With the likelihood of a federal election, the prime minister's failure has been noted by voters whose generation will have to try to deal with the dire consequences of climate change.
Author of the article: Tom Mulcair • Special to Montreal Gazette
Publishing date: Aug 10, 2021 • 1 day ago •
Just over a month after being elected prime minister in 2015, Justin Trudeau went to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and proclaimed: “Canada is back.” PHOTO BY ALAIN JOCARD /AFP/Getty Images files
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Canadians are getting ready to go to the polls for the second time in less than two years, and the result will have a determining effect on the economy, the environment and social programs.
Justin Trudeau has followed the pattern of previous Liberal governments: governing by polling and focus groups, and achieving very little in the process.
Scenes from the historic climate march in Montreal on Sept. 27, 2019
Jean Chrétien will be remembered more for something he didn’t do (get us embroiled in the U.S. war in Iraq) than any signal accomplishment that has lasting historical significance.
During an election campaign, you learn a lot about the other side.
In my run as leader of the NDP in 2015, we heard that the Liberals were doing a new focus group every day. It showed as they veered from one policy announcement to the other with very little ideological consistency. The only common thread was the desire to tell people what they wanted to hear. It works. They won.
Trudeau stole a page from our playbook and announced (hundreds of times) that 2015 would be the last election under the unfair “first past the post” system. Once the election was over and they’d formed government, a lengthy set of hearings concluded that a fairer system would include some form of proportional representation. Trudeau tore up the report because it wouldn’t be good for the Liberals to change the system. He was proven right in 2019 when the Conservatives under Andrew Scheer actually got more votes than Trudeau, but the Liberals still won based on that unfair system he’d promised to change.
Whether it was smaller local issues like restoring door-to-door mail delivery to communities where it had been cut by Stephen Harper’s government (Trudeau broke that one right away) or big promises like ending boil-water advisories on reserves during their first five years (cheques are now being sent out to try to compensate for that failure), the Liberals have a history of promising big to win, then breaking those promises once they’re in office.
Right after being elected, Trudeau went to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and proclaimed: “Canada is back.” Then he came back to Canada and announced that he was sticking with Harper’s targets and timeline.
This week’s UN report lays out in stark terms the extreme danger that human-caused climate change is creating for life on our planet. Trudeau’s failure has been duly noted by those voters whose generation will have to try to deal with the consequences.
Indeed, polls are showing that younger, more progressive voters are increasingly turning away from Trudeau. In the past, the Liberals have often been able to use the threat of a Conservative victory to convince hesitant progressives not to “split the vote.” With the very low polling numbers of Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives, that threat won’t work this time.
Trudeau’s history of broken promises and the self-destruction of the Greens have provided an interesting opening for Jagmeet Singh’s NDP. The increasingly strange rule of Jason Kenney in Alberta has given Singh hope that he can surf on the resurgent popularity of Rachel Notley’s provincial NDP. In the seat-rich Greater Toronto Area, Singh has built a solid following that extends beyond the NDP’s traditional base, bringing in many voters from ethnocultural communities who often feel taken for granted by the Liberals.
But it’s Singh’s own province of B.C. that may decide whether Trudeau gets his much-coveted majority.
Against a backdrop of heat domes and forest fires fuelled by global warming, climate activist Avi Lewis will be running as part of Singh’s team. He is emblematic of a refusal to compromise on this vital issue.
Lewis’s views may cause some grief to NDP organizers elsewhere, but in B.C. he’ll be seen as part of a bulwark against more climate failures, if Trudeau can be denied a majority.
Article content
Canadians are getting ready to go to the polls for the second time in less than two years, and the result will have a determining effect on the economy, the environment and social programs.
Justin Trudeau has followed the pattern of previous Liberal governments: governing by polling and focus groups, and achieving very little in the process.
Scenes from the historic climate march in Montreal on Sept. 27, 2019
Jean Chrétien will be remembered more for something he didn’t do (get us embroiled in the U.S. war in Iraq) than any signal accomplishment that has lasting historical significance.
During an election campaign, you learn a lot about the other side.
In my run as leader of the NDP in 2015, we heard that the Liberals were doing a new focus group every day. It showed as they veered from one policy announcement to the other with very little ideological consistency. The only common thread was the desire to tell people what they wanted to hear. It works. They won.
Trudeau stole a page from our playbook and announced (hundreds of times) that 2015 would be the last election under the unfair “first past the post” system. Once the election was over and they’d formed government, a lengthy set of hearings concluded that a fairer system would include some form of proportional representation. Trudeau tore up the report because it wouldn’t be good for the Liberals to change the system. He was proven right in 2019 when the Conservatives under Andrew Scheer actually got more votes than Trudeau, but the Liberals still won based on that unfair system he’d promised to change.
Whether it was smaller local issues like restoring door-to-door mail delivery to communities where it had been cut by Stephen Harper’s government (Trudeau broke that one right away) or big promises like ending boil-water advisories on reserves during their first five years (cheques are now being sent out to try to compensate for that failure), the Liberals have a history of promising big to win, then breaking those promises once they’re in office.
Right after being elected, Trudeau went to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and proclaimed: “Canada is back.” Then he came back to Canada and announced that he was sticking with Harper’s targets and timeline.
This week’s UN report lays out in stark terms the extreme danger that human-caused climate change is creating for life on our planet. Trudeau’s failure has been duly noted by those voters whose generation will have to try to deal with the consequences.
Indeed, polls are showing that younger, more progressive voters are increasingly turning away from Trudeau. In the past, the Liberals have often been able to use the threat of a Conservative victory to convince hesitant progressives not to “split the vote.” With the very low polling numbers of Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives, that threat won’t work this time.
Trudeau’s history of broken promises and the self-destruction of the Greens have provided an interesting opening for Jagmeet Singh’s NDP. The increasingly strange rule of Jason Kenney in Alberta has given Singh hope that he can surf on the resurgent popularity of Rachel Notley’s provincial NDP. In the seat-rich Greater Toronto Area, Singh has built a solid following that extends beyond the NDP’s traditional base, bringing in many voters from ethnocultural communities who often feel taken for granted by the Liberals.
But it’s Singh’s own province of B.C. that may decide whether Trudeau gets his much-coveted majority.
Against a backdrop of heat domes and forest fires fuelled by global warming, climate activist Avi Lewis will be running as part of Singh’s team. He is emblematic of a refusal to compromise on this vital issue.
Lewis’s views may cause some grief to NDP organizers elsewhere, but in B.C. he’ll be seen as part of a bulwark against more climate failures, if Trudeau can be denied a majority.
Tom Mulcair, a former leader of the federal NDP, served as minister of the environment in the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest.
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