Liberals were unprepared for volatile emotions on campaign trail, misread enthusiasm for an election
An August poll showed a five-point national lead on the Conservatives and 'behind the scenes most of us were pushing for an election,' a Liberal MP said
Author of the article: Ryan Tumilty, Christopher Nardi
Publishing date: Sep 27, 2021 •
Protesters shout as Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau arrives to campaign in Nobleton, Ont., on August 27. PHOTO BY CARLOS OSORIO/REUTERS
OTTAWA – Liberal insiders and MPs believe outside events more than internal mistakes shaped the election campaign and that Justin Trudeau’s future as leader is entirely in his hands.
The Liberals have 159 seats in Parliament, up just two from where they were, and they are 11 seats shy of the majority government Trudeau hoped for when he went to Rideau Hall.
The decision to call an election in the fourth wave of a pandemic dogged Trudeau in the campaign, but insiders who spoke to the National Post on the condition of anonymity, said there was little dissent on the timing of the campaign.
One senior campaign official said the prime minister made the final call, but the spring sitting of the House of Commons had been a grind, with opposition parties filibustering legislation and voting against the government dozens of times and there was no desire for a similar fall sitting.
A Leger poll done the weekend the election was called, showed the party had a five-point national lead on the Conservatives and solid leads in most regions of the country.
One Liberal MP said with those numbers most people inside the party wanted to go as soon as possible.
“Behind the scenes most of us were pushing for an election.”
All of the sources who spoke with the National Post said after the election was called, it was clear they had misread the public’s enthusiasm for an election.
It was like nothing we've seen before, those angry people screaming at us
OTTAWA – Liberal insiders and MPs believe outside events more than internal mistakes shaped the election campaign and that Justin Trudeau’s future as leader is entirely in his hands.
The Liberals have 159 seats in Parliament, up just two from where they were, and they are 11 seats shy of the majority government Trudeau hoped for when he went to Rideau Hall.
The decision to call an election in the fourth wave of a pandemic dogged Trudeau in the campaign, but insiders who spoke to the National Post on the condition of anonymity, said there was little dissent on the timing of the campaign.
One senior campaign official said the prime minister made the final call, but the spring sitting of the House of Commons had been a grind, with opposition parties filibustering legislation and voting against the government dozens of times and there was no desire for a similar fall sitting.
A Leger poll done the weekend the election was called, showed the party had a five-point national lead on the Conservatives and solid leads in most regions of the country.
One Liberal MP said with those numbers most people inside the party wanted to go as soon as possible.
“Behind the scenes most of us were pushing for an election.”
All of the sources who spoke with the National Post said after the election was called, it was clear they had misread the public’s enthusiasm for an election.
It was like nothing we've seen before, those angry people screaming at us
On the campaign trail, Trudeau said the decision to run was about giving Canadians a say on the major changes that the pandemic had brought and the path forward. They also felt there was a risk moving forward without a mandate.
“You could overplay your hand in the long run.”
They said the polls looked good, but they also fully expected a close race.
“We felt confident with our position, but by no means was it a slam dunk.”
The slam dunk definitely failed to materialize in the first two weeks of the campaign, as the crisis in Afghanistan dominated headlines and Trudeau continued to face questions about why the campaign was necessary.
Unlike opposition leaders, Trudeau wears two hats during a campaign; Liberal leader and prime minister. One source close to Trudeau said early on the public and media’s focus was strictly on Afghanistan, which made it difficult to talk about Liberal policy and promises.
One insider said the Liberals wanted this to be a campaign about who Canadians trusted to end the pandemic and manage the recovery, but instead it focused on what critics described as an “unnecessary election.”
“The ballot question could have been clearer,” a senior Liberal said with a sigh. “Emotions (were) much more volatile. So you had everything in the cards to have a very polarizing debate. And that’s something that we underestimated.”
Trudeau was also dogged by anti-vaccine protests, especially in the early weeks. He was forced to cancel one event and had gravel thrown at him at another.
Protestors wait for an election campaign visit by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, which was cancelled citing security concerns, in Bolton, Ontario, August 27, 2021.
