It’s being called the most important, consequential, crucial, meaningful and bizarre election in modern Canadian history. It’s riding a wave of very un-Canadian-like nationalism, one that’s even seeing Bloc Québécois supporters migrate—perhaps temporarily—toward one of the two major parties. It’s got Canadians’ elbows up and, with the notable exception of Preston Manning’s perennial threat of Western secession—woefully unsupported by numbers—parading in-your-face pride of place.
What remains to be seen is whether it’ll be enough to actually drive Canadians to vote in greater numbers than their abysmal turnout in federal elections, maybe cracking the 70-per-cent mark, a result not seen since 1988.
At the dawn of the new year, no one imagined this election would be touch and go. Smart money was on a truculent Trudeau clinging to power and leading the Liberal party to the bottom of the ocean on the good ship Hubris, a slaughter reminiscent to the one the Progressive Conservatives suffered at the end of the Mulroney era.
That was then. This is now.
In the final Days of Trudeau, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre enjoyed a 25-point lead in the polls. As of last weekend, that lead had not only evaporated but the new Liberal leader, Mark Carney, was outpolling PP by a consistent five to seven points.
Three things happened during that period. First, the reality of the U.S. playing its Trump card sunk in. An all-out assault against friends and allies, coupled with aggravating threats against the sovereignty of Canada and other “friendly” nations and economic war against the entire world awakened Canadians to a new world order, one far more threatening than anything faced since the end of the Second World War.
The new kid on the block, Carney, enjoyed a rep for being a calm, successful, economically savvy guy who seemed more likely to steer the ship of state through the turbulence ahead.
Finally, the unpleasantness of Poilievre, his everything-is-broken screed against the Liberals, was seen as a condemnation of Canada. His MAGA-lite populism, his high school denigration of those opposing him, his general attack dog demeanour wore thin with situational Conservatives who’d put a foot in that camp out of disgust with Trudeau. The natural governing party called them home.
This election, at least at the top of the ticket, is going to come down to an assessment of who Canadians think has the skills, the ability and the moral compass to guide Canada through the acid trip of Trump’s reality.
With the NDP sinking below 10 per cent in polls, we have the two-party race with the Bloc close behind and the Green and Peoples parties running near the flatline of irrelevance.
But we don’t get to vote for the party leaders. We get to vote for the candidates running in our riding. Our politics are local... or should be. Voting a party line because of the leaders isn’t uncommon but it’s in our best interest to vote for the person we believe will best serve our interests, whether in government or opposition.
In Sea to Sky country, that comes down to voting to re-elect our current MP, Patrick Weiler, or voting for his Conservative opponent, Keith Roy. Hopefully at this point, few are seriously considering making their vote irrelevant by embracing the also-rans.
Patrick Weiler has served this riding for five years now. He’s been a very effective MP, an honest politician and a hard worker for this riding. In the three-plus decades I’ve lived here, we haven’t enjoyed a more productive MP.
He has shown an independent streak, being an early voice calling for Justin Trudeau to step down. He has delivered for our riding, from north to south, east to west.
The money governments scatter around the country tends to find its way to communities where the local MP has a strong voice. In our corridor, Pemberton, Whistler and Squamish have received more than $200 million, by way of low-cost loans and grants, through an alphabet soup of governmental programs, the vast majority of which has gone into creating supportive and below-market housing.
Millions more have been spent in other communities—Bowen Island, Gibsons, West Vancouver, communities on the Sunshine Coast. Those funds and the projects they helped build didn’t get there by gravity. They were deployed because we had a powerful voice advocating for the residents of this riding.
Regardless of your disdain for the many faults of the Trudeau era, it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. There has been major support for families. The Canada Child Benefit has directly reduced the level of poverty across the country. Many more families are paying far less for child care because of the rollout—by no means universal—of $10/day child care. Small businesses have seen tax rates reduced.
All these programs and more have left the Liberal government open to charges of spending like drunken sailors. The reality is, deficits are the straw man of the opposition. Once in power, the concern fades. And the last government to run a balanced budget was, oh yeah, the one Jean Chrétien headed.
Patrick has been both humble and honest, unafraid to admit there are things he’d like to accomplish that just aren’t possible at this time. He has under-promised and over-delivered.
I don’t know what kind of MP Keith Roy would be. I only know what he says he supports. And, frankly, it doesn’t make sense to me. He continues to hold the party line that pretty much everything in Canada is broken... and broken by the Liberal government.
He trots out the usual Conservative nostrums—reducing personal income taxes, reducing corporate taxes, reducing capital gains tax, remove GST on new homes selling for under a certain price, getting tough on crime, returning Canada’s place in the world as hewers of wood and drawers of water, fast-tracking mining and LNG projects.
He also says the Party will bring in a dollar-for-dollar spending law, requiring every new dollar spent be offset with a dollar of savings elsewhere. I’m unsure how he or his party square the billions of dollars of tax savings their promises will cost the treasury with cuts elsewhere. Or maybe it’s just new spending that counts. I believe one economist used to describe this as voodoo economics.
Even for the most cynical among us, those who believe elections always come down to voting for the lesser of two evils or voting for the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know, we know the devilish success Patrick Weiler has been as our MP. I look forward to his return to office after the 28th.
