{"id":64375,"date":"2021-09-21T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=64375"},"modified":"2021-09-21T10:54:33","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T14:54:33","slug":"lorinc-2021-was-a-tale-of-two-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2021\/09\/21\/lorinc-2021-was-a-tale-of-two-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: 2021 vote was a tale of two elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the dying days of an election no one wanted, four themes dominated: the split on the left, the split on the right, the apparent re-awakening of Quebec separatism, and the alleged pointlessness of this exercise, which, really, was a leitmotif<\/em> throughout.<\/p>\n

Voter irritation was clearly on the ballot, but not enough to keep people from exercising their franchise. What else can you say about a contest that featured three-hour line-ups to vote? As for Shachi Kurl\u2019s question at the English language debate<\/a>, it transpired that this query did not flip seats or resurrect the ghost of Rene Levesque. The Bloc gained just two ridings, proving that the Kurl controversy was much more of a pundit talking point than a loosened bolder.<\/p>\n

The vote splits on the left and right, however, could well define Canada for years to come, and the implications of these two elections within an election are worth unpacking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Election on the Left<\/h3>\n

Jagmeet Singh, I would argue, wakes up this morning as the most powerful political leader in Canada. He got to the place Jack Layton wanted to be, just by a different path.<\/p>\n

Numerically, the next parliament won\u2019t be significantly different than the previous one, and Singh, during the two years between 2019 and now, supported a Liberal program that was left-leaning, yet time limited. But as Liberal king-maker Gerry Butts said on CBC last night, Justin Trudeau\u2019s Liberals, now well aware of the risk they took in calling this election, are planning to govern for four years, meaning they\u2019ll have to go out of their way to make an alliance with the NDP work.<\/p>\n

A centre-left minority has never held power continuously in Canada for six years, so we\u2019re in uncharted territory, particularly because deficits are not, for the time being, spooking voters or markets. Consequently, Singh can press a progressive agenda, and the Liberals can, in theory, break with the old tradition of campaigning left and governing right.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s way too soon to tell how this dynamic will express itself: National pharmacare? Higher taxes on the wealthy? Employment or pay equity? I\u2019d expect at least some of the above.<\/p>\n

However, to my mind, a centre-left coalition has a unique opportunity to not only make significant progress on the ur-issue<\/em> of our time \u2013 climate change \u2013 but also to find a way to definitively re-shape climate politics in Alberta as we move towards key milestones in the Paris Accords.<\/p>\n

Alberta\u2019s reactionary and petulant petro-politics, expressed in its most flagrant form by Premier Jason Kenney, has profoundly distorted Canadian politics and therefore our ability to meet our climate obligations. Obviously, there have been other factors \u2014 $100\/barrel oil, just a few years back \u2014 but the province\u2019s one-party-rule for the past half century has created a culture that produced, in Kenney, the most venal leadership I have ever seen in a Canadian politician.<\/p>\n

Yet as global energy markets and investors bet ever more heavily against bitumen, the political influence of Western Canada\u2019s oil and gas sector has begun to ebb rapidly. I\u2019d say the Liberals and NDP could, if they chose, deploy every fiscal, monetary and labour force lever at their disposal to dramatically boost the province\u2019s clean energy and environmental remediation sectors.<\/p>\n

The creation of thousands of new blue-collar jobs \u2014 in the clean-up of abandoned oil rigs, for instance, or the development of carbon capture facilities \u2014 plus the investment\/innovation opportunities in renewable energy could transform the vicious cycle of Alberta politics into a virtuous circle.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a best-before date-stamp on this moment, which means Singh and Trudeau need to hive off climate into a separate category of coalition negotiations, and seize every chance to move as quickly as possible. The climate, in short, must not become a bargaining chip between now and 2025.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Election on the Right<\/h3>\n

While the final tallies aren\u2019t in yet, you don\u2019t need to look too far to find examples of Liberal victories, especially in Ontario, that turned on vote splits on the right. In several ridings in the exurban southern and central parts of the province, the People\u2019s Party delaminated enough votes from Conservative candidates to produce, as Erin O\u2019Toole warned, Liberal wins.<\/p>\n

This outcome triggered memories of a weird period in Canadian politics, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when self-appointed emissaries \u2014 among them David Frum, Ken Whyte and a Reformer named Stephen Harper \u2014 sought to patch up the rift on the right (Reform vs Progressive Conservatives) that enabled successive Liberal majorities.<\/p>\n

The so-called Unite-the-Right movement eventually produced Stockwell Day\u2019s short-lived Canadian Alliance and finally the Conservative Party of Canada, which sought to paper over the deep split in right-of-centre national politics. In the 1980s, Brian Mulroney achieved this unity through his charm and also his ability to forge alliances with a less extreme generation of Alberta politicians.<\/p>\n

From the early to mid-2000s, Harper managed a similar result, but only because he was a highly tactical strongman leader as opposed to a schmoozer like Mulroney.<\/p>\n

I fully expect that a new unite-the-right movement will bob to the surface of conservative politics in the coming months and years, as an alternative to the civil war that has consumed the Republican Party since the days of the Tea Party.<\/p>\n

The outcome of whatever brokering takes place will eventually form a national government. Perhaps O\u2019Toole will be allowed to spend the next few years figuring out how to expand the appeal of the more moderate Conservative Party he presented during this race. Or maybe, as the Toronto Star<\/a><\/em> reported two days ago, the knives are already unsheathed, with potential successors arguing that O\u2019Toole\u2019s gambit didn\u2019t work. And then there will be those who seek to bring Maxime Bernier\u2019s prodigal son party back into the fold.<\/p>\n

Point is, it\u2019s not difficult to envision a hard-right version of the Conservatives emerging from this moment, and positioning itself to unseat the Liberals in 2025, when many voters will be hankering for a change of political scenery, no matter how self-destructive, as happened when Ford Nation defeated Kathleen Wynne\u2019s Liberals in Ontario in 2018.<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to the Liberal\/NDP approach to the climate in the years to come. If these two parties can find a way to meaningfully re-boot the Western Canadian resource economy \u2014 and do so without letting the perfect become the enemy of the good — it\u2019s possible that Alberta\u2019s fear- and anger-infused politics could begin to dissipate as voters no longer see green as short-hand for permanent unemployment.<\/p>\n

If and when that shift happens or at least begins to gather momentum, Conservative politics \u2014 bought and paid for by the oil-and-gas-sector for so long \u2014 will have to shift, too, and perhaps re-emerge as a viable right-of-centre alternative in the era of global warming.<\/p>\n

photos courtesy of each political party<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the dying days of an election no one wanted, four themes dominated: the split on the left, the split on the right, the apparent re-awakening of Quebec separatism, and the alleged pointlessness of this exercise, which, really, was a leitmotif throughout. Voter irritation was clearly on the ballot, but not enough to keep peopleContinue reading “LORINC: 2021 vote was a tale of two elections”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":64384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: 2021 vote was a tale of two elections - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2021\/09\/21\/lorinc-2021-was-a-tale-of-two-elections\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: 2021 vote was a tale of two elections - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the dying days of an election no one wanted, four themes dominated: the split on the left, the split on the right, the apparent re-awakening of Quebec separatism, and the alleged pointlessness of this exercise, which, really, was a leitmotif throughout. 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