PHOTO BY CARLOS OSORIO/REUTERS
Trudeau deals with protesters regularly, mostly on climate change and reconciliation, but one Liberal source said this was much different.
“It was like nothing we’ve seen before, those angry people screaming at us.”
Another campaign official said the protesters were mostly aligned with the People’s Party of Canada, but it enforced the Liberals pandemic message, because Canadians saw they were protesting Trudeau’s events and not the Conservatives.
Several Liberal campaign sources said the Conservative campaign was impressive, softening Erin O’Toole’s image and introducing him to the public. An event where O’Toole hung out with rescue dogs and promised tougher animal cruelty laws, was particularly well done, one Liberal said.
The first direct contest of the election was TVA’s French language debate. Trudeau went hard in the debate on O’Toole’s gun control stance hoping to create a wedge.
O’Toole raised eyebrows when he said he would not repeal a ban on assault weapons and Trudeau pounced, repeatedly citing the page of the Conservative platform that said the opposite.
“The PM opened a door for us on the gun issues and we drove a bus through it,” said one senior campaign advisor.
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair held five press conferences to highlight O’Toole’s inconsistencies on the gun file, but the campaign also wanted to highlight other areas where O’Toole seemed to have more than one opinion.
O’Toole ran on a platform promising to secure employee pensions in bankruptcy cases, but had previously spoken out against such a measure. The Liberals also pointed out O’Toole was saying he was pro-choice, but his caucus had voted in favour of a law that would prevent abortion for sex-selection purposes.
“We were trying to demonstrate to Canadians that Erin O’Toole would say anything,” said one source.
The Conservative momentum largely stalled under those attacks, working better than the Liberal imagined.
“We wanted to put the contrast there. We just didn’t think it would take six days for him to get to his position,” said one source
Trudeau deals with protesters regularly, mostly on climate change and reconciliation, but one Liberal source said this was much different.
“It was like nothing we’ve seen before, those angry people screaming at us.”
Another campaign official said the protesters were mostly aligned with the People’s Party of Canada, but it enforced the Liberals pandemic message, because Canadians saw they were protesting Trudeau’s events and not the Conservatives.
Several Liberal campaign sources said the Conservative campaign was impressive, softening Erin O’Toole’s image and introducing him to the public. An event where O’Toole hung out with rescue dogs and promised tougher animal cruelty laws, was particularly well done, one Liberal said.
The first direct contest of the election was TVA’s French language debate. Trudeau went hard in the debate on O’Toole’s gun control stance hoping to create a wedge.
O’Toole raised eyebrows when he said he would not repeal a ban on assault weapons and Trudeau pounced, repeatedly citing the page of the Conservative platform that said the opposite.
“The PM opened a door for us on the gun issues and we drove a bus through it,” said one senior campaign advisor.
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair held five press conferences to highlight O’Toole’s inconsistencies on the gun file, but the campaign also wanted to highlight other areas where O’Toole seemed to have more than one opinion.
O’Toole ran on a platform promising to secure employee pensions in bankruptcy cases, but had previously spoken out against such a measure. The Liberals also pointed out O’Toole was saying he was pro-choice, but his caucus had voted in favour of a law that would prevent abortion for sex-selection purposes.
“We were trying to demonstrate to Canadians that Erin O’Toole would say anything,” said one source.
The Conservative momentum largely stalled under those attacks, working better than the Liberal imagined.
“We wanted to put the contrast there. We just didn’t think it would take six days for him to get to his position,” said one source
.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole take part in the federal election English-language Leaders debate in Gatineau, Quebec, Sept. 9, 2021.
PHOTO BY ADRIAN WYLD/POOL VIA REUTERS
The TVA debate helped the Liberals, but debates can both giveth and taketh away.
Up to that point in Quebec, the Liberals’ campaign was going swimmingly. By the beginning of week four, the Liberals were polling at 34 per cent in the province, a seven-point lead over the Bloc opponents.
“In Quebec, we made no mistakes. We had the best campaign in the country,” a senior Liberal said. “There were no errors. No ministers screwed up, even Infoman couldn’t find anything to run on our candidates,” they added, referring to a popular Quebec news and politics satire show.
