How this election will, and won’t, be different

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: In many ways, most Canadian federal elections are the same. There are promises and more promises.

Clip of Justin Trudeau: Keep Canadians safe and thriving, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

Clip of Erin O’Toole: We will get the budget back to balance over the course of the next decade.

Clip of Jagmeet Singh: Making the ultra-rich pay their fair share so we can invest in people.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Criticisms and more criticisms.

Clip of Erin O’Toole: And the NDP, Greens, and Bloc Quebecois. They support spending other people’s money as much as the Liberals. They’re all the same.

Clip of Jagmeet Singh: Justin Trudeau teamed up with Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives to vote against a universal pharmacare that would help all Canadians.

Clip of Rand Paul: Again, common sense and collaboration has lost out to the quest for power.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: There are boasts about the size of party platforms and fears about strategic voting. There’s usually a scandal or two along the way. In that sense, there will be nothing different about this federal election, but that’s the content of the campaign. What will be dramatically different this time are the logistics. Federal elections cost hundreds of millions of dollars to stage, and this pandemic election will have the highest price tag of them all. And that’s just what we know so far. What we don’t know could fill a book or at least a podcast episode. Will party leaders crisscross the country to tout their policies, even if COVID cases are rising in the communities they’re planning to visit? Will candidates knock on doors? Will they hold town halls in person? Will they shake hands? Will their events be outdoors and masked? Will Canadians flock to voting by mail? And if they do, how well will that system hold up? What will Election Day, September 20th, look like with public health officials already expressing concern over voters crowding into school, gymnasiums and auditoriums? Seen provincial elections during COVID-19, but nothing on this scale. This will be the first federal election of the pandemic era. And hey, if we end up with another minority government, it might not be the last.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Cormac Mac Sweeney is our guy on Parliament Hill, not just our guy, he reports for CityNews, he reports for Rogers Radio, and we call him in whenever Ottawa goes crazy as it does. Hi, Cormac.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: How’s it going?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: It’s going well, I imagine you’re fairly busy already and about to get busier.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Yeah, I think saying it’s getting crazy in Ottawa is accurate, but not just here in Ottawa, of course, across the country, because we have our leaders on the campaign trail right now. And just when you thought your fully vaxxed summer was going to be easy, we have this campaign to deal with, but, you know, democracy. This is a chance for Canadians to have their say. And some people may not like the fact that we’re heading to a campaign. Others are fine with it. On September 20th, we’ll make our choice as to who we want to lead us federally.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: I’m glad you mentioned the leaders heading out on the campaign trail, because that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about as it pertains to just the logistics of holding this election. Never mind the rhetoric that all the parties will bring to the table. How quickly have plans for how this election will work come together? Or is that kind of still a work in progress, depending on who you talk to?

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Well, in some ways, parties have been planning for this for some time. There was a lot of speculation earlier in the year when the Trudeau government was doing its vaccine contracts and everything looked primed for Canada to have a flood of vaccines late in the spring, early in the summer, and that we would have more than enough vaccines for June. Of course, there were some issues with the vaccine rollout. Johnson & Johnson, we didn’t end up using any of those single dose shots, there were issues with AstraZeneca as well. Some other companies had some production problems. So there were definitely blips along the way. And there was a lot of speculation that we would be heading to the polls in June. So there was a lot of talk about it. There were rumours flying around, but those rumours not only did they prime the Canadian public for the fact that we could be heading to the polls, but it allowed, let’s say, the opposition parties to start to make their preparations.

So preparations have been underway for some time, whether it be from the governing Liberal parties or the opposition parties, it’s not like this was completely out of the blue. The interesting thing is that no matter how prepared you are or no matter how much time you really have, it always seems to be a scramble as we kick off an election campaign. I don’t think we have a single party with every candidate in place at this time. There are certain measures that some parties have to try and just sort of drop in some candidates and to certain ridings where they need to just have face. But there are still scrambles right towards the end. And you talk about planning. I mean, the Conservatives on the second day of the election campaign released their full party platform in this magazine style platform that takes planning that takes time to get together. But the opposition party said they didn’t want a campaign, but they’d be ready for one. So there are always going to be little changes that can be made.

