’t last long .
Burlington was the conservative riding to lose and they did. I think the way this local conservative riding chose Jane Michael as the candidate needs to be questioned. How she could be the candidate of choice is mind boggling. A candidate that was sanctioned as a trustee for the Halton Catholic School Board (the first time ever). A candidate that has declared personal bankruptcy not only once but lied and still gets to be the conservative candidate for Burlington, which for years voted conservative.
The strategy used to basically “hide” the candidate just fuelled all the negatively around this candidate.
Last evening when Justin upstaged Andrew Scheer by coming into his party headquarters at the same time to speak to his supporters, was pure Justin – can’t imagine he will be able to collaborate with the other parties to get things passed. It is not just in his nature, and I have to wonder if this was the strategy to show Canada that he is the Prime Minister and he can do as he pleases.
I personally cannot stand to hear Justin speak- everything he says sounds like he is playing a role. I guess his life experience being a failed actor, a drama teacher and a bodyguard in a club is the prerequisite to being the Prime Minister of Canada. Does anyone think that he would be Prime Minister of Canada if his last name was Smith?
The “Popular Vote is the Message”, 34.4 % of Canadians wanted the Conservatives to govern while 33.06% wanted the Liberals to govern. Two provinces felt they are not being served by confederation and shut out the Liberals, and we now have a resurgent Bloc. If Trudeau is as smart as his archenemy Harper, he will figure out how to work with the various interests. My prediction, we will be back in the voting booth within two years. I hope I am wrong.
No surprise here. When you run a candidate like Jane Michael…you’re not even trying!
Today will be a day when the political pundits really earn their keep, dissecting all the reasons that the federal election went the way that it did, the ‘puts and takes’ for each party and the future prospects for each leader read in the entrails of last night’s vote. WeLoveBurlington will not go there – where we have neither the expertise nor the inclination to play. However, we would like to offer one observation; that the shutout of the conservatives in the GTA bodes ill for the current provincial government and its representatives. It may be a sign that you ignore the people’s voice at the peril of your political future; that the failure to engage in a respectful and meaningful way is a fast-track to the exit door. We note that Jane Michael was the only major candidate for Burlington who failed to respond (twice) to the question that we posed of all candidates. Her failure to participate in most of the ‘all candidate’ forums has been well commented. Citizens react predictably when ignored – they return the favour. In this regard, we note also that we have not received a response from either of Burlington’s MPPs relative to our request to meet and discuss our quite different views of the possibilities of municipal amalgamation. We look forward to the opportunity.