By Ray Rivers
June 25th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Carolyn Bennet
There was a federal by-election yesterday. Carolyn Bennet, the Member of Parliament for the federal electoral district of Toronto-St Paul’s, had accepted an appointment as our new ambassador to Denmark and resigned as MP. She had held that riding ably for a quarter of a century. Dr. Bennet once told me, jokingly, that she was always confident of winning her riding because, as a practising physician there, she had delivered half of the babies for the voters.
But no more. Voters in one of the safest Liberal ridings have sent a clear message to the prime minister. They want to change the channel. Enough of actions to fight climate change. Enough of expanding the social safety net for the most needy Canadians. It’s time to turn the clock back as Ontario did when it booted out the Wynne government.
Federal child care, dental care and pharmacare. These programs, forced onto the Liberal agenda by the NDP, are all on the table as we move to an election as early as next year. The exact date will depend on whether the NDP pull the rug out from Trudeau’s minority government, as Jack Layton once did to Paul Martin almost two decades ago.
There is a message to the NDP from this by-election. They have long known that they are unlikely to ever become a governing party in this country. Perhaps it is time they finally make their current co-operative arrangement with the Liberals permanent. The biggest threat to the continuation of progressive government is the splintering and back fighting among the progressive parties, including the Greens and Bloc. Though the separatist Bloc has a bigger agenda in their sights.
The question hanging over this by-election was whether the polls, which show the Liberals about 20 points behind the opposition Conservatives, would materialize into the ballot box. Losing this safe riding should tell Mr. Trudeau that they have. Those polls aren’t lying.
Trudeau will pay the price for breaking one of his fundamental promises – to make 2015 the last first-past-the-post election.
Pundits had called this election a referendum on Mr. Trudeau’s leadership. The question is what comes next. Unless something changes Mr. Trudeau will pay the price for breaking one of his fundamental promises – to make 2015 the last first-past-the-post election.
All of the Liberal initiatives over the last decade, including the huge reduction in child poverty, more progressive taxation and the climate change initiatives are at risk if the Conservatives win. Though a Conservative political platform is yet to appear, Mr. Poilievre has been pretty clear about his disdain for the progressive slate of issues the Liberal have carved out for us over the last decade. Proportional voting would have muted that possibility of loss. But that is a door Mr. Trudeau closed on his own accord.
The ballot in this by-election was the longest in history, with over 80 candidates to choose from. It was a protest fittingly intended to reinforce why so many Canadians would like to see us go to a more representative form of democracy. And ironically it kind-of worked, even though most of those 80 candidates had little to do with the final outcome.
The odds were against the Tories taking this, one of the safest Liberal seats. And progressive Canadians are almost as shocked as the winning Tories who can’t believe their luck. And for the Liberals that’s a twofer.
We lost the battle to win the Stanley Cup as well.
Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Background links
As Canadians, we may look down at the folly of the USA as it embraces Trumpism. Sadly, we know so little about Mr. Poilievre, that he appears, at this time, to be cut from the same set of ethics, or lack of them, as his American counterpart. Other than some Draconian proposals, like terminating the CBC, embracing fossil fuel use, declaring war on the civil service and allowing anti-abortion bills to be presented to Parliament, does he really offer anything more beneficial to us than his American cousin? There was a time when Progressive Conservatives were prepared to battle for the middle political ground, with an emphasis on the conservative side, to offer the Canadian public a viable alternative to the Liberals. It appears that those days have ended. Now we have a parade of extremist right-wing, pseudo-folk-heroes with their foot hard on the accelerator but without a roadmap. That is the flavour of the day.
If so, and you vote for Brand X, make sure that you keep your bottle of Pepto-Bismal close at hand.
I’m confused. You admit that “we know so little about Mr. Poilievre” but you appear to know more than enough to demonize him?
Gee Bob you may be more like than Trump than you think:
like terminating the CBC:
actually he wants to defund the CBC and let them sink or swim, “Canadian Broadcasting Corporation advertising revenues are off a third in the past decade (18% in the past year alone), because fewer and fewer Canadians are watching the state broadcaster and advertisers know it.”
