News Clips: We’re breaking news from Canada votes 2019 see TV tonight declaring a liberal minority in the federal election CBC now projecting a liberal minority and City projecting a win for the liberals so far. They are had a hundred forty.
Jordan: There were a lot of questions over the past 40 days of a long. And ugly federal election campaign and often there weren’t nearly enough answers.
News Clips: I am weary of of being definitive about this. It’s a we don’t offer comments. We don’t think like stands for sure. You mind that contracts they are may not. This week on Fridays. Can we just ask you a quick question really quick question. We just ask you really quickly. Can we just ask me really quick? Can we just make it says really quickly? She’s running for office.
Jordan: With all of those unanswered questions. It is only fitting that the 43rd Canadian federal election ended with an answer that leads to more questions. This election is in the books it is done. But how will Canadians actually be. For the next I’m actually I don’t know how long. Will a workable Parliament appear over the next few days. Will the Liberals be able to find a way to effectively run the country over the next few months. Will we be doing this again next year? I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. And this is the big story. The votes are in John Stall is 680 NEWS political affairs specialist. He joins us in a quiet spot in a busy Newsroom as we wind down our election coverage here late at night.
Hi, John,
John: And I like both Vibes. I like the quiet chatty talk and I love the excitement of a newsroom on Election night.
Jordan: There’s nothing like it and we’re glad we could steal you for a few minutes. People are listening to this waking up the next morning. Some of them spared themselves this night. So what are they waking up to
John: their waking up to a strong liberal minority’s government and strong means they had at least 35 seats more than second. Runner conservatives, so there’s none of the anticipated permission required from the governor general or deal-making that has to take place between Justin Trudeau and any of the other leaders overnight or in the next few days to establish a government. It essentially means he could if he wants to just continue to govern as though he has a majority really without talking to anybody you’d be smart to talk to people as you go forward.
But that’s what he can do. Just go in there and govern and with every piece of legislation. The first one would be a throne speech right there requires a vote in the House of Commons. You just put it on the table and says, go ahead.
Jordan: Is that risky?
John: Well, It would be risky under other circumstances, but nobody in it, you know realistically no other party is going to bring them down within a month.
Jordan: Why not?
I’m triggering election because the country would be furious.
Yes. I’d be furious personally
John: You know having to go through another election the cost of. An election to the National treasury as you know astounding and generally you don’t do that, you know within a month, right and also the other parties are if they’re not broke.
They spent most of their money the none of them could afford to mount another campaign that conservatives probably could but the NDP couldn’t the green couldn’t individual candidates couldn’t so it’s unlikely they bring them down. The first week first Throne speech. Yeah the first budget frankly.
It’ll be two years. He could pretty much yeah, you know before it’s reasonable for an opposition to consider other than just because it is
Jordan: In all the discussion leading up to this election when there were the conversations about a coalition government and should Justin Trudeau resign if he doesn’t have as many seats as the conservatives everybody sort of was coming at it from the point of view of. The opposition would try to bring down a government when they could
John: Well eventually they do the question is how long does that take? You know, what is a reasonable length of time?
Jordan: So what would that look like on the ground?
John: Well again, let me back up a little bit. He can last two years pretty much guaranteed without anybody bringing him down for the sake of bringing him down.
He could last longer if he gets the support of. The NDP which is very likely to give him that support. I mean Jack meets sings best case scenario out of this is that he has a degree of balance of power. He was never going to win. So the most influence he could ever have is. Being somewhat of a kingmaker using that leverage now as we go to bed or wake up this morning, the number of seats that he has is almost equal to the difference between the Liberals and the conservatives right?
So when it gets contentious if the Liberals can rely on Jagmeet Singh’s support on every bill that would likely be more than the combined other. Party supposing it which would be the block of and they and the PCS and Jagmeet Singh’s more likely to keep him alive where it gets contentious is on things like the pipeline.
Hmm, you know, if the Liberals want to go forward with this Pipeline and they said they do and they bought it. Yeah. Well,
Jordan: That’s kind of my next question is how does governing from a minority position whether he’s working with the NDP or with the Blocker on a case-by-case basis. How does that change? The platform that Trudeau was presenting in this election
John: Probably not unfolding the kind of legislative policy that they pledged during election. So they may withhold install the big ones like the. The pipeline because it would just be difficult for the kind of support required on the NDP side.
However, the conservatives how that they would oppose the government on most other things might say yes to the pipeline, right? That’ll be a contentious issue. And you know, I mean Trudeau’s got a hard job ahead. And I mean he’s got to repair the kind of damage that’s been done across the country.