One expert I spoke with said no party is ever fully prepared on day one of an election campaign. And it is considered, through the campaign itself a work in progress right up until voting day, because so much can change. So much has to change. You got to be able to roll with the punches and deal with any challenge that pops up on the campaign trail. And there will be challenges for every party and COVID-19 is that big question mark hanging over this campaign. So we’ll see what impact it really has in terms of those tours. But it’s going to be a different campaign that we’ve seen in the past.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: When you talk to people working on these campaigns inside the parties, and I don’t mean partisans who are focused on policy when you just talk to them about how the campaigns will work. Is this going to be different from a normal federal election because of pandemic concerns and how so?

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Most definitely, it’s going to be different. The way that they’re structuring the events, the way they’re structuring their leaders’ tours, the way they’re approaching their interactions with voters are all different this time around. You’re seeing in these early days, a lot of shots of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau giving elbow bumps to people, having masks, having his mask on whenever he’s interacting with the public. But so far, his campaign has been a little closer to a normal campaign, getting out there, meeting the public a little bit more, still doing announcements outside of Ottawa.

However, behind the scenes, you’re seeing the tweets from the reporters on the plane. They got to do rapid testing every day. There are vaccination requirements for, I think each leader’s tour of the three main national parties all have these vaccination environment for those who are traveling with them. But as well, there’s masking that has to happen. You have to make sure that there is some sort of distance to try and make sure that you don’t have COVID cases on your plane, because that would be a huge issue for any leader’s tour right now. So a lot of precautions are in place, and it’s not just the Liberals. The NDP have their own plans as well. The Conservatives also have their plans for how they’re treating this. The NDP are open about the fact that if they get a COVID case on their leader’s tour, they’re going to shut down the tour. They’re going to hit pause on it for a certain amount of time. And the person who tests positive would have to go for a PCR test. Everybody who’s on that plane, staff and media included, would have to get tested again with the PCR tests to make sure that nobody else has caught COVID as a result of a positive case on their plane or bus. And they would have to resume it after that.

Conservatives have completely changed the way they’re focusing on this campaign. The first couple of days, Erin O’Toole was doing all of his events out of a hotel studio that they set up in Ottawa. They have this almost like a production studio where he’s able to virtually connect with people. And so he’s having these virtual town halls with people in different provinces and holding his announcements there. And he hasn’t really hit the campaign trail. On day three, he went to Toronto for a rally, an in person rally. But also, he had an announcement, but that was also held at a hotel, not outside anywhere. So it’s very interesting because the Conservatives here seem to be taking the most cautious approach in terms of the COVID precautions. However, they’ve also invested a lot of money to set up a big studio. So when you invest that money, you expect that it’s going to be used. So voters should expect that to be a more common campaign stop, if you will, for the Conservatives, is that that TV studio that they basically set up. But, yeah, each party is taking this differently.

Annamie Paul with the Greens, is doing everything out of Toronto Center the riding where she is running to try and win a seat. But that’s not necessarily because of COVID. She’s doing these events outside and making her announcements outside in terms of those COVID precautions. But I think she’s been open about the fact that she wants to win her seat, and so that’s why she’s going to spend all of her time and effort in that riding instead of crisscrossing the country.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: How much do you expect that issues related to COVID protocols around the election will be a subject of actual campaign discussion? Just to mention a couple of things. To your point, Erin O’Toole not getting right out on the hustings as it were to talk to people? But also, we’ve seen those pictures of Trudeau out in a crowd outside, and there’s also been talk of which parties will and will not require all their candidates to be vaccinated. And so I’m wondering, I guess, beyond its actual impact on the logistics of the campaign, how much will the perception of whether or not a given candidate or party is taking COVID seriously enough play into attacks on them?

