This was an election about nothing

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/09/2021 (1452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If Seinfeld was the show about nothing, then Canadians must be living in some type of post-Seinfeld world in which we hold elections about nothing.

Never mind that the sitting prime minister cannot elucidate a reason to call the election for the first two weeks of the campaign. We don’t expect him to be a genius — he’s certainly proven himself incapable of carrying that title, but if you can’t come up with a reason why you called the election two weeks in … well, maybe we have a serious problem.

Whenever I hear any politician declare the current election as the “most important election since the Second World War,” then my spider senses start tingling. They are essentially asserting the stakes are so high, and obvious, that they don’t need to explain them. So, they don’t.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d like the effort made. Tell me why you called the election. Maybe use words Canadians can understand. Maybe give us a rationale that would stand up to a child’s simple query “why.”

Am I asking too much?

Over a quick lunch this week, a good friend of mine and I came up with what we believe Trudeau should have said as a rationale — it took us 45 seconds. Here goes: “We are at the end of the beginning of the global pandemic. We have done our level best to protect Canadians. We had to spend more money than anyone would have expected. We put out the house fire. Now Canadians must have a serious conversation about how to rebuild the house better. We need your mandate on building back better.”

It didn’t take a lot of ciphering to puzzle out this rationale. And yet, unfortunately, our PM didn’t seem to have that bullet point planned out. Why? It’s obvious — he wanted an election because his polls told him he could win the treasured majority.

Here we sit today — the election outcome changed nothing. No new mandate was given, even if you believe in that kind of thing. (I don’t.)

Winners have power and losers don’t. Like it or not.

My friend made a very thought-provoking observation: perhaps we Canadians need to become comfortable with minority governments and more sophisticated in our understanding of what political parties should offer as a result.

Think about it this way — in Canadian history, minority governments largely mean greater spending. Why? Because these governments are usually comprised of two parties that have common ideological underpinnings. The NDP and Liberals view extending the government’s reach more than the right-wing normally does. These two parties are more comfortable working together.

Unfortunately, it also means that more spending is the outcome, and spending may appear to be its own reward.

It didn’t help anyone that Tory election spending commitments actually outpaced the Liberals for the next four years. What? How does that happen?

Make no mistake; I am no more a proponent of spending than I am an opponent of it. I believe in appropriate investing, whether that is in people or assets. Much of the spending that has occurred in the last two years has been simply throwing money at problems with no monitoring or follow-up. (WE Charity anyone? Paying people to volunteer?)

There is no discipline. You can be as undisciplined as you want with your own money, but please take taxpayer money seriously.

So where do we go from here? My personal suspicion is that there will be further of the same. Why expect anything different?

We have immature, performative, emotive leaders on all sides. Does anyone think these leaders could handle the responsibilities of former PMs like Jean Chretien or Stephen Harper? Does anyone think this cast of characters could manage us through another 2008 global crisis or a Quebec Referendum?

This is the Twitter, TikTok, selfie age. Our leaders reflect this lack of substance. And I’m not being the old guy yelling at the kids playing on my lawn — I want that old guy managing our taxpayer money.