There’s a whole National Unity crisis. Now that is a result of this election that he is partly responsible for not solely but partly by trying to pit Ontario and Alberta against the other regions by trying to tie Doug Ford in and and Jason Kenney, so. He at the one on the one hand he wants to put lots of people want them to do the right thing for Alberta and help them through this economic challenge with the pipeline and on the other he’s got to repair the kind of damage that’s been done in this election, which no other damage has ever been done before like this.
Jordan: That’s what I was going to ask you is you’ve seen a lot of Elections how what made this one different in terms of fracturing the country.
John: Well a lot of things none of them. I don’t think we’re very important but they choose like in the big picture but the Liberals chose as a game plan to gamble on what they call the Investments.
And people conservatives would call that wild wasteful Reckless spending. So Trudeau drew the the wedge into the campaign by saying these other guys are the ones who are going to cost you lots of money because they’re going to raise taxes and they’re going to they don’t work for the little people and all that.
So he drew that and pointed to Kenny. And and to Doug Ford Ford in particular playing hang on what he knew who is been a Troublesome year for Doug Ford in Ontario and you know to some extent I think it worked but there’s a lot of damage done along the way. I mean, how does he sit down for a first Minister’s conference and get you know cooperation on other issues from guys like Ford and Kenny really took the brunt of his vitriol.
Over the selection but again, he chose that because that was the only difference that he could distinguish himself from the conservative Camp by and it became a little vicious in a little bit too personal.
Jordan: Well, one of the questions I had was about Doug Ford and and how quickly. Will the conservatives be looking at their strategy, which I think everybody knows we talked about it.
When we did our podcast about the Ontario angle in this election, which was to keep Doug Ford out of the public eye. I already saw some people on our on our broadcast on other broadcast tonight saying in the conservative Circle saying. Maybe that wasn’t the smartest play
in retrospect. Yeah,
well everything Smart in retrospect, but but what happens to the conservatives now
John: Well, but that’s hard to say.
I don’t think they’ll replace Andrew Scheer right away. He has increased their own what I mean. The positive is he has increased their seats standing in the House of Commons from 95 to whatever it ends up being. On the other hand, there are a lot of conservatives who feel like Trudeau’s screwed up so badly and gave them such an opportunity with SNC and with black face and with the trip to India and whatever other, you know, mistakes and faux pas great year you never great year.
A lot of conservatives think a stronger conservative leaders should have capitalized on that like crazy. And this was theirs to win given what Trudeau left them with on the other hand very few first term government’s ever lose. In the first election, so there is a victory of sorts for the conservatives even though they would have wanted to finish better and have the minority go on their favour.
They did hold a majority government to a minority in the second term that’s you know, an election and a half that they can reclaim power if they win the next phase which might be a collapse of this government within two years and another election in two years and away they go. Whether they all stick with Andrew Scheer for that are not hard to say at this stage real early, maybe chatter about replacing them, but that’s dangerous, too.
Jordan: What surprised you about the results we saw last night?
John: The size of the Bloc québécois support in Quebec, although we anticipated at that that’s surprise me generally over the selection.
Yeah a year ago this party was, you know, I hadn’t nothing going for it. And then it’s only the leader with Monseiur Blanchet really? I was able to coalesce support and rebuild a party behind him and it was totally personality-based that surprised me. I didn’t see this coming year ago and there was chatter that they were growing so that level of support in Quebec is as a surprise to me.
I’m surprised generally that the Liberals did not hold onto a majority really I did. Yeah, I mean not like I wasn’t thinking that yesterday or the day before I still thought it was. Possible but a year ago, it was in my view impossible to think that you know, a conservative Victory could unseat this this liberal government which rode very high for the first two years and if it wasn’t for I don’t know that there was any one thing it was just a kind of a.
Accumulation of disappointments and surprises I think in the way the Prime Minister conducted himself not the rest of the party and not necessarily their policies that SNC Lavalin situation. I don’t think was the cause of any loss of support it certainly gave the conservatives the a kind of ammunition to try to keep it alive, but there’s just as much of a.
case to be made for the case that the Prime Minister made in terms of seeking a DPA for that friend company how he treated the two women? That that raised the concern over separation of justice and politics is a legitimate complaint and I think he lost a lot of support for the his conduct in the.
Jordan: Well the shine um just really seem to come off. I’m never even mind before the Brown face and black. Oh, yeah before the shine shine just came off of him and and yep his image. With such a big part of the brand
John: It was
Jordan: Do they govern differently without that another because that image is not coming back.
John: No, it’s not coming back.
They do govern somewhat differently. You’ll govern carefully. I mean they were grateful to hold on to this. Yeah. They got scared to death. Trust me the last few few days. I think it only from my sources tell me that it only turned around for them about 48 hours ago when they realized. We’re not going to lose really but there was always the fear that they might so this you know, this is both a victory and a loss for the Liberals.