Cormac Mac Sweeney: I think it will play into this, but to the degree that it matters to a voter when they mark their X on their ballot remains to be seen. We’ve seen in these early days that, yes, vaccinations are a divisive issue on the campaign trail in the sense that, as you mentioned, Justin Trudeau doing a stop in Cobourg where anti vaxxers or protesters who didn’t like the promise of having mandatory vaccinations for all federal public employees and making sure that anybody who was flying on a plane within Canada before the end of October will have to be fully vaccinated. They weren’t happy with that, and they were trying to shout down Trudeau while he was trying to speak to supporters out in Cobourg. So that’s going to be an issue that pops up.

Jagmeet Singh as well, was facing some people who are making comments to him while he was trying to do an event outside in regards to his position on vaccinations. But that mandatory vaccine issue is something that’s being asked of the party leaders. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole questioned why he doesn’t want to have mandatory vaccinations for all public service employees and many federally regulated employees and passengers on air and rail travel. And his take is a little bit different, he says, look, I encourage every Canadian to get vaccinated. And for those who aren’t getting vaccinated, we need to have rapid testing. We need to have other measures in place. But he doesn’t want to decree that everyone has to or there will be consequences, which is what we’re hearing from the Liberals and the NDP.

So it’s become a bit of an ideological issue here that is being brought up on the campaign trail, government forcing something on the people, and whether that’s right or wrong, given the context of the public health emergency that we are facing, I assume that as we move forward in the campaign, we’ll hear more positioning, more attacks about whether one person’s position on the issue of vaccines is better than another. And then that being thrown back, let’s say at the Liberal leader, where he’s already faced the attacks from the other party leaders, that this is not the time to call an election. Covid-19, we’ve got this fourth wave coming in, and it’s too risky to have people crisscrossing the country or trying to make sure that Canadians head out to the polls on a certain day and line up around other people, potentially at gyms or community centres or wherever the polling stations are going to be.

Typically, the reasons why we head to an election don’t matter as much on voting day. It’s the policies and the platforms and the ideas and maybe for the incumbents, the amount of time that they’ve spent in power that really factors into it for a lot of Canadians. But this time around, it’s going to be a different campaign. And we will see COVID pop up on the campaign trail, not just from the logistics of it all, but also where we go from here, how this has changed our minds as voters, what we want to see the future of our country, whether that’s the Conservative point of view, the Liberal, the NDP, the Green, whatever your political band of whatever you think is the best for the country, you get to choose now, COVID could disrupt this campaign in many ways if we see a wave like we saw in the spring.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Well, that’s the thing, right? Trudeau or O’Toole or Singh or anybody is expected to make a stop in City X for an announcement. And the morning of that announcement, they announced their highest COVID case count in however many days since the bad days of the spring. And the next image you get as a leader standing outside asking for the vote, like it’s just, those optics are going to be tough for campaigns to adapt to.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Yeah. And I think they can adapt through the campaign. And I think that we’ve seen smaller crowds trying to close off larger crowds when we see that. But you’re also seeing images of large crowds because you can’t always control who decides to show up at your event when you’re holding something outside. So maybe they get more controlled if they see scenarios like that happened. You just triggered a memory for me. When I lived in Calgary, I covered a lot of Alberta politics, and I remember there was a pitch to end a gas rebate that was being given out. One of the election campaigns. I believe it was a Liberal Party in Alberta, but nonetheless, there was this promise to end this rebate in order to try and gain some revenue for the government. But it was made I believe I’m one of the coldest days of that campaign. They should have had a Plan B there. And I think they acknowledged afterwards that it was not the best time to have rolled with that announcement on that day.