But then came the final English debate and a controversial question from moderator Shachi Kurl.
Within the first minutes, she asked Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet to explain why he denied Quebec has a problem with racism in light of two pieces of provincial legislation she described as “discriminatory”.
At a debate viewing party in Montreal hosted by Liberal minister Steven Guilbeault, candidates, staffers and volunteers gasped when they heard the question. A single, f*** was heard around the room.
“Because of the English debate’s stupid question and Quebec bashing, we lost eight points during that (final) week,” one source said.
The following day, Trudeau (and all other major party leaders) came out against Kurl’s question, describing it as “offensive.”
But the damage was already done. The question gave life to the Bloc Québécois, who had thus far unsuccessfully tried to bring identity issues — which fuelled the party’s success in the 2019 election — back to the forefront.
Quebec Premier François Legault fuelled that fire, with regular outings to denounce the question and the moderator, keeping the issue alive for days, giving the Bloc a purpose and Quebeckers a reason to vote for them.
“Once the Bloc does well in Quebec it is hard for any government, Liberal or Conservative, to get a majority,” said one senior Liberal.
The Liberals’ Quebec campaign took another unexpected turn in the later weeks of the election when Legault invited Quebecers not to vote for the party (and the NDP and Greens) because he considered their “centralizing” platforms to be “dangerous.”
But one Quebec source says instead of hurting the party, that outing galvanized and motivated the Liberal base.
All sources agree that a “strong ground game” was an essential factor in ensuring they stay in government.
“A lot of ridings were won by one or two per cent because of the fact we had fantastic candidates that had very strong (campaign) machines. We were able to …do the right investments in these ridings based on the data that candidates were providing through their voter identification,” one senior Liberal source said.
They added that their efforts on the ground reaped “four more seats” in target ridings in British Columbia, something they said hadn’t happened in “a long, long time.”
In Quebec, sources say the Liberals’ organization allowed them to dream of winning “five to ten” more seats, and then to keep the same number of seats from falling to the Bloc during its late-election surge.
“We were able to stay in government because of these local machines,” one source said. Another pointed out the fact that the party won 20 of the 26 closest races in the country and said it’s all because of a well built and well maintained volunteer effort.
“The single most impactful day of the campaign is pretty much solely in the hands of local volunteers,” said one campaign official.
In the campaign’s final week, several Liberals said Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s apology and reversal on COVID measures was another turning point, putting the Conservative campaign even more on the defensive.
“That helped us move the dial in B.C. in particular,” one senior source noted.
Many expressed surprise at how O’Toole handled the issue, doing few press conferences or events, effectively ceding the campaign’s final days to Trudeau who held multiple events across the country each day.
As they hit election day, most say they expected to have somewhere in the range of 140 to 150 seats, not the 159 they ultimately ended with. “We were pleasantly surprised,” said one campaign official.
Trudeau has now fought three consecutive elections for the party; no prime minister has ever won four consecutive campaigns. That includes Trudeau’s father who lost to Joe Clark in his fourth election, only to run again in 1980 and win in a fifth campaign
Liberals all say that this Trudeau is unlikely to face any internal pressure to leave, even after the election that failed to return a majority.
Most of Trudeau’s MPs were elected in 2015, when he brought the party from third place to a majority government. One senior campaign official said there is no chance he will be pushed out anytime soon.
“He has the confidence of the cabinet, the caucus and the party for sure.”
One MP said Trudeau’s ability to draw a crowd, to draw a few hundred supporters with little notice to hear him speak for less than 30 minutes, is an under appreciated skill, one that would be difficult to replace.
Despite everything that went wrong for the party in the election, they said a majority was fairly close at hand and it would be a different narrative.
“A couple more points across the country and he is a political genius.”
• Email: cnardi@postmedia.com | Twitter: ChrisGNardi
• Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter: ryantumilty
The TVA debate helped the Liberals, but debates can both giveth and taketh away.
Up to that point in Quebec, the Liberals’ campaign was going swimmingly. By the beginning of week four, the Liberals were polling at 34 per cent in the province, a seven-point lead over the Bloc opponents.
