The Canadian Election: NOTHING EVER HAPPENS

whenever you're listening to this. I was up all day on on CBC and on elections dot Ca checking in on all the charts and all the stats to see how this how this kind of upset election went, and oh boy did it go. James, how much do you do you know about Canada and elections?

It's a first past the post system, so whoever gets the most votes in each writing they get their representatives.

Since to Parliament, the party with the most representatives they take control of the government and that is who the Prime Minister is and the next Prime Minister of Canada will be Mark Karney, who assumed the prime minister rule like last month, winning the Liberal election after Justin Trudeau resigned in January, and before we get into some of the results, at first, a little bit of an election

kind of background. So Liberals have been in power for nearly a decade, slowly getting less and less popular as the cost of living has risen. Last election in twenty twenty one, the Liberals kept their minority government, but the leader of their party, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, continued to decline in popularity. By the end of twenty twenty four's approval rating was just twenty two percent or net negative fifty two. Conservatives were up twenty five points in

the polls. It was a near certainty that they would sweep the next election. Trudeau announced his resignation on January sixth, kind of the January sixth of Canada if you think about it. Former banker Mark Karney won the party election in March or twenty twenty five. Carney quickly called for an election to write off the peak of anti Trump sentiment sweeping across Canada. This was following Trump's talk of annexing Canada. And the global trade war and tariffs directed

at the American neighbor upstairs next door. I don't know, yeah, downstairs south, No, from America. It's a oh I see, yeah, okay, yeah from Yeah, got it understand, which is maybe a northern standpoint. But who cares.

Monday night. At this point, the Liberals are projected to win one hundred and sixty eight seats, falling barely short of the one hundred and seventy two majority. There's still, as a time of recording, still a possible path for them gaining a majority government, but it's fairly unlikely. It'll probably be a minority government. The Conservatives have won one hundred and forty four seats, the Blackabiqua twenty three and the NDP a measly seven, with the Green Party snagging one.

Liberals also secured the largest vote share, forty three point six percent of the vote compared to the Conservative's forty one point four percent, though because of a vote efficiency basically how spread apart certain votes are, this has still led to much more seats for the Liberals than the Conservatives. Right, if you have more Conservatives voting in a district that's going to go Conservative anyway, those extra votes don't necessarily

mean there's going to be more representation in parliament. That's the vote efficiency idea.

early during Easter week. The full turnout is higher than it was the past few elections. But it matches pretty much to the twenty fifteen election. So to get a majority government you need one hundred and seventy two seats. This allows you to not have to worry about like no confidence votes which trigger new elections, and you don't

need to work with other parties to pass legislation. Now, this will probably be a minority government with the Libs having to work with a small number of remaining and DP and Block seats to run the government, which one could consider a good thing in terms of being pushed maybe towards some better policies rather than just like liberal supremacy. But it also in its government will be more unstable and it kind of gives the Conservatives more room to wiggle.

So it's definitely a mixed bag. As reporting first came in for Atlantic Canada, it showed that this would be a tighter race than what the Liberals were hoping for. During election night, it seemed Conservatives were on track to pick up two seats in Newfoundland, though in the end the Liberal incumbent barely kept their seat, beating the Conservative challenger by twelve votes. In Terra Nova the Peninsulas. The Libs did fare much better in Quebec, though they flipped

eleven seats. This was the best performance by Liberals in Quebec in years now. Conservatives gained some seats from the Liberals in Ontario under Doug Ford, with Conservatives flipping seats around the Toronto suburbs. One of the biggest stories of this election was just the complete NDP collapse the progressive kind of democratic socialist New Democratic Party. They're currently projected to lose seventeen of their twenty four previously held seats.

The NDP basically gave Carny this election. Jack met Singh lost his seat. That's the leader of the NDP. He lost his seat to Wade Chung, a Liberal, and stepped down as leader on Monday night. Part of what makes this such a big setback for the NDP is that because they failed to win at least twelve seats, they actually lose official party status in Parliament. Parties have to win at least twelve seats to be recognized as an

official party in the House of Commons. Official parties get to have offices in Parliament, extra staff, They get to ask questions in legislative sessions and can sit on committees. Now, the NDP did previously lose party status in nineteen ninety three, winning only nine seats in that election, but this performance was slightly worse, getting only seven. So this is going

to be a big shake up. The NDP is going to have to be forced to rebuild, which is maybe necessary based on kind of a degree of NDP stagnation the past decade. They're kind of caught in like twenty seventeen politics in my opinion, though saying did lead them to pass some significant legislation and progressive policies do have a degree of popularity in Canada. The NDP was polling about the same as the Liberals just three months ago.

