Byelections show Trudeau alive and kicking

Opinion

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This article was published 22/06/2023 (834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cancel that Justin Trudeau walk in the snow — it’s not happening.

The June 19 federal byelections are now behind us. Pundits, pollsters — and people who pay too much attention to both — had been led to believe that the Trudeau government was low on gas, out of gas, or gassed. Four June byelections, two of them in Manitoba, were supposed to see real voters support the fiction that Trudeau’s political career was in the rearview.

But something funny happened on the way to the funeral.

Nobody died.

In the Ontario riding of Oxford, 40 minutes from London, Liberals increased their vote. Conservatives reduced theirs. The safe Conservative riding looked competitive. So, are the Liberals crashing in Ontario? Don’t be ridiculous. In the Quebec riding of NDG-Westmount, the Liberal did three times better than the Conservative.

In Manitoba, Conservatives did better in Portage-Lisgar. But nobody ever has expectations of the Liberals getting any traction in one of the country’s safest Conservative seats. The Conservatives could run a rooster in the rural riding and the chicken would easily be sworn in as the new member of Parliament.

The only contest there this week was between the Conservative and a former Conservative, Maxime Bernier. Bernier was trying to win a seat thousands of kilometres from his home base in rural Quebec. The Quebec rural riding of Beauce was easy money for him during four elections when he was a Conservative. But as leader of the People’s Party of Canada, he got his rooster handed to him twice. Mad Max was hoping for a political resurrection in Manitoba. But Jesus Bernier wasn’t on the ballot.

Conservative Branden Leslie won two out of three votes. In one of the largest ridings in southern Canada, that includes Portage, Winkler, Morden, Carman and Altona, poor pitiful Max received only one out of every six votes, a worse showing than his party without a prayer got two years ago when Portage Lisgar gifted them one in five votes.

In Winnipeg South-Centre, Liberal Ben Carr’s percentage of votes was double that of his Conservative rival. The winning margin for the Liberals in the riding was even larger than it was for his very popular late father, Jim Carr.

Even though we are frequently given the media impression that Canadian public opinion shifts on a dime with every screaming news headline, Canadians refuse to play ball.

There isn’t enough column space here to list the dozens of issues and stories over nearly eight years of Trudeau governance where the usual suspects among Canadian commenters have given last rites to this prime minister.

We were told he couldn’t survive the ethical trespasses which included vacationing in the Caribbean on the dime of a wealthy friend of the Trudeau family, who also happens to be the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, the Aga Khan. The PM got his knuckles rapped by the ethics commissioner for that. But he paid no price at the ballot box.

The PM got sanctioned again by the ethics commissioner in the SNC Lavalin affair, which saw his justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, shuffled out of her cabinet post. Many believed her joust with JustinTrudeau would end badly for him. But once again he dodged the political bullet and won re-election in 2021, gaining five more seats.

I could be kind to the Conservative Party of Canada and write that their public behaviour has little to do with what makes the prime minister look politically invincible. But I don’t pay a twice weekly visit to this page to trim, spin and fib.

Just as Stephen Harper was lucky to have Liberal opponents who made him look stronger than he was, Prime Minister Trudeau has had similar good fortune. Harper won a majority government after the Gomery Inquiry into Adscam wood chippered Liberal support in Quebec, a province that is key to the success of any Liberal campaign. The inquiry devastated the Liberals.

Before Paul Martin succeeded Jean Chrétien as Liberal leader, he was thought of as someone who could easily win three terms.

Post-Gomery, he behaved like the walking wounded, struggling to win two. A weakened Martin gave Harper a majority. He and his mediocre Liberal successors, Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, kept Harper in the PMO for a decade.

There is a two-word reason the Conservative Party did not have a big day on June 19: Pierre Poilievre.

Despite what conventional wisdom regurgitators have told you, there is no inevitable path to power for Trudeau’s inquisitor.

Harnessing an old Conservative ad slogan, he’s just not ready.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com