“In Quebec, we made no mistakes. We had the best campaign in the country,” a senior Liberal said. “There were no errors. No ministers screwed up, even Infoman couldn’t find anything to run on our candidates,” they added, referring to a popular Quebec news and politics satire show.
But then came the final English debate and a controversial question from moderator Shachi Kurl.
Within the first minutes, she asked Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet to explain why he denied Quebec has a problem with racism in light of two pieces of provincial legislation she described as “discriminatory”.
At a debate viewing party in Montreal hosted by Liberal minister Steven Guilbeault, candidates, staffers and volunteers gasped when they heard the question. A single, f*** was heard around the room.
“Because of the English debate’s stupid question and Quebec bashing, we lost eight points during that (final) week,” one source said.
The following day, Trudeau (and all other major party leaders) came out against Kurl’s question, describing it as “offensive.”
But the damage was already done. The question gave life to the Bloc Québécois, who had thus far unsuccessfully tried to bring identity issues — which fuelled the party’s success in the 2019 election — back to the forefront.
Quebec Premier François Legault fuelled that fire, with regular outings to denounce the question and the moderator, keeping the issue alive for days, giving the Bloc a purpose and Quebeckers a reason to vote for them.
“Once the Bloc does well in Quebec it is hard for any government, Liberal or Conservative, to get a majority,” said one senior Liberal.
The Liberals’ Quebec campaign took another unexpected turn in the later weeks of the election when Legault invited Quebecers not to vote for the party (and the NDP and Greens) because he considered their “centralizing” platforms to be “dangerous.”
But one Quebec source says instead of hurting the party, that outing galvanized and motivated the Liberal base.
All sources agree that a “strong ground game” was an essential factor in ensuring they stay in government.
“A lot of ridings were won by one or two per cent because of the fact we had fantastic candidates that had very strong (campaign) machines. We were able to …do the right investments in these ridings based on the data that candidates were providing through their voter identification,” one senior Liberal source said.
They added that their efforts on the ground reaped “four more seats” in target ridings in British Columbia, something they said hadn’t happened in “a long, long time.”
In Quebec, sources say the Liberals’ organization allowed them to dream of winning “five to ten” more seats, and then to keep the same number of seats from falling to the Bloc during its late-election surge.
“We were able to stay in government because of these local machines,” one source said. Another pointed out the fact that the party won 20 of the 26 closest races in the country and said it’s all because of a well built and well maintained volunteer effort.
“The single most impactful day of the campaign is pretty much solely in the hands of local volunteers,” said one campaign official.
In the campaign’s final week, several Liberals said Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s apology and reversal on COVID measures was another turning point, putting the Conservative campaign even more on the defensive.
“That helped us move the dial in B.C. in particular,” one senior source noted.
Many expressed surprise at how O’Toole handled the issue, doing few press conferences or events, effectively ceding the campaign’s final days to Trudeau who held multiple events across the country each day.
As they hit election day, most say they expected to have somewhere in the range of 140 to 150 seats, not the 159 they ultimately ended with. “We were pleasantly surprised,” said one campaign official.
Trudeau has now fought three consecutive elections for the party; no prime minister has ever won four consecutive campaigns. That includes Trudeau’s father who lost to Joe Clark in his fourth election, only to run again in 1980 and win in a fifth campaign
Liberals all say that this Trudeau is unlikely to face any internal pressure to leave, even after the election that failed to return a majority.
Most of Trudeau’s MPs were elected in 2015, when he brought the party from third place to a majority government. One senior campaign official said there is no chance he will be pushed out anytime soon.
“He has the confidence of the cabinet, the caucus and the party for sure.”
One MP said Trudeau’s ability to draw a crowd, to draw a few hundred supporters with little notice to hear him speak for less than 30 minutes, is an under appreciated skill, one that would be difficult to replace.
Despite everything that went wrong for the party in the election, they said a majority was fairly close at hand and it would be a different narrative.
“A couple more points across the country and he is a political genius.”
• Email: cnardi@postmedia.com | Twitter: ChrisGNardi
• Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter: ryantumilty
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