The movement that we're seeing is from NDP voters scared of Polyev and Trump, so they moved to Carney to avoid splitting the left vote, as Carney was seen as more capable of beating Polyev than the NDP leader sing and certainly Justin Trudeau.

individually getting an enough votes to win the riding. Let's talk about vote share compared to the last twenty twenty one election, so Liberals did fairly well this election, especially compared to previous ones. They gained over ten points compared to the last election in twenty twenty one. Conservatives also didn't do badly, actually like they actually did. Okay, this certainly wasn't the result they were wanting, but they did not do bad. They gained over seven and a half

points this race. Reliable conservative voters still voted conservative and they were able to siphon off some support from other parties, with Conservatives doing slightly better than what polling predicted, but a lot of very close races across key districts. Now where all those extra votes or vote movement is coming from is all of the third parties. The Green Party and the Blackapiqua both dropped over a point, The far right People's Party dropped four points and the NDPP eleven

point six huge huge losses for the NDP. Most of those voters probably going liberal, although some may just not have voted. One of the more interesting parts about this election is that the Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev lost his parliamentary seat. He lost to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy by about four thousand votes. Oh damn, four point six percent of the vote. So this is going to probably cause

a bit of an upset in the Conservative Party. There might be some maternal conflict over whether Polyev should continue as party leader, though he did not step down from that position during his concession speech Monday night, James, do you do you have any thoughts here before we pivot to ads.

something resembling a conservative sweep. Not to put words in your mouth.

took the number one campaign. It was the actual campaign slogan of the Conservatives away from him immediately after being crowned the new leader of the Liberal Party, which was ax the tax, which is what you know, fascist Millhouse, who we call Pierre Pollievro over here. That was his big campaign promise, The Conservatives were going to ax the carbon tax, and that had a lot of people excited, a lot of people didn't like Justin Trudeau. And then along comes Mark Carney and he takes both of those

things away from the Conservatives. He's not Justin Trudeau, and he acts the tax and so they had to kind of completely reset. And this was before the wild card of Trump shows up, ye, which of course now is caring not only Canada but the world. I would say like most countries now are kind of having to completely reset how they think and want to do geopolitics into the future because of his policies.

That made a schism happen, where the sentiment kind of really started accelerating towards less of you know, blaming Trudeau for everything, kind of like Obama that used to be a joke, like Trudeau to actual fuck Trudeau merchandise, and the idea of you know, Trudeau being an enemy of the state and a communist dictator that was on the

right side of things. On the left side of things, everyone got burnt out from Trudeau because the performer of progressive politics of his entire character, he was very vocal about standing up for a lot of issues that on one end he would you know, pretend to care about, such as indigenous rights, land backs, stuff like that, and then he would be suing the survivors of residential schools in federal court to try and prevent them from getting

too much money from the federal government. So there was a lot of Trudeau seems to performatively enjoy being perceived as someone who's enlightened and progressive and trying to steer the society in a good direction, where his policies are effectively exacerbating wealth and equality very rapidly, because that's effectively what you get with neoliberal centrists.

Like general anti incumbent sentiment was growing so much last year, which which you saw levied against the Democrats in the States and certainly against the Liberals. And the way that the Liberals in Canada have kind of been able to maneuver away from that in the way that like the Democrats haven't is super interesting. It's not necessarily like replicable, especially for US politics, but it's still as interesting. I guess.

Like on the Conservative side, their leadership changed in twenty twenty two, right.

but because they are simply not the Liberal Party. At least that's kind of what it seemed like to me, because like approval ratings for Paul of Aara's never been like great, but the Conservative Party has still been gaining popularity, at least previous to the past few months.

fact that the Liberals are out of touch elites who only care about enriching themselves, and you know, a lot obviously you'd have a lot of the right wing kind of nebulous terms like woke ideology being tied into that kind of stuff. But he was for a long time kind of starting to gain a lot of ground in traction as more of a moderate style conservative who was concerned with helping the working class, which is astonishing considering the man is a lifelong.

