Item: The Conservative Party is the most incompetent political party in our recent history.
It was really stupid of Trudeau to call this election and the fact that he did was a huge gift to the Conservatives. People were angry about having to vote during a pandemic and rightfully so, and it seems like this made a lot of them ready for a change. So what did the Conservatives do? Well, pretty much zilch. The last two weeks or so I saw nothing but the same TV ad over and over, slamming Trudeau for calling the election. A basic premise of politics is that negative attacks by themselves are not enough, you have to give people a reason to vote for you. This simple formula was apparently lost on O'Toole and his advisors, who never came close to establishing how things would be better if they were in charge. As Toni Morrison famously said, "When someone tells you who they are, believe them." A majority of Canadian voters decided to believe the Conservatives when they showed they didn't really have much of anything to offer.
Item: The People's Party is now firmly the anti-vax, Covid-denier party.
Never let it be said that Maxime Bernier lets an opportunity go to waste. While it may look like his 'pro- freedom' stance on Covid is entirely consistent with his supposed Libertarian ideology, his rallies have been filled with a garbage dump of Neo-Nazis, conspiracy loons and fundamentalist Christian fanatics. (Do I have to point out that none of these people actually believe in freedom except as it applies to themselves?) Bernier, ever the carnival barker, got himself arrested in June for violating Manitoba's Covid measures, which I'm positive was exactly what he was hoping for. In 2019, his party got only 1.6 percent of the popular vote. But his anti-vax performance art worked pretty well this time and the PPC snagged just over 5 percent, and while it didn't come close to translating into any seats, their rise in support likely did cost the Conservatives some ridings. While I'm for some form of proportional representation, the increased support for Bernier's retinue of village idiots gives me pause. There's no way I want this clown car of a party to have a parliamentary presence.
Item: This campaign was a desultory bore, with little substance and a seeming assumption by the parties that most of us Canadians weren't all that interested in what they had to say.
The Liberals sent me a bunch of inane texts. The Conservatives sent me a four page letter with a lot of vague promises and accusations against the other parties. (Did you know the Liberals are actually trying to break our economy? I did not.) They claimed it was the third time they had written to me ; I didn't get the other two. An elderly lady with a poodle silently stuck a card from the People's Party in my door. I never heard a peep from the NDP.
If I were grading on effort, they'd all get an F, except for the Conservatives, who'd get a C- because I'd like to see letter writing make a comeback. Two of the Liberal texts asked me if I had a "plan for voting." I think they meant was I okay with standing in line for an hour to cast my vote? Nothing short of a patience transfusion would make me okay with that, so I went early and didn't have to wait at all. And that small victory, unfortunately, is the best thing that I took from this miserable campaign.
Item: Rex Murphy is a craven, attention-addicted sell-out and likely always has been (pun intended).
Sadly, Murphy qualifies as what passes for a star journalist in this country. Maybe at some point 20 years ago he had something to offer but now he's just another ranting climate change denier, and the stupidest kind at that: he marvels that it still snows a lot in Newfoundland in winter and thinks that passes for proof that it's all a hoax. His election columns were little more than 'old man yells at clouds'. You really have to wonder what a well-fed, firmly embedded establishment figure is so angry about, don't you? He's rabidly conservative across the board now, whereas before he was a card-carrying Liberal. He ran as a Liberal twice in Newfoundland and also worked as Clyde Wells' executive assistant. Of course people can change their minds but I always question someone who flips so far so easily. I suspect these people never really had strong beliefs or principles in the first place. They check which way the wind is blowing and adjust accordingly. In Murphy's case, he now rakes in some good coin for speeches he makes to anxious oilpatch executives, reassuring them that they are awesome and that in fact everything really is Justin Trudeau's fault. Just like snow in Newfoundland, those speaking fees are all the evidence I need.
Item: Our business leadership is either getting dumber or even more dishonest.
The Liberal victory brought out the expected cascade of whining from BNN and its regular guests. John Manley, chairman of CIBC, moaned that high taxes where chasing away business investment. As I've shown elsewhere, taxes on business in Canada are not at all high, so Manley is either an idiot or a liar. I'll let you decide. The most common complaint was about the deficit. (We can't pay it back! We're all doomed!) David Rosenberg, one of Canada's most well-known economists, claimed that the big deficit will hinder private investment. This so-called crowding out effect has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked, and Rosenberg's bleating about it makes me wonder if he's been asleep the last 20 years. The capper was Gord Nixon, former CEO of the Royal Bank, who said Trudeau's plan for a surtax on bank earnings "made no sense" and that Trudeau was simply "pandering" to voters. You see Mr. Nixon, when a government has created a regulatory framework that creates an oligopoly ( five big banks protected by legislation dominate the Canadian financial sector) whose members make excess profits (rent, in economist jargon) because of the lack of competition, it is proper that those profits be more heavily taxed. This isn't my opinion, it's just the view of some guy named Adam Smith. You may have heard of him.
I'm sure we are all looking forward to doing this again in 2023...
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