Canada, Exposed

Some people were surprised at the results of Monday’s Federal Election, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals retained power, albeit in a minority government. I have to say, I wasn’t. Many would ask, how could a man so awash in scandal, so obviously shallow, so egregiously out of his depth, be re-elected?

It’s easy, really. The voters had their minds made up going in, and didn’t change them. They’ve concluded that all politicians are liars, and with the candidates making promises left, right, and centre, they also concluded something else.

This election was all about “me.” Whatcha gonna give me, eh?

Canada is not a unified federal state. It never has been, and, thanks in large part to geography and language, it never can be. On the map, it looks like a big, broad, bruiser of a country. That’s deceiving. Most of the land on the map is essentially unlivable. 90% of Canada’s 37 million people live on a tiny, 100-kilometre-wide strip that hugs the US border from the Pacific to the Atlantic. That strip is long and fragile. And people on one end of it, don’t see things the same way as the people on the other end of it. That’s a fact we like to try and avoid.

We pretend that hockey, Tim Hortons, and the Tragically Hip hold us together. But these are essentially trivialities. When it comes to who should run the country, and how it should be run, we do not agree. And, increasingly, the way we think things should be run is for our own benefit.

Let’s work our way east to west, shall we? The Maritime Provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, are generally safe Liberal territory. The Liberals keep the powerful Irving conglomerate happy, and do not trouble Newfoundland’s oil and gas industry in the way they love to mess with Alberta’s. In fact, in PEI and Newfoundland on election night, it would appear that voters were unaware there was another party besides the Liberals, if their voting patterns were any indication.

Quebec. Ah, mais oui (but yes), the “special case.” Recognized as a “distinct society," with control over its own pensions and immigration, Canada’s majority French enclave frustrated the hopes of anti-Liberals by turning to the separatist Bloc Quebecois instead. The time spent pandering to Quebec’s inflated sense of grievance, and the delicate work of ignoring Bill 21, an anti-religious symbols law that would have been denounced as bigotry anywhere else, was wasted for the Conservatives and the NDP.

See, Quebec, better than any other Canadian province, gets the racket that is Canada. Complain, stomp your feet, and pretend you want to leave, and people will pay attention. To the tune of 13 billion dollars a year in equalization payments, at least partially from Alberta and Saskatchewan, provinces that have suffered since North America decided domestic oil production was evil but Saudi oil was swell. This pretty much blatant extortion guarantees three things:

1. Quebec gets lots of shiny things other provinces don’t get, like subsidized daycare.

2. Quebec will therefore, continue to vote for its own interests, and only that.

3. The rest of the country, though not admitting it, will hate Quebec.

And Quebec does not like pipelines. Despite the fact that a small town in Quebec was recently wiped out by an out-of-control oil train, with grievous loss of life, non, pipelines are the devil’s work. This is the main motivating factor in the Liberals’ yes/no/maybe attitude to getting Alberta’s oil to market. One must not displease Quebec.

Ontario is the largest and most populous of Canada’s provinces. Though westerners sometimes regard Ontario as being another monolith of think-alikes united against their interests, the picture is actually more complex. In this election, large swathes of rural and suburban Ontario went Conservative blue. The thinking in these areas is not too different from what you’d hear in Saskatchewan.

But. Toronto.

Toronto, the country’s most populous city, is a testament to Canada’s “more is better” immigration policy. It is the most diverse city in the world, except in one respect. In this election, it was pretty solidly Liberal.

The Liberals are the party that brought in grandma, and they don’t let you forget it. Despite the fact that no Canadian government on either side of the aisle in the last fifty years has ever challenged the almost religious belief in immigration being an unqualified good, the Liberals still make great hay out of the murky, unspecified threat of the Conservatives not being quite as welcoming. They might, you know, do something. Can’t have that.

And so, recent immigrants love the Liberals, and young Trudeau specifically. More settled immigrants may question why their neighbourhoods are free-fire zones, and just what they are getting for their taxes, but if they are supplanted by newcomers at a greater rate, and they get their citizenships within the election cycle, say three years instead of five, then problem solved!

Also, the Conservatives might do something… something about abortion, or maybe gay rights. Sure, they say they won’t, and the last Conservative government didn’t, but they can’t be trusted. This is enough, when combined with a magic-wand promise to ban the legal guns almost never involved in Toronto gun crime, to woo the 905 set.

The Prairies is where Liberal luck runs out. Starting in Manitoba, then accelerating in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the blue tide accelerates and wipes out Liberal representation. Trudeau is hated in oil country, perceived as the pawn of Quebec and foreign anti-energy celebrities and lobbyists. Hated like his father was. Albertans have noticed that Trudeau was willing to risk the fall of his government to save 8000 jobs in Montreal in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. But he was unwilling to do much of anything to save 100,000 jobs in Alberta’s oilpatch. It seems that the Trudeau senior slogan of “Forget the west, we’ll take the rest” is actual policy.

But now, Alberta and Saskatchewan are left without any representation in government. Not the first time this has happened. Dark mutterings of separation are being heard.

If Alberta is Canada’s Texas, then British Columbia is its California. In the north and interior, Conservatives are popular among ranchers, loggers, and energy workers. But the urban ridings of Vancouver have some of the same love for Trudeau seen in Toronto, and Vancouver Island is a hippy enclave of Green Power. No pipelines or tankers for us, thank you very much. The Liberals got just enough support out here to save their bacon, when combined with their stellar performance in Toronto.

The result is a splintered and mutually suspicious conglomeration of regions. Trudeau is delusional if he really thinks, as he said on Monday night, that he’s been given a mandate to govern. He owes his success to a friendly press, a resurgent BQ, and a lackluster Conservative leader. I’d say there was a chance to salvage things, if he played his cards right, but this is Trudeau we’re talking about. When comes to cards, his skill level is strictly “Go Fish.”

Look for Canadian politics to become more divisive, uglier, and more populist in the years to come. That fragile, 100 KM band of a nation could be stretched to the breaking point.