But this is the thing. Campaigns. If you don’t have a Plan B, if you’re not prepared, if you don’t know how to adapt and enrol with the punches as this campaign moves on, that could be damaging to your campaign. And it’s something especially in COVID times, that they should definitely have a lot of contingencies in place for whatever may come our way. When you talk about the planning as well as we discussed at the start of this, I think there’s been a lot of planning to make sure that they know what to do and what scenario. But we’ll see, because if a scenario pops up and they don’t have a plan to deal with it, that could be a big problem for any of the campaigns on this race.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Let’s shift away from the campaigns for just a second. I know you’ve also done some reporting around Elections Canada and the actual process of getting Canadians to the polls, or at least getting them to cast their ballots safely. Why don’t you first kind of explain how expensive this thing is going to be, and then what’s going to be different about the way we vote this year?

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Yeah. So the cost is going to go up. I think we’re pretty clear on that. Elections Canada did give me an estimate. They believe that it could cost up to $610,000,000 to run this campaign. That’s around 100 million more than the campaign that was held two years ago in 2019. But they do note that the overall cost is not yet known. It’s kind of unpredictable. They say it’s going to depend a lot on the status of the pandemic at the time of the election. There are a lot of precautions that have to be taken because of COVID-19 and Elections Canada wants to try and make sure that this is the safest election that they could possibly have at this time. And so because of that, we’re seeing these increase in costs. So when you go to cast your ballot, you might notice a lot of differences from what you normally do.

Elections Canada says that they’re going to have sanitizing stations at all entrances and exits for polling stations, there’s going to be physical distancing markers. Poll workers will be wearing masks and PPE. They’re going to be using single use pencils to try and minimize any contact points. But they also have an option for people to return those pencils to be recycled if they want. All polling stations are going to be cleaned regularly. So this costs money to do all of this to make sure that across the country, at every single polling station and every single riding, you have the proper precautions in place to make sure that you’re not creating some big super spreader event across Canada. One political scientist I spoke with wasn’t bothered as much by the cost. They were saying, yes, it’s more. But when you look at the reasons why it’s justified from an Elections Canada point of view, it’s justified this higher cost. And they just said, look, democracy is messy and it’s expensive. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best one we have. And you got to pay if you want to have a Democratic election.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Just thinking back to last year’s American election. And obviously Canada is on a smaller scale. But a huge issue around that was voting by mail and whether or not the US Postal System was able to handle that kind of volume, because presumably far, far more people voted by mail, and that will be true this time as well. What is the vote by mail system like in Canada? Is it ready for this? Are they planning for a huge surge?

Cormac Mac Sweeney: They are planning for a huge surge. They know the Canada Post is aware that this is going to happen, that they’re going to see a larger volume as a result of this election. Elections Canada as well is fully expecting to have many more mail-in ballots. I think the number is somewhere around, like 55 or 60,000 mail-in ballots that they usually get in an election. There are estimates that it could be millions now, and it’s come with a warning as well that there’s a chance we might not get the full results on election night, which would be odd.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: That’s what I was getting to like. How could this impact the actual vote counting? Because that is an order of magnitude.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: It’s going to take time, that’s for sure. But there are other rules in place to make sure that it’s not like we’re getting mail ballots mailed in for the week that follows or anything. There are certain rules around mail in ballots. So first of all, you have to apply online or at an Elections Canada office to get a mail-in ballot. And you need to do that before Tuesday, September 14, at 06:00 p.m.. That’s the deadline to send your ballot in by mail, and so you have to apply for that. Otherwise you can’t do it. You can’t just write on a piece of paper and mail it into Elections Canada.

