The election only Justin Trudeau wanted is becoming one he wishes he hadn’t.
The public hasn’t stopped stewing about the timing of the call, and Trudeau hasn’t concocted anything approaching a reason in the first two weeks of the campaign why it is not being held, say, a year or two hence.
As the Delta variant penetrates the country’s priorities, his government has silenced the country’s top medical officer from her daily briefings. As Afghanistan roils in crisis, his government’s response is positioned as a campaign distraction rather than a matter deserving national discussion.
After six years in power, he is suddenly declaring war on the generations-old investment in the asset class of real estate and its industry, in the big banks he has never before squawked about, and in the ultra-wealthy.
His party has resorted, as all desperate ones do, to playing the fear game – fear of never being able to own a home, fear of not getting the health care we need, fear of what the Conservatives would wield.
Only now, that old saw doesn’t always cut it and might even self-inflict a wound, as in how the Liberals insulted the public in thinking that in 2021 no one would detect their doctoring of an Erin O’Toole video to make it seem the Conservative leader didn’t support universal public health care.
Twitter – not the Twitterverse, but the actual company – noticed and marked it as manipulated media. Trudeau, though, adopted his double-down persona in defending the fake news. He had the gall to suggest we were wrong, not he, in trotting out that old chestnut of a pivot: “Well, I don’t know what you think, but I …”
Well, yes prime minister, we not only think, but know, you perpetrated and perpetuated a lie.
If there is, as he and his party love as a mantra, to claim a “hidden agenda” in the moderate tone O’Toole is presenting, he could have kept Canadians from it until the fall of 2023. But no, a majority government is what he wanted, and a majority government is something no poll today suggests he will get.
That is mainly because O’Toole, after a stumble out of the blocks, has found some footing. He has left Trudeau to soil his own cage and ceded the role as principal Trudeau critic to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who can regularly launch haymakers without worrying he will form government to deliver on promises. Then again, he and O’Toole may soon do so if the Liberal descent persists.
O’Toole’s 160-page platform is a clever bag of pocketbook issues, painting a much more compassionate picture with his ideas on mental health and addictions care, and sidestepping concerns that his administration would turn the clock back on social issues. If the public does not worry that O’Toole would have handled the pandemic much differently – or will – Trudeau’s ace in the hole isn’t playable and he will need new cards up his sleeve.
Who would have thought a few weeks ago it would sound sane to suggest he needs a great debate performance to secure the election, much less that vaunted majority? He might need even more than that.
What he certainly needs is to accept that housing affordability – the issue at the top of the public list when not worrying about the coronavirus – is not something he has suddenly discovered and is here as our saviour, but something he has nurtured and is told by pollsters that it is a mess he must at last address.
Within that national issue is a Vancouver clue on why the Liberal campaign has been pretty clueless. The party’s sweeping housing promises of consumer-friendly tactics include a crackdown on property flipping, suddenly convenient for a party in power long enough for a Vancouver home to double in value.
“You shouldn’t lose a bidding war on your home to speculators. It’s time for things to change,” Trudeau said in amenable Hamilton last week.
Problem for the Liberals in Vancouver, though, was that Vancouver Granville party candidate Taleeb Noormohamed has been flipping properties for many years as a multi-house landlord. He couldn’t even tell reporters how many he’s bought and sold in recent years.
It’s obvious Noormohamed’s candidacy was green-lit by the party before it hatched the policy that runs counter to its candidate’s income source. He would have been considered too high-risk if the Liberals knew their attempt to retake a riding vacated by Jody Wilson-Raybould would feature someone who would face basic questions as a public face of housing speculation.
Which gives you a sense of how the back-of-the-napkin hatching of ideas for Liberal governments only works when pulling together a Constitution, not a campaign, and only for the elder Trudeau and not the son. The party platform has cost a candidate considerable awkwardness, even if it should be noted – and neither reports nor the candidate has – that Noormohamed pays taxes on his capital gains.
It has been said before that a) incumbents lose support as campaigns persist, b) the public doesn’t pay attention until the leaders’ debates, and c) a misstep in French or English those nights can cut the knees from any runner.
For Trudeau that night will require him to be authentic like Singh and restrained like O’Toole. He will be baited like no hook any fish has been tempted by in any sea. If this were baseball analytics, he would be a hitter who swings for the high fast one. Let’s see if he can lay off the heater.
The campaign is becoming a Seinfeld episode: a show about nothing, but increasingly interesting.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
