Trudeau in trouble?
[Hat tip: commenter “Bob Wilson.”]
Could it be a portent of things to come?:
A Liberal stronghold for thirty years and one of the ridings that helped squeak out a minority government for Trudeau in the last election, swung Conservative in last night’s Toronto-St. Pauls by-election. This is most certainly a sign of things to come in the next general election, scheduled for late 2025.
Late 2025 is awfully late, though.
Canada has a parliamentary system, and Trudeau’s present government is a coalition. The left isn’t going to relinquish power easily, and so there’s talk of a tighter coalition next time: a Liberal/NDP merger. The NDP has never formed a Canadian government and stands to the left of Trudeau’s party. Sounds great. A merger, however, would create a stronger force – and an even more leftist one. So whereas Trudeau may not be the head of such a party, it’s possible it would be led by someone even worse and more leftist.
At least, as a bona fide non-expert on Canadian politics, that’s my take.
If such a merger were to occur, though, I’m not sure it would be all that strong, because if it moved even further left some of the current Liberal Party (Trudeau’s party) supporters might leave.
Any Canadians here who can shed a bit more light on this?
I’m not a Canadian, but about a month ago I was talking to one about the political scene. Trudeau is doing terribly, and is widely despised across the country. According to the guy I was talking to, the Parti Quebecoise was polling better nationally than Trudeau’s party. And PQ is exclusively a Quebec party. People in other parts of the country don’t support it.
If the numbers hold, he’s confident that the Conservatives will utterly dominate the next election.
Canada is a strange place. Most of the people live within a hundred miles of the U.S. border. And many more in the eastern part of the country – Mostly in Ontario and Quebec along the Hudson River.
Back in the day, I used to loathe flying into Toronto. The station managers and mechanics were mostly French-Canadians who were uniformly nasty about the fact that we didn’t speak French, their preferred language. Now, of course, all the signs are in French and English all over the country. As well as all the announcements on their airliners. Godawful!! No nation should ever have dual languages.
The Frenches imposed their will on the rest of the country because they have the numbers and have been nasty enough. And most of those people in the east are leftists like in our Northeastern corridor.
The people in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the NW Territories are under the thumb of the lefty East. It’s basically an authoritarian country in spite of their parliamentary system. Unless some of those in the Ontario/Quebec regions get a clue, they will continue to be a petty tyranny. At least that’s the way I see it from afar.
The WaPo spins it for the left natch
“Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said the Liberals lost the district not because of a wave of support for Poilievre and his party but because of deepening distaste for Trudeau.
“The pressure on Trudeau to announce that he will be stepping down is now insurmountable,” Wiseman said. “Toronto-St. Paul’s was one of only 40 seats the Liberals won when they experienced their worst performance ever, in 2011.” If the Liberals cannot win this district, Wiseman said, “how can they hope to win a general election?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/25/canada-trudeau-election-upset-toronto/d361ee9e-32ec-11ef-872a-1d22f44a0d95_story.html
I relate to JJ’s comments. In many respects, Canada, with their dual language edicts, and ethnic divisions, came perilously close to the disaster that was Yugoslavia. I used to laugh, or sneer, when Flight Attendants were required to repeat every announcement in separate languages. No longer. I now live in Southern California.
One addition to JJ’s lineup. The time that I actually spent in Canada was in the Maritime Provinces. Admittedly my experience would be classed as distant history, but I find it hard to believe that those highly independent–and charming– people would have changed a great deal. Lacking further evidence, I would include them politically with the western provinces.
It is a familiar story. The huge population centers, the locales of major universities, and the areas around the seats of government have bought into ‘big government’. There are numerous reasons that this is true. But the result is that they overwhelm their political venues, and significant swaths of the population have little voice.
As a resident of California I am only too conscious of that.
John Hinderaker at http://www.powerlineblog.com periodically writes of the possibility of disunion in the U.S. That prospect boggles the mind. Yet…
Zer are vays to make the populace comply (or, if not comply, then do an “end-run” around zem).
OTOH, this might be a bit trickier for a Parliamentary Democracy to pull off than it was for “Biden”.
But since Trudeau, “Biden” Australia and much of Europe are operating out of the same WEF/WTF playback—and since Trudeau has the so-far unstinting support of the (Orwellian) New Democratic Party (Orwellian, since it’s actually Stale, Geriatric—politically—and Not Terribly Democratic), all bets are off.
OTOH, one Torontonian I met several months back, politically plugged in (he volunteered), told me that he’s not even sure the Liberal Party (Trudeau’s party) will make it past the cut-off point to even get into Parliament, but I think he was hallucinating—too much Loganberry Manischewitz, no doubt…ah, but the Concord Grape is a different story entirely…
BUT we shall see…
Liberals were also strong in the Maritimes. The Atlantic Provinces got money from the Liberal federal government and the people there felt more comfortable with Ontario and even Quebec than with the Westerners. The Conservatives, though, did do better in the Maritimes in the last election.
Blow-out elections are more common in Canada than in the US. In 1993, the Tories were down to 2 seats, and until they merged with the Reform (or Alliance) Party a decade later you could count their number of seats on your fingers and toes. In 2011 the Liberals flew in Michael Ignatieff, who had been living for years in Britain or the US, to be their leader and fell behind the NDP in both votes and seats.
The Liberals are only in power now because of the NDP’s agreement not to oppose them in Parliament. I don’t know if the Liberals and NDP can work out some kind of non-compete pact for the coming election. If a Liberal-NDP alliance runs with one leader at the top, who would it be? The unpopular Trudeau? The more radical NDP leader? Somebody else? That would be hard to figure out.
A full merger might come the election, when the parties will know more about where they stand. It would make Canadian politics look a little more like how things are in the US. The discontented NDP voters — and there would be more than a few — could turn to the Greens. This article, though, suggests that the Liberals keep any alliance temporary, to avoid lurching further left.