entire life to make houses more expensive. But marketing and branding really work, especially like you know, there's compilation clips of him saying things that are JK rallying tier in terms of both their nonsensicalness, Like talking about how electricity is crafted by harnessing the power of the lightning bolts into the wire that the electrician holds up.

depot and gets some wood. Yes, it's definitely pulling from that vein, although maybe a bit more successfully and like, at least from my perspective, it feels like the degree to which Pierre kind of hitched himself to like the Trump populist wagon the past few years, especially like with like sentiments like growing in like the Western provinces, that kind of mirrors some of the Trumpian rhetoric. That type

of stuff was getting popularity. And now because he put if not all his eggs, but some of his eggs in the Trump basket. This is like backfired in like popular opinion when it comes to his ability to succeed as like a politician and like gaining support because we've seen so much anti Trump polarization based on like the fifty first state stuff based on the tariffs, and like Carnie has been able to weaponize that pretty effectively against

against Pierre. Absolutely like it. Initially, like the way like popularity points shifted was like by like twenty points, which was like huge. Those have gotten closer, But.

country is decidedly rejected by the populace. Like, you know, the protests that are going on in the United States against tesla's are going on here as well. Maybe not as large scale or perhaps as fire based, but a lot of them are occurring here, and so like that I think is also really hurting him. So there's been this really funny, strange political dance that's kind of happened in the last couple of months where everyone is trying to say Trump loves you more. It's like a circular

firing squad. Like at one point the Conservatives were trying to market themselves to saying Trump was making fun of Pierre in this clip, so look he hates Pierre More. Yeah, And then another it was like, oh no, no, look he's talking a lot of smack about Mark Karney. He hates Mark Carney Moore. So that that has actually become a very strong dynamic of the Canadian election is who exactly does Trump like more? And that's not going to be good for you if it turns out you're the one.

of the Bank of England during that time period. Returned to Canada, has served as like an informal advisor to Trudeau and now is the is the leader of the Liberal Party. He's a very I don't know, he tries to like project this sense of like he's like a like like a reasonable man, which which which he you know, in some ways is like he's like he's like kind of boring. He works in banking. He's not like overtly charismatic. But he doesn't have like the the like youthful, like

bumbling presence of like Trudeau. Like he just he seems he seems kind of basic. I don't know.

in some view, it depends on your worldview. Right, if you are as a person who thinks that the solution going forward, especially in the face of actual manifesting fascism, is more neoliberal policies, austerity and measures, then you might be very, very excited to perhaps get your own, like honestly Joe Biden style election here where we are once again going to be choosing center to center right economic policies that are going to undoubtedly exacerbate wealth and equality more.

They are not going to solve the housing crisis. The housing crisis of Canada, while it is portrayed constantly as complex, really goes down to fundamentally there are a lot of houses, but there are also a lot of houses being built in luxury markets that most people can't afford. Speculation is not addressed, and so speculation usually gets blamed on foreign investors, which in turn kind of brings up the whole immigration fears, which are very successful. But with Carney, I mean, I

don't see anything dramatic. Not only did he acts the carbon tax when he was in power initially, and that was again, I think, strategically to remove the power the Conservatives had on that policy. He also is getting rid of the capital gains tax, which again is just going to be funneling more money towards the ultra wealthy in Canada. So the problem for me is that, if anything, I'm happy that p here it looks like he might not win. I don't know what by the time people are listening

to this, what the results are. But I also recognize that this does not solve these crises. For simply putting band aids on a pause before finally a Trump of our own gets elected and then yes, people after the facts start realizing, oh, Oh my god, he's doing a lot of the horrifying things that he promised he would do. He's actually trying to enact Project twenty twenty five. All these terrible things are happening.

of receiving freedoms. Specifically because, like Donald Trump, he wants to begin silencing people for their speech in relation to protesting against Israel and their genocide of Palacidians, especially if you are an immigrant or someone on a student visa, and these policies you can see they're a disaster after the fact, and people I think wake up to them like Americans are right now when they realize Trump's actually

doing it. But you know, make no mistake, it doesn't require, you know, too long of the increase in out wealth and equality for people to look for an answer because they're not being listened to by the libs or the liberals here.

to really regain trust in the voters. And yeah, it's going to be tough because I think, like for the Progressives in Canada, it's kind of been convenient for the Liberals to have a minority government because then they need to work with ENDPT.

