Is there even an election going on?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/08/2015 (3712 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL — It’s campaign day 20.

We are almost three weeks into the 42nd Canadian general election.

But on the ground, one could easily be forgiven if you didn’t know there was an election happening at all.

In almost any other campaign, neighbourhoods would already be teeming with lawn signs, candidates would be working at a frantic pace, volunteers lined up at phone banks making calls from dawn until dusk.

But on a swing through western and central Quebec this week, the pace of the race thus far is far more leisurely.

Even in Montreal, where some of the most competitive races in the province will be, the streets are almost void of political signs.

Every so often you see one attached to a lamp post or utility pole. (In Quebec, most signs are placed high up on poles on public property, rather than stuck in the ground on boulevards and front lawns).

But downtown, and in neighbourhoods in the city’s south- and north-shore suburbs, they are few and far between. There wasn’t a single Conservative or Bloc Quebecois sign spotted.

Campaign offices are bare bones if they are open at all.

In Laurin Liu’s election office in the Montreal north-shore hamlet of Boisbriand, the former butcher shop is being transformed, but it’s still mostly empty. Two staff members were present one evening last week, setting up for her office opening party but the phone banks sat empty over the crucial dinner hour window.

Stacks of Liu’s NDP signs lean sideways against the office walls waiting for teams of volunteers to hit the streets and erect them.

In any other election, holding a campaign launch three weeks into a campaign would be a sure path to defeat but Liu, who was unexpectedly elected in 2011 as one of the so-called “McGill Five” is still considered the favourite here in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

But in this campaign — an Ironman Triathlon of an election that will last more than 11 weeks, we are still only in the first swim leg. The bike race is still a week or two off, and the foot race won’t really begin until almost the end of September.

From the candidates and the organizers the key words are simple: “Pace yourself.”

Instead of hitting the ground in a flurry of activity, local campaigns are taking far more time to ramp up.

Nobody wants to burn out their volunteer base by Labour Day, says Matthew Dubé, the incumbent NDP MP in Beloeil-Chambly on Montreal’s South Shore.

Dubé, 28, is going door-to-door each night, but he acknowledges there aren’t many signs up yet.

He says he doesn’t want to intrude on people’s summer holidays. There is an area in his riding along the water with a series of outdoor patios — Quebecers call them terraces — which come September will be prime pickings for his signs, says Dubé. But at the moment, he doesn’t want voters to be annoyed at seeing them too early while they enjoy the last days of summer.

Even the leaders’ tours are slower. Neither the Liberals nor NDP even have campaign planes in the air yet. Organizers from both tell the Free Press their August campaigning hasn’t really altered from what their plans had been had Prime Minister Stephen Harper not called the election August 2. Most expected the campaign to begin by August 20, but the August long weekend was a surprise to almost everyone.

Harper is generally sticking to his announcement-a-day campaign strategy, used in the last election, but most of the announcements are so small they barely register.

Like Thursday’s tax-credit increase for adoption fees. Something prospective adoptive parents will certainly embrace, but with about 3,000 children adopted each year in Canada according to the Conservative campaign, the impact is small.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair are spending most of their time extolling the virtues of what they’ve already promised — middle-class tax cuts and a new national benefit for people with children for Trudeau and small business tax cuts and a national, universal $15-a-day child care program for Mulcair. There have been some new things but nothing that rocks the election boat.

But to use Harper’s favourite turn of phrase: Let’s be clear. This election will not be a snooze-fest all the way until Oct. 19.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

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Come Labour Day, the kids will be back at school, the beaches will be mostly empty and then you will see the kind of pace more consistent with a Canadian election.

It’s not to say there is nothing happening at all right now. It’s just to say, kind of like any other activity in summer, things are just moving a little bit slower.

Mia Rabson is the Free Press parliamentary bureau chief.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mrabson