So why should taxpayers continue to prop them up when we have CTV, Global etc?
embracing fossil fuel use :
Is this what you mean?
“Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre slammed the federal Liberal government over its handling of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) file Tuesday, saying Canada missed its opportunity to supply Europe with the fossil fuel. Europe faced a serious supply crunch last year as it weaned itself off Russian oil and gas following Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
declaring war on the civil service :
“The Trudeau government has increased the size of the federal public service by 37.9%, or almost 100,000 additional employees, since coming to power in 2015, according to a new study by the Montreal Economic Institute.”
“Conservative leadership contender Pierre Poilievre said Wednesday, if elected, he’d introduce new legislation that would force the federal government to offset every dollar of new spending with a cut to something else — a program he’s calling a “pay-as-you-go” approach to budgeting.”
allowing anti-abortion bills:
” A Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre would not legislate on, nor use the notwithstanding clause, on abortion, his office says.” CTV News May 10 2024
Contrary to your comment Ray, I believe the polls are actually lying, a 20% lead by the conservatives is actually a gross under estimate, it’s much higher. Just do the math based on St. Paul. I would suggest our MP dust off her CV.
Editor’s note: Edited
With your “No safe seats left for Trudeau” title, I almost expected an objective opinion piece. By highlighting Trudeau’s “so-called” progressive advances in taxation, poverty alleviation & climate change without even mentioning his disastrous immigration, foreign interference, fiscal management, procurement, & defense policy track record, you leave no doubt about your bias Ray, once again. The electorate will not be fooled again.
One last thing as a true Oiler fan. Leave us out of this as the Oilers at least deserved to win.
And this article is a proxy for why one of the safest pre-justin Liberal party seats was narrowly beaten. Its is called being tone deaf or dead to what taxpayers are trying desperately to tell you. But nope, the response is double down. As to the NDP. The reward for propping up Trudeau should cost Singh his job as well. When the Liberals dump the “progressive” moniker as an excuse for poor governance the healing will begin. We can only hope Trudeau stays on long enough to reap his just reward. Apparently 81 candidates wanted to send a “ this will be the last past the post” message to Trudeau, the first of his many broken promises. I wonder how many will run in Burlington to thank Minister Gould.
Time to stick a fork in Justin. He’s done! Arguably, the worst Prime Minister in the last one hundred years. Arrogant, aloof, entitled and elitist. The man is so conceited that he’ll probably stick around and end up dragging his party into the gutter leaving a trail of political corpses behind him. Serves the Liberal sheep in the caucus right for not speaking up and challenging him. The price one pays for blind obedience. They can derive comfort though from their gold plated pensions.
We might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater…Conservatives have no climate policy, we will lose valuable social programs like childcare,
pharmacare and dentalcare. Poilievre is neither likeable nor liked, as a career politician he will lead Canada to adopt a US style of politics, with restrictions on abortion on the line ( there is already talk of banning IVF in some Conservative quarters).
I am concerned about our loss freedom which ironically the Conservatives falsely attributed to mask wearing and vaccines during Covid. Let’s not forget that while the loss of 50k Canadians was devastating, American deaths under the ridiculous and poor leadership of Donald Trump, topped over 1,000,000 citizens. We do need a guy who encouraged and supported the disgraceful trucker convoy. Poilievre is not the answer.
Time for Trudeau to take a walk like his Dad.His government is floundering and shovelling cash out the door for poorly thought out projects.
Good Riddance !
The voters of St Paul’s riding could also have sent a message to Justin Trudeau by voting for the NDP rather than the Conservatives. They chose not to make this choice. Perhaps the middle left were fed up with the Liberal-NDP arrangement and were not as enamoured with Trudeau’s attempts to be to the left of the NDP and the cozy arrangement that developed.
Ray, luck has nothing to do with it. It remains to be seen whether the narcissistic, egotistical Prime Minister takes a walk or is forced out by the Liberal Party who will be usurped by the NDP in urban communities outside of Quebec. Is Freeland anxious to become Kim Campbell II ? Carney? Poilievre will tear him to pieces. Rebuild for 2029.