enacting progressive policies. But it's the Liberals who are also equally as good at taking credit for all the things that people have come to really like, such as having dental care for the first time and having cheaper firementcare and stuff like that.

you know, a separate country. Now, this was an election that was previously about liberal stagnation and wanting change in economic policy. This was kind of leading the conservative popular support the past two three years, and very suddenly this whole election changed and it became about to who Canada trusted to oppose Trump and who Canadians wanted to be like the face of Canada in this new global trade war and this fight against a hostile neighbor. And Trump

did not help this. On election morning, Trump released a statement basically endorsing himself as the leader of Canada.

how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access, with no border, all positives, with no negatives. It was meant to be. America can no longer subsidize Canada with hundreds of billions of dollars a year that we've been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a state.

see this in some polling stats. On Trump's inauguration day, the Conservatives in Canada were leading forty four point eight percent in the polls compared to the Liberals twenty one point nine percent to end the NDP's seventeen point six But as Liberals searched for a new leader and as Trump took office, the Conservative lead slowly started to slip.

The CID began referring to Canada as the fifty first state, called the Prime minister quote unquote governor, and threatened to impose huge tariffs to stop a non existent fentanyl smuggling crisis through the Canadian US border. By April, the Conservative lead had fully flipped over to the Liberals, who rose to forty four percent in the polls, Conservatives falling to thirty seven percent and the NDP around eight point five. And these are pretty close to the final results. This

number is very accurate for liberal support. Conservatives got a little bit more than thirty six percent of the vote and NDP got a little bit less than this eight point five. This is according to data from CBC and Abacus this was very much a leader's election, meaning that one of the biggest factors driving votes was who people wanted the prime minister to be, and Mark Carney is much more popular despite being kind of an unknown figure, which kind of actually helps in popularity, Carney's was so

much more popular than Polyiev. The past three months, Carney has steadily gained in popularity, getting forty six percent approval, whereas Polyiev has slowly declined in popularity. I talked about this a little bit with Lance, but the degree to which he's aligned himself with this like anti woke, like far right populism rhetoric really bit him in the ass

these past few months. He would have done fine against Trudeau, certainly, he was really writing off that like anti incumbent wave, but he is not like a loved figure across Canadian politics, even among some conservatives. The two most important factors driving Canadians vote, according to Abacus, was reducing cost of living

and dealing with Donald Trump. Younger voters seem to be more focused on cost of living and changing policy, around fifty seven percent of voters eighteen to twenty nine, while older voters around fifty six percent of boomers were more concerned about stopping Trump. The very first topic in the Canadian Prime Minister debate was tariffs and US threats to Canadian sovereignty. This is seen as like a very real issue up there, and like hatred against the US is

genuinely growing, like like people are very upset. Canadians are very upset about what Trump and the US has been doing. It's being seen as like a genuine like like intense betrayal. The by Canada movement's been gaining a lot of support with people trying to only purchase Canadian products and this has resulted in a real cultural moment in Canada united against the United States.

we're used to. And obviously Trump is training that for a lot of people, and like in a very negative way. And so you and as Garrison said, like the politics of personality is becoming more important, like voting specifically for individuals who they think will have like the negotiating ability or just break or like whatever it is to stand up to Trump.

other Western nation. He is genuinely good at his job of being like a neoliberal like bank economy guy, and specifically with these tariffs. This is the guy that you want to handle this global trade crisis because this is like what he has done his entire life. He's never been elected to office before. He is just an economy guy.

And we saw this in like head to head matchups with Carnie versus Polier rating certain things like finding common ground to solve a dispute, where carne was twelve points ahead adding up to a bully Carney's eight points ahead. Managing household expenses Carney six points ahead. Sitting beside you on a long airplane flight Carneie six points ahead. Captaining a ship through a rough storm Carneie five points ahead.

Carnee Carney came out. I'm going to read a few lines from Carnee's celebration acceptance speech here, and I'm just gonna read them and not play clips because he blends English and French and that's going to be annoying. No offense to our French speakers out there. Yeah, Garrison, it's gonna be annoying to play for a podcast. It's not gonna do for the kbra Qua crowd quote. America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. These are

not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us, so America can own us. That will never happen. We are once again at one of those hinge moments of history. Our old relationship with the United States, relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for a country

for decades, is over. But it is also our new reality. We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves and above all, we have to take

care of each other. When I sit down with President Trump, it will be to discuss the future economic and security relationship between two sovereign nations, and it will be with our full knowledge that we have many, many other options than the United States to build prosperity for all Canadians. We will strengthen our relations with reliable partners in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. And if the United States no longer wants to be in the forefront of the global economy.

