[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Barrister]

Sorry. I don't read the NHL thread after the Leafs bow out, normally in April😞

I knew you were in Alberta. Not sure why I thought Calgary. Now I know😁

Sucks about your mom and I hope all gets resolved sooner than later

I think they said it would be like 5 weeks.  Which sucks in the middle of summer.

[Barrister]

The big story, of course, is that the former BC Liberals (big tent Lib + Con party) rebranded themselves as the BC United Party, only to be challenged by a new party from the right: the BC Conservatives.

There was some chats about a potential merger, to avoid splitting the anti-NDP vote, but so far it hasn't materialized. In general, the BC Cons have taken the place as the main contender with BCUP facing oblivion.

So yes - in FPTP a divided right (or left) can be death.  That's how we got so many years of Liberal rule in the 1990s.  Or how the Alberta NDP came into power because of a divided right / collapse in Liberal voting.

Merging two parties is hard though - and definitely not enough time to do it by October.  We actually saw something like this in ALberta in 2015.  The PCs of course had been in power for something like 30+ years, but the major pressure was coming from the right-wing Wildrose Alliance.  So the PCs arranged a back-room deal with (get this) Danielle Smith, leader of Wildrose.  Smith and most of her caucus joined the PCs in order to try and unify the parties.

The thing is - nobody liked this.  Wildrose supporters felt like it was a sellout of their party.  PC supporters didn't like that they were bringing in these "crazy" right-wingers.  And it all felt highly undemocratic.

In the follow up election PC support evaporated, Wildrose still did reasonably well - and the divided opposition allowed the NDP to win.

It's a little different in BC because the NDP are the incumbents, but seems like similar vibes.



By the way - I think after voting NDP in our last election, I've been mildly surprised by Danielle Smith's government.  She hasn't pushed some of her nuttier ideas from the election campaign.  She passed the Sovereignty Act, but hasn't used it.  She hasn't moved on an Alberta police force or pension plan.  She came out with a controversial policy on trans kids but it actually seemed fairly sensible.  I don't have to decide anything yet but I feel like I might return to the UCP fold.

[crazy canuck]

Jacob, one quibble.  The BC Conservative party is not new.  They have been around for a very long time.  It's just that they never got any meaningful support because the coalition party of the right (First the Social Credit Party and then after they collapsed, the "Liberal" party) took all those votes.

But the name change has turned into a disaster for the coalition party.  And now the BC Conservatives have life.

[Jacob]

Fair enough, CC. The BC Conservative Party was already moribund when I came to BC, so I never realized it existed.

[Jacob]

Beeb - yeah the merger talks are finished. IIRC it went something like this: when the BC Cons first started gaining a bit of momentum (a few BCUP defectors + some percentage points) they reached out to BCUP and were rejected. Later, when the BC Cons had passed the BCUP in the polls BCUP reached out and were rejected. Then there were stories about it, with both sides trash talking the other.

... so unlikely to happen, both for reasons of timing as you point out, but also - it seems - for personality reasons.

[crazy canuck]

Fair enough, CC. The BC Conservative Party was already moribund when I came to BC, so I never realized it existed.

Well yes, it's been moribund since the 1950s.  But there have been enough extreme right wingers around to keep it alive. 

[Jacob]

That I know

[Josephus]

Federal Conservatives win in byelection in Toronto riding always known to be a Liberal stronghold.

[crazy canuck]

That is going to add some urgency to the Trudeau must go movement

In BC political news the NDP attack add is interesting, they too have realized they need to remind voters that the leaders of both the BC United and B.C. Conservative parties were B.C. Liberals.

[Barrister]

So always be careful in assessing by-election results but:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-liberals-byelection-loss-1.7245731

The riding of Toronto-St Paul's has been Liberal since 1993.  Even in the 2011 electoral disaster the Liberals held this riding.  The Liberals won it by 24 points in 2021.  The Conservatives haven't elected a single MP in "urban Toronto" since 2011.

But the Conservatives won in Toronto St-Paul's last night.

[Valmy]

Trudeau should have resigned years ago. He has been in office too long anyway.

Not sure what he is doing, besides just trying to stay PM for as long as possible just for its own sake.

[Barrister]

Trudeau should have resigned years ago. He has been in office too long anyway.

Not sure what he is doing, besides just trying to stay PM for as long as possible just for its own sake.

A couple different things are at work - I think.  Be warned that armchair psychoanalyzing is almost always a bad idea, but I'm going to do it anyways for S&Gs.

1. No obvious successor.  There's nobody with enough profile just waiting in the wings.  Remember the party was in the wilderness before electing Trudeau.  The names thrown around are Mark Carney or Chrystia Freeland - both of whom are smart and capable people but neither of whom have any public profile or base of support.

2. They believe their own advertising.  Trudeau really does view Poilievre as a Trump-like figure, and thinks in an election campaign enough people will realize it.

3. Hubris.  It catches up to a lot of people.  Trudeau was under-estimated for so much of his political career - since as a total light-weight, yet brought back the mighty Liberal machine to power and proved his critics wrong.  He has some reason to think he can do it again.

4. What else is he going to do?  He's still a relatively young man, age 52.  He's pretty unlikely to go back to teaching.  He's separated from his wife, so "spending more time with his family" doesn't seem plausible.

5. Harper did it.  I think this is least likely, but thought I'd mention it.  In 2015 the polls for the Conservatives weren't good.  Nowhere near as bad as they are now for the Liberals, but bad.  Harper though went out to fight the election, rather than do a late resignation and hand the party off to a sacrificial lamb.

So like I said - armchair psychoanalyzing is usually a pretty bad idea.  I've never met Trudeau, I have no particular insights on him.  But this is what I'm guessing.

[Sheilbh]

Also inertia. It is very, very easy for parties (and leaders) watch their oncoming doom and not do anything. It's not necessarily the wrong choice - but doing nothing is always the easier option than doing something.

From a Brit perspective you think of Labour in 2010 when it was clear the public didn't like Brown, when it was clear Labour were doing really badly there were lots of rumours of plots, lots of princelings waiting for their go. But in a weird way it was almost like there just wasn't the energy left to go through with a leadership change.

[Grey Fox]

There's also the natural cycle to take into account. Even with another leader the Liberals have only a slim chance to win the next election. Might as well wait after it to pitch your tent for the leadership.

Also, JT saved the party in 2015. That still means a lot.

[Sheilbh]

There's also the natural cycle to take into account. Even with another leader the Liberals have only a slim chance to win the next election. Might as well wait after it to pitch your tent for the leadership.

And on this another side on BB's point 1 - I think that even if you want to take over, you might think it would be better to let Trudeau own the defeat and come in with a clean slate.