Canadian election: Curses! Fooled again!

Ed. here. I'm stitching together a bunch of text messages and e-mails received from Walt at the Canadian Affairs Desk, somewhere north of the World's Longets Open Border. Interspersed with requests for cash and substances were notes on yesterday's federal election in Canuckistan. The messages stopped coming around 0300 EDT, by which time the issue seemed pretty much decided.

Let me set the table (a new buzz-phrase) for readers outside the Great No-longer-white North. Canadians from sea to sea to sea (Canuck politicians' buzz-phrase) today [Monday. Ed.] to elect a new House of Commons and federal government. 338 ridings [electoral districts. Ed.] were up for grabs. Five parties fielded candidates in most of them. Here are pix and profiles of the leaders.



From left to right (in the picture, not politically) you see: Andrew Scheer (Cuckservative), Maxime Bernier (People's Party of Canada, endorsed by yr obdt servant), Jagmeet Singh (NDP = scary socialist party), Just In Trudeau (Gliberal) and Elizabeth May (Green Loony). Not pictured is Yves-François Blanchet, whose Bloc Québécois ran candidates only in Québec (duh!) but wound up with the third-highest number of seats in the new House.

In "What if no-one wins the Canadian election?" (WWW 19/10/19), Walt predicted a close race between Mr Sheer's Tories and Mr Socks Liberals, ending with neither party obtaining a majority of the seats, and possibly leading to a constitutional crisis as to who would have the right to form the government. (For details of how that works... or not... read the post.)

For the record, my prediction, written down in the records of Tony the Barber and other turf accountants was: Liberals 142, Conservatives 132, Bloc Québécois 35, NDP 20, Greens 6, PPC 1 (Max Bernier's own seat in Québec) and 2 Independents. The final standings [as of 0630 today. Ed.] were... drum roll please.........
Liberals 157, Conservatives 121, Bloc 32, NDP 24, Greens 3, Independent 1 and (sadly) PPC 0.

Yes, that means "Mad Max" lost his own seat, and the People's Party will have no representation in the House of Commons. Agent 78 says that's what happens when you tell the truth about what you will do (or not do) if elected. In M Bernier's case, the deal-breaker, in his own riding and throughout la Belle Province, as his proposal to scrap the supply management system for dairy products -- an arcane point for most Canadians but a very sore point for 1000s of QC farmers. Might want to have another think about that one, Max!

The result are, or should be a great disappointment for the Cuckservatives. The anti-Trudeau sentiment was so strong, in most of Canada outside the Toronto and Montreal conurbations [How long have you been waiting to use that word? Ed.] that it took real creative genius not to win. That genius is the Tories' leader, Andrew Scheer, a one-time insurance salesman from Saskatchewan with all the charisma of a bed of kelp. Mr Scheer and his advisors tried to position themselves as centrists, not true conservatives, and wound up looking like "almost-Liberals" or "liberal Republicans" or "progressive Conservatives", an oxymoronical phrase which was actually the party's previous name. "Red Tories" -- who could believe that?

In fact the Conservatives won the popular vote, with 34.5% to the Liberals' 33%. But, as Hellery Clinton will remember, winning the popular vote is not the same as winning the election. [Didn't she say last week that she could "win again" in 2020? Ed.] Canuckistan doesn't have an electoral college, but what counts is not the percentage of the popular vote but how the votes are distributed. The winner is the party that gets the most seats, not the most votes.

After a tight campaign that saw the two leading parties struggle to break out of the pack, the Liberals held on to just enough seats in Atlantic Canada, Québec and Ontario to secure a minority government. Conservative turnout and support was very high across the prairie provinces. In Alberta, they won almost 70% of the popular vote to 14% for the Liberals. In Saskatchewan, the Tories took 65% of the vote to the Liberals' 10%. But alas, those provinces, being sparsely populated, account for only a fraction of the seats allotted to the Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver conurbations. [That's enough conurbations. Ed.]

So it's a minority government for the Liberals then, with Justin Trudeau, the "preening fraud" (as Andrew Coyne called him in the National Post) remaining Prime Minister of Canuckistan for as long as he can avoid pissing off the NDP and the Bloc. Mr Socks had some help, by the way, in the final week of the campaign, when none other than the Prez tweeted his support for M Trudeau. The bromance continues...

but I do wonder what would happen if M Trudeau should, in the interest of better Canada-US relations, declare  his support for Still-President Trump in about a year's time. Wouldn't that be, errr,foreign interference in the affairs of another country?

There's more, but I can't make sense of it... something about shorting the Canadian dollar. I thought beaverbucks were the same size as real money, only more colourful? Anyhoo, Walt will undoubtedly have more to say after he sleeps off his late night. Ed.

Further reading (added 23/10/19): "The preachy, gauzy, meaningless aphorisms don't suffice, Justin Trudeau", by Neil Macdonald, the CBC's token anti-Trudeau guy, 23/10/19.