Nothing Changed: Trudeau’s power grab failed


Dustbin Trudeau called a snap election in August 2021, only twenty one months since the last federal election (December 2019), yet Canada allows a sitting parliament up to five years.  His hope was to get a majority after riding high in the polls.

Instead, parliament will have almost exactly the same distribution of seats.  This $600 million debacle of ego and a power grab accomplished nothing except give Trudeau two more years on the clock than he already had with the same parliament.  It created potential mass spreader events everywhere, inflated the cost of an pointless and unnecessary election that taxpayers will foot the bill for.  If he wanted to win a majority, how about acting in the public interest and doing what’s best for the country and saying “look what I did” in 2023?

After the December 2019 election, I said “a tolerable result”.  This is intolerable.

Unless Trudeau accomplishes a lot in the next three years, this will almost certainly cost him the next election.  Historically, Canadians vote for the clowns in retaliation after elections like this.  If the pandemic isn’t resolved by then, the clowns would reignite it with their incompetence.

And yet if Trudeau did manage to make positive changes (which would only happen if the NDP and BQ force him to), he’ll get the credit.  That means another corrupt liberal majority, just as bad as a conservative majority.

After approximately fifteen million votes have been counted:

                2019   At dissolution
                ----   --------------
Liberal          157   155
Conservative     121   119
Bloc Québécois    32    32
New Democratic    24    24
Green              3     2
Independent        1     5

                2021    Votes (~15,000,000)
                ----    -------------------
Liberal          156    4,761,585 (31.744%)
Conservative     122    5,099,692 (33.998%)
Bloc Québécois    32    1,177,521 ( 7.850%)
New Democratic    26    2,654,703 (17.698%)
Green              2      339,528 ( 2.263%)
People's Party     0      769,591 ( 5.131%)
Other              0      143,000 ( 0.953%)

This proves again why Canada desperately needs proportional representation, and why the liberals and clowns are adamantly against it.  I would even be willing to tolerate rightwing extremists and racists like the PPP holding seats if it meant we never have a majority government again.

If the parties were allotted seats by percentage of the vote, the liberals or conservatives would need BOTH the BQ and NDP to support them to pass any legislation.  That would be a government which actually represents the public interest.  The liberals and conservatives would never form a coalition.

Seats by percentage of votes, 2021:
Liberals        107
Conservatives   115
Bloc Québécois   27
New Democratic   60
Green             8
People's         17

What a pointless waste of time, money, resources, and risk, all for the sake of his ego.

This is Canada’s most expensive election

When Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau asked Gov. Gen. Mary May Simon to dissolve Parliament in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, he triggered what is estimated to be Canada’s most expensive federal election ever.

Elections Canada is projecting a $610-million price tag for the 36-day campaign.

In 2019, the election cost $502.4 million.

[. . .]

A fact sheet posted on the Elections Canada website from November 2020 estimated costs for pandemic safety material (such as masks, plastic dividers and sanitizer), adjustments to the vote-by-mail system, and a voter information campaign would cost approximately $52 million.

This might be Trudeau’s last stand.  I would like to see him wake up and realize now is the time to push for prortional representation.  New Zealand has a parliamentary democracy with prortional representation, and it works.  Copy theirs.  Or even ranked voting, but end this “first past the post” crap.

First photo in colour of Trudeau donning blackface emerges on eve of election night

Yet another photo of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau donning blackface has emerged, on the eve of the 2021 election day, potentially serving a blow to the prime minister’s hopes of securing a majority government.

[. . .]

The [2001] photo has caught the attention of several international media publications, with British outlet the London Daily Telegraph being the first to break the story, followed by reports published in the Daily Telegraph, Reuters and Yahoo News.

He was 29 when he did this.  Is he going to call it “youthful indiscretion”?

 


 

Side note: Because it was a snap election, my mail in ballot didn’t arrive in time, once again cheating me of my right to vote.  Not that would have made a difference in the riding I am forced to vote in, which always votes for the clowns.

Comments

  1. planter says

    I’m just glad we still have a minority with the NDP holding the balance. Seems to me to be the best possible outcome under the circumstances. I suspect we will see a new Liberal leader a year or two before the next election.

    I am in Saskatchewan and I find the rise in support for the Peoples Party rather concerning (to say the least). There is a set of people here who would fit right in in the reddest republican state, and they are now feeling comfortable saying it out loud.

    • says

      Not counting interim leaders (e.g. Bob Rae), since Edward Blake in the 1880s the federal liberals have always alternated between Anglophone and Francophone national leaders. It’s an unwritten tradition. And after Trudeau?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada

      The last Anglophone liberal leader to win a federal election was Pearson, not exactly a winning record. I don’t see any capable Anglophone leaders among his cabinet members, unless they want to push Sajjan into the role and make a statement.

        • jrkrideau says

          Capable, yes but I do not trust her take on Int’l affairs.

          Also Intransitive’s point, though I am not sure it is as serious as she seems to think.

          • Rob Grigjanis says

            I do not trust her take on Int’l affairs

            Based on what? Her stint as Minister of Foreign Affairs was impressive, IMO.

  2. says

    Yeah, it sucks being here when we can’t seem to elect anyone from the NDP anymore. I blame all those expats who came back from Alberta when the oil boom hit here.

    The question with the PeePees is whether they’ll be around next election. In the end the party is Maxime Bernier’s vanity project, so how long will he be willing to go on if he doesn’t win? If he decides to quit the party will fall apart in short order.

  3. jrkrideau says

    The NZ or German Mixed-member proportional representation sounds like a good choice. A rabidly political friend suggests a ranked voting system in Canada means that we get an eternal Liberal Gov’t since Liberal is the default second choice among Canadians.

    With something like a 5% vote rule we can probably even tolerate a few nutty extremist parties like the PPC though I did like Bernier’s outstanding success in this election.

    Did anyone notice that in the 2019 election that Bernier proposed abolishing the Milk Marketing Board? IIRC Bernier’s riding in one of the major dairying areas in Canada.

    First photo in colour of Trudeau donning blackface emerges on eve of election night

    In the 2019 election, the head of the largest black human rights organization in Québec’s response to this type of thing can be paraphrased as, “meh”.

    @ 1 planter
    If you look at the seat count the NDP does not really hold the balance. The Libs can play them against the Bloc. Lib + NDP or Lib + Bloc is a majority in the House.

    @2 timgueguen
    Maxime Bernier’s vanity project….
    Agreed but in many ways this is the old Reform Party going nasty. We might see a new version of it if we see a bit of meltdown of the Cons and some replacement for Bernier. Maybe Ezra is polishing his C.V.? Oh please, please!

    Yeah, it sucks being here when we can’t seem to elect anyone from the NDP anymore.

    I hate to say it but the NDP performance in the House and in the campaign has been a disappointment. They should have been pounding the Libs in the House and in the campaign on policy rather than following the Cons in stupid attacks on Trudeau. They really failed to comprehensively attack on environmental issues that are likely to resonate with the younger vote.

    Also, Jagmeet Singh kept making policy statements that suggested that he had no idea that we are a federal state and there are divisions of authority between the federal and provincial gov’ts. Some of his heath care suggestions and timelines were ludicrous.

    A joke among some friends was that he must have skipped the constitutional law course in law school. O’Toole did the same thing in a few throw-away comments but not in policy statements.