Canada will unquote and yeah, this is the type of rhetoric that's going to be I think successful in Canada right now and probably in the next few decades. Is Canada is going to try to take the spot that America used to hold as like the center of like global power, especially with climate change, with you know, crop crops slowly slowly needed to be moved north. I think as as as global warm progresses, Canada is in a spot to be like a new emergent like world power.

And with the degree to which America is just kind of giving up that role under Trump, remarkable, someone like Carney is very interested in in gaining that degree of superiority. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna read a few comments from our listeners who I asked to send over their thoughts on the Canadian election. And yes, this is a limited sample, sask It's based on the politics of people who listen to this show. But I still think there's some interesting

points here outlining what's happened in this election. Quote Mark Karney might not be far enough left for my tastes, but he immediately made gas cheaper, a tangible improvement for my brokeass, and with the way he's been pulling, I'm settling on voting for him to keep the Conservatives out with their stated anti woke agenda parenthesis bigoted. Not like

I have much choice. I would have loved to be picking here about my vote, but I don't feel confident in the NDP or the Greens to come out on top of the cons Another person said, quote, I can't believe the country seems to be rallying around a neoliberal central banker in the face of American fascism, But our resentment to the US seems to kind of override all other political considerations. So much of the way this election is panning out is a display of our culture's profound

inability to take necessary risks. We're running scared to the serious administrator, man in the blind hope things will be safe and normal again. When he fails, will take a late and stupid risk again. Unquote. And this is something I've seen other people express, is like with this kind of Obama esque, you know, serious man in charge, this like return of neoliberalism. Will this just set the stage for like the material conditions for someone like Trump to

emerge in the next ten years. This is a fear that I've seen people express. I don't think it is an inevitability, because this is not America in twenty twelve or twenty sixteen. This is Canada in twenty twenty five. The world is different, but I can understand this fear. Lastly, I'll read one other comment or from Blue Sky quote. I understand the drive to keep the Conservative Party out of office, but I'm also terrified of what the Liberal Party will do to this country if they can keep

campaigning on that very basis in perpetuity. It's good that we will probably avoid the worst. It's terrible that progress is on hold until the Conservative Party is no longer a contender, which could take decades. I also do not expect the Liberal Party to meaningfully change the conditions that are pushing voters towards reactionary politics. To be again with

unquote so kind of a similar sentiment there. I think that the role for progressives in Canada right now is either to rebuild the NDP or infiltrate the Liberals, probably rebuilding NDP in most cases because they are going to have to have new leadership and seriously reevaluate their strategies going forward. James Any notes here, I guess, yeah, I.

genocide in Gaza, right. And this fear that a lot of other nations in the global north right, like these liberal economies are feeling, is going to lead to lots of that, like, yes, we need a serious man like we needed, we need a statesman to stand up to Trump, and that's going to reinforce a lot of that neoliberal orthodoxy, and that's going to make it very hard to make any meaningful progress to electoral politics in those countries for the next few years, which sucks.

a different country than the United States. And I think what we can see here is that this Canadian election, although it was close, it still was a rejection of Trump's style polities. Most Canadians do not want Canada to

go the way of America. There's there's been a subset of Canadians, especially in Alberta and and and Saskatchewan, who have been trying to push for this like mega style like Canada first rhetoric and and this was denied I think you were seeing more support for conservatives under Doug Ford. With this more like moderate conservatism. I think that's something

to like watch out for more. But like this, this Trump style of politics was was rejected across the country and and Carney was able to figure out a way to make people trust him to be a genuine like combatant against against Trump and and usher in a new a new golden age of neoliberal trade in the face of Trump's Trump's chaotic and and anti market sentiments.

throw trans people under the bus and like that that will be like a deciding factor in their support.

it could have been worse. Is it is odd to see Canada almost accidentally replicate America's two party system. So even if this was a rejection of Trump style politics, this this this climate of fear did result in replicating America's two party system, which is kind of interesting the amount of which, like the third parties lost support, with support going just towards conservatives and liberals. That is, you know,

one of the big stories of this election. The the NDP blowout one of the big stories and pauliev losing his seat. I think is it is at least the very least a nice cherry on top for this for this election.