Before I start in on this week’s abbreviated blog, you should know that I wasn’t actually going to do one this week as I found myself struck down by some teenager imported plague for mist of the week. How bad was it? Well, I actually worked from home for two days (until I got kicked out) and slept in a separate room (an actual room, not just falling asleep watching endless hours of hockey).
Not to mention that I was pretty choked that having to do that stupid election blog last week prevented me from reviving one of my favourite annual traditions – the NFL Draft blog where I help people and countries select what they need. Kinda like an election I suppose, except I am in control.
Speaking of the NFL draft and elections, there sure are a lot of lessons from the draft that could be applied to the election results.
Like what you may ask?
Well. first of all there is the spectacle of Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders’ fall from grace. A consensus first round pick who dropped round after round. Kinda like Pierre Poilievre who I guess never caught on enough as a “leader” and like Shedeur being rejected because of the circus that comes with being Deion Sanders’ kid, maybe a certain group of voters rejected Poilievre because of the perceived circus that comes with the fringe right and the convoy hangover. Unlike Poilievre who lost his seat, Sanders did get drafted, but it was by Cleveland so it’s kinda the same.
Or the first overall pick, Cam Ward out of Florida. He’s not a generational talent. And he’s going to a mediocre team. But they really needed a leader and a QB and he was the best available and he will fort sure make the Titans better – he would be hard-pressed to make them worse. Kinda the same way with Canada. Mediocre. Stagnant. Canadians selected Carney, who may not have even been the best player in the draft but he’s a safe pick and he’s not going to make the country worse.
The best part of the NFL draft of course is the last pick, the player called “Mr. Irrelevant” (sports can be cruel). Most of the time this player is famous only because of where they were picked – as a footnote – and rarely make a roster. Sometimes it’s Brock Purdy who as the exception to the rule takes you to a Super Bowl. This year’s Mr. Irrelevant analoguous politician is Jagmeet Singh, who will now be nothing more than a footnote.
Alright, enough of that torture. Time to do the post mortem on this most unlikely election. What happened, how did my prediction go. Is the world going to come to an end? And what is up with these Wexit people?
First off, my predictions were as follows:
Solid Liberal Majority.
Liberals 185
Conservatives 132
NDP 2
Bloc 24
Green 0
Independent 0
PPC – thanks for playing, now go away.
The actual results were different in a surprising way
Solid Liberal Minority.
Liberals 168
Conservatives 144
NDP 7
Bloc 23
Green 1
Independent 0
PPC – thanks for playing, now go away.
So what happened? Well first off the NDP didn’t flat-line as much as I expected, so add 5 seats to the 168 the Liberals won. That last Bloc Seat was a LPC/Bloc toss up determined by 44 votes so that’s an add and the Green seat would likely go LPC if not Green so one more. So that’s 175 and a majority if my NDP meltdown had been as absolute but they eked it out.
Clearly the CPC did better than I expected and that was at the expense of the Liberals and mainly in Ontario except of course, famously, in Carleton where Pierre Poilievre was defeated by the super well-organized and locally popular LPC candidate Bruce Fanjoy. No one will ever know if the recent redistricting of that riding played a role – maybe the demographics shifted and there were more civil servants who didn’t want to be laid off in a Poilievre-led Canadian version of DOGE, or if the pandering to the convoy crowd was still an electoral memory or if the residents simply got tired of Pierre after 20 years. But he got beat. And it was decisive. I am somewhat happy to see him own it in the aftermath, unlike the conspiracy trolls on the interwebs who are blaming a ballot with lots of names. And high turnout. Hmm – my experience is a high turnout means people wanted change.
At any rate, now we have a duly elected Minority LPC government led by shiny new MP and Prime Minister Mark Carney. Congratulations to them, now it’s time to get to work.
And there is a lot of work to do.
I know I’m not in government, but here’s some free and unsolicited advice.
Free Advice!
First off, the electorate clearly split the vote between the Conservatives and the Liberals.
The vote percentages were at generational highs for both parties and combined popular vote for the two main parties is the highest since the 1950’s.
Voters (aside from Quebec, blah blah blah) kicked the fringe parties to the curb and even in Quebec the Bloc saw its seat count drop by 10 (a third).
This means that the vast majority of Canadians want either what the LPC or the CPC are selling or some combination.
My read? Canadians want change. They like a lot of what the CPC were suggesting policy wise, but they rejected the leader as too brash or not economically up to the moment, given the alternative. Based on pre-election and pre-Trump polls, Canadians clearly rejected the pre-Carney leader (what’s his name again?) and policies but, when presented with the Trump and tariff factor thought that even if they aren’t super keen on continuing the policy direction, they liked what the new leader had to offer and decided to give him the chance. With minority strings.
Canadians want the CPC and the LPC to work together and have repudiated the other parties. This is what needs to happen.
Rather than do some cynical and fake majority buying scheme that elevates NDP MP’s to a level of prominence Canadians didn’t want them to have, the Carney government should find a way to work with the CPC on areas of mutual interest to put the country on the path to success we all really want.
What does this mean? It means continuing to steal the policy platform ideas that people like as the LPC did during the election campaign. It means reaching across the aisle to ask for electoral peace for a period of time to allow the government to address the existential threats posed by a Tariff and Trade War addicted Trump administration.
It means allowing the CPC to run an early and uncontested by-election to get their leader back in Parliament so that a proper opposition can exist, because right now your opposition is Danielle Smith in Alberta.
It means giving up, however briefly, that LPC need to win at all costs and look for ways to be Pan-Canadian.
Maybe it actually means reaching out to Alberta and Danielle Smith to address their ongoing issues and pour some cold water on the very real burgeoning support for Wexit.
The LPC won 9 seats in Alberta (2), Saskatchewan (1) and Manitoba (6) combined. That’s either a problem you want to fix or a wedge you want to exploit for Central and Eastern Canadian electoral gain. For the last 10 years it has been the wedge. Might be time to try something new.
It also means not allowing the Bloc to have the balance of power anymore. A “unity” or at peace government will not need to keep bending over backward to appease separatists. Give the Western Canadian blue bloc a voice and marginalize the Quebec Bloc. It’s a winning strategy.
Next up – go meet Trump. Have a meal, a photo op, an awkwardly interminable press conference. Have a private meeting where you will realize he really isn’t that well-informed about international trade. Agree to negotiate a new deal, which he will announce as a done deal and then return to Ottawa to organize for the trade deal negotiation of all trade deal negotiations.
But don’t be in a hurry. The US is a monster trading partner and has a lot of leverage over Canada. But they have made the trade war too broad and too chaotic and too fast moving. The chickens are coming home to roost. Let them feel their self-imposed pain. The poll numbers, as bad as they are now, can only get worse when the shelves start to be empty. Especially when consumers realize that it’s only American shelves that are empty. Watch as X explodes about the lack of blueberries at grocery stores and point out that we have lots on Canadian shelves.
Negotiation takes patience, time and leverage. Use all three to our advantage.
In any negotiation you need to be Sherry the Nanny and not Jack Donaghy
This is the end of my preliminary advice to the new Prime Minister. I’m sure there will be more in the years to come.
