Canadians are agitated. They’re upset. They’re perturbed by the state of what remains a largely polite and accommodating country.
On Monday, they arranged for Liberals to finally get some good news. Not the ones in Ottawa, who remain about as happy and organized as a load of cattle on the way to the slaughterhouse. What they got was a glorious victory in New Brunswick, ousting Blaine Higgs and his Conservatives, even plucking away the suddenly ex-premier’s own seat in what the CBC described as a “red tide.”
Obviously, no one told the CBC that oceanographers describe a red tide as a harmful occurrence in which “colonies of algae — plant-like organisms that live in the sea and freshwater — grow out of control while producing toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals and birds.”
No matter. Liberals were ecstatic. The tide (sorry) had turned. Happy days are here again. Sunny ways are working. Look out Tories, Liberals are on the march!
Except, uh, maybe not. Way over at the other end of the country, progressivism and all its accoutrements were being issued a very firm shellacking. It’s no longer possible to spurn the B.C. Liberal party, which dissolved itself after it became obvious that hardly anyone wanted to vote for it.
What happened instead is that after seven years of leftish government, first via an NDP-Green alliance, then an all-New Democrat majority, British Columbia voters had had enough progress for now, thank you very much, and indicated they’d greatly appreciate something better. The NDP majority evaporated as they came within one seat of defeat to the Conservatives, smoked by a party that attracted less then two per cent of the vote the last time an election was held.
Far from accepting the public’s verdict, B.C. Premier David Eby, who delivered this result after less than two years in office, showed no sign of complying with voters’ wishes. He has no plans to resign. Instead he professed to have grasped that “we need to do better,” and apparently still believes he’s the guy to lead the charge.
Given that he now commands fewer than half the seats, he’ll have to find his way back to the corner of the legislature where the Greens keep their offices and offer a new round of favours in return for the two votes they can provide to keep him just barely off the chopping block.
Who knows, the Greens might even go for it. The last time the NDP came calling, in 2017, Green Leader Andrew Weaver struck a power-sharing deal that succeeded in squeezing a few juicy concessions for his troops. But Weaver says negotiations might be a bit more complicated this time around, given that the Greens’ current leader lost her own seat and wasn’t pleased when Eby launched a public appeal late in the campaign to steal away Green supporters.
You could argue that the demise of B.C.’s Liberals is being replicated in Ottawa, where the polling numbers are so bad for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government that some members of his caucus have finally summoned the courage to hold a meeting with him and openly state their views.
Given that this is a democratic country and there are 152 Liberal MPs to only one prime minister, it shouldn’t be ground-breaking for such a large crowd to make known its concerns, but this is a party that’s so frightened of upsetting its boss and his phalanx of protective aides that it took months of muted grumbling and escalating press leaks for the prime minister to agree to sit in the same room and listen to his team complain about the job he’s doing.
Still, Liberals be Liberals, so even in rebellion everyone was desperately determined to keep their remarks secret, hide the dissenters’ identities and pretend for all they’re worth that the obvious signs of revolt were nothing more than a healthy debate among colleagues.
After listening to dozens of MPs share their dissatisfaction with the state of the party, including a document outlining the reasons he should resign, Trudeau emerged to stride past a throng of waiting reporters, put on a jaunty grin and declare that “the Liberal Party is strong and united.”
He did agree to reflect on the situation, and did so all the way until the next morning, when he categorically rejected the complaints and indicated his only concern was “how I can best lead the Liberal party forward.”
That’s the way things work in Canada, where people may harbour strong opinions but as a country have trouble getting anything done about it. Eby took a party that enjoyed a 29-seat gap over the next largest party and, even after that party ceased to exist, came within a whisker of defeat, yet still wants to remain premier and may well do so, if he can find a member of the Green party willing and able to save his bacon.
Trudeau is miles back in the polls, struggling with a caucus revolt and facing a deadline from the Bloc Québécois, which gave him until Tuesday to accede to its legislative demands or lose its support for his minority. That would force the prime minister to make nice with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who just last month withdrew his party’s support on the basis that, “The Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people.”
Does he mean it? Is he willing to put his caucus where his mouth is? Maybe we’ll find out. Or maybe everyone involved will just go on as if nothing had happened, and Canadians can continue wishing for change while their leaders nod their heads and play out the string for as long as they can get away with it.
National Post