I mean, it’s a lost because you shouldn’t lose a majority after one term. It usually takes the end of the second term before that happens. This one is the animosity continues and the conservatives get their legs. It could happen in an election and a half if in two and a half years from now, we’re into another election as a result of the minority government situation instead of four.
It could be a conservative Victory and that would be a election and a half that take instead of the two but this never did start out as a change election, right and that’s not just my opinion people and pollsters and strategists take a look at public opinion at the outside of a campaign and just to give you an example in 2015.
So that’s two terms after Stephen Harper. The recorded and measured Appetite For Change among Canadians was about 58 percent. So 58 percent of the country had declared that in their View. It was time for change contrast that with this election 37% think it’s time for change that’s nowhere near the the majority.
So that was not the issue. So it without a time for change. How does an opposition party win? They came close with these faux pas and that’s why criticism of mr. Shears that he just wasn’t able to capitalize on that.
Jordan: What about the NDP surge that we heard a lot about in the polls leading up to election day.
Certainly. There was a real feeling that something had coalesced around jug meet sing. Where did that support go or was it ever real because it doesn’t seem to have materialized
John: Now I certainly didn’t think back in hold that some here in Ontario some in western Canada, but. A lot of people thought it’d be wiped out completely
Jordan: Did people just get their hopes up who really wanted to believe in things rise.
John: I’m not sure that they thought he would actually win and increase the seats and certainly not, you know become Prime Minister, but I think a lot of people just appreciated his honesty and his authenticity right campaign. Yeah, and at about also argue, we’ll come back to that. He looked great because the others were so bad in comparison.
Jordan: That’s fair.
John: He was used terrific. I was really interesting. I don’t speak French and I don’t understand it. Well enough to have analyzed the French language debate. So what I decided to do because I understand body language and communication and Charisma is just turn the sound off and just sit there watch it and boy the difference between sing and bloc leader Blanchet and the rest was miles apart.
Jordan: What are you talking while they’re tell?
John: You know, I mean, I don’t want to I’m Italian by the way, if with a Italian background of roots, so I speak with my hands and I’m passionate about the kitchen and I make my homemade sausage and homemade wine and when you come to my place you eat and you know, and you can see what I’m doing here with my hands and I’m telling you what I do.
Yeah, and I mean. That Supply ship was doing and sounding like and looking like on the screen. I don’t know whether because I had the sound down he was going to really saying I’m gonna take this province out of this country once and for all I don’t know that he was saying that that’s not my point.
But whatever he was saying he was saying it with such passion and all of his body that I sat there and saying I’d vote for that guy. Without even knowing what he’s saying and the same with Singh just from the visual using his hands leaning in nothing phony about. It was authentic the eyebrow raise.
It was all it was all real just body stuff. I think that’s what people at bought into and light not with the expectation that he was going to form government, but I think give him a chance you’re rewarded him. So good for you. You know you’re doing good. So we got the buzz. It didn’t translate into the kind of seats up, but nobody expected them to win.
That’s my point. I don’t want to repeat myself. He still may end up being third party because he’ll have influence
Jordan: When you look back on this election. What was it about?
John: But whether this government should and deserved to remain at the head of the House of Commons despite the snc situation despite.
Criticism the Trudeau is nothing more or less than a you know color colorful socks and lots of selfies taken around the world and going too far with the costumes and India because the cut the cut the economy is great unemployment is low western Canada wants or they’ve Alberta wants their economy back.
They want the oil out and to Market and they want the pipeline and he’s not standing in the way of. You have to remind those who say he standing in the way of the pipeline. He’s not he gave it permission to go through they wanted through was it was the courts that said you just didn’t consult well enough with indigenous Canadians until you do you’re actually bought it when he gets criticized for buying it by those who don’t want it but Alberta should rest assured that he wants it through and you’ll get it through so it wasn’t about anything other than they deserve to be re-elected.
Jordan: That’s pretty anticlimactic.
John: Is this selection the best line I heard actually came from Jenny burn who is with Stephen Harper calling it a goats rodeo. He’ll you know that that’s what it was. Just kind of plotted along it had to happen. For years fixed date whether we like it or not. We got to have an election and now it’s over.
Jordan: My last question is do I ever have to hear the name Maxime Bernier again?
John: No.
Jordan: Oh, thank God. Thank you John.
John: My pleasure.
Jordan: John Stall 680 news political Affairs specialist that was the Big Story and that is a wrap on the big stories 2019 federal election coverage. If you liked it, go to your favourite podcast app, you’re probably in it right now, and hit 5 Stars. You can find other stories not all of them political at thebigstorypodcast.ca you can tell us what you think will happen next in Canada’s Halls of power at @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter, and as always you can listen wherever you like to listen to podcasts on Apple, and Google, on Stitcher, on Spotify or anywhere else. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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