The other rule around this is that Elections Canada needs to receive it before the end of Election Day. On on Voting Day. You need to make sure that you are planning out in your head how long it might take to mail that ballot into Elections Canada to make sure that it comes in an appropriate time for them to actually count it as a ballot. If you know who you’re going to vote for and you want to vote by mail, apply now get your kit, mail it in, it’s free. You get an envelope to send it in and it’s postage page. You don’t have to worry about buying a stamp. It’s all a part of democracy to make sure that everybody gets a vote. So you got to send that in. But there are many other ways to vote as well. It’s not just mail-in ballot or voting on the actual Election day. You can also vote at advanced polls from 09:00 a.m to 09:00 p.m. On Friday, September 10. Saturday, September 11. Sunday, September 12. Monday, September 13. Those are the advanced polling days and closer to I think you’ll get more information about where exactly you can cast that vote. But here’s the cool thing that a lot of people don’t really know. If you already have your mind made up now, you can vote right now.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Really.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: You can go to any Elections Canada office across the country and cast your ballot today.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Just get it over with.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Just get it over with. If you know who you’re voting for, that is I mean, there are a lot of people who want to wait. They want to see more plans. They haven’t decided yet, and that’s totally understandable. And that’s fine. That’s the way elections work. But there are a lot of partisans, people who know exactly they’re not going to be swayed by one of the other parties. Monday to Friday, 09:00 a.m. To 09:00 p.m.. Saturday, 09:00 a.m. To 06:00 p.m.. Sunday, noon to 04:00 p.m.. Elections Canada offices across the country are there, are open. You vote by it’s considered a special ballot, but you can go in there and vote. I’ve done it myself before because you cover the elections. You get the voting out of the way early because you’re going to be working on Election Day. There are many options for people to cast their ballots early if they want to, and avoid what could be long lineups on Election Day or just the delayed process on Election Day because you’re going to have that social distancing. You’re going to have all these extra precautions put in place. It’s going to be very different this voting day. If COVID is a concern for you, you have the mail-in ballot. You could do advanced polling. You could do voting at an Elections Canada office, which tends to not be as popular, so less people are probably going to be there voting with you at that time. But if Canadians have that option, I strongly encourage them to use them.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: That is great information. I think it would be incredibly practical to do that. And then you could tune out the rest of the election campaign, which would be bad for people like me and you, but good for people who just don’t want to deal with it.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: And I think that’s fair that some people might be hesitant because they might say, well, what if a scandal pops up, right, like nobody expected in 2019 to be dealing with, let’s say, the blackface scandal with Justin Trudeau. Or maybe if you were in a little bit too early in 2015 election campaign and maybe you didn’t like what the Conservatives had said at the time. There are all these things that can pop up that can change someone’s mind. But if you feel confident before September 14th at 06:00 p.m., that’s the deadline for voting at these Elections Canada offices, you need to get it in there before September 14 at 06:00 p.m.. But you can go and cast your ballot at that time.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Last question, before I let you go, you’ve been on the trail at least virtually for a couple of days now. You’ve seen kind of what’s different and what’s not. What will you be watching for in the next few days or weeks to get a sense of how different this campaign might be from a normal campaign?

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Well, I’m going to be keeping my eyes on the numbers and stuff that we’ve already talked about, whether we see these campaigns shift in terms of strategy. If numbers climb up even more, and we’re really struggling with this fourth wave, you know. Do we see less in person events? Or if the numbers remain low to the Conservatives change their tactics and start to do more in person events? There are always hurdles, roadblocks, big issues that pop up an election campaign, policies, debates that maybe you didn’t expect at the start of the campaign to pop up in the middle and polling as well.

You know, a lot of people look at the polls at the start of the campaign, but it’s rare to see a campaign and exactly the same as the polling was showing at the start of that campaign. In more modern elections, I think maybe 2008 was pretty stagnant. It ended almost exactly the way you expected it at the start of the campaign. But 2011, we saw the rise of the NDP and the Orange wave embarrassing the Liberals and coming up to official opposition. And at one point in that campaign, it was even looking like they could potentially form government. So there was a lot that happened in 2011. In 2015, Trudeau, Justin Trudeau made history, coming back from third party status to form a majority government, that had never happened before. But he rode the wave of a long election campaign, and he was able to rise significantly with his hopeful messaging and the Liberal parties. In 2019, we had the blackface scandal pop up and part of that and the big shifting Quebec from the Liberals to the Bloc Quebecios really held the Liberal Party back from another majority government, and they were stuck with a minority.

What’s going to happen in this campaign in the days and weeks and head? I don’t know. I don’t know what the big issue will be on Voting Day that will really sway the most votes. The one thing I can say as well is that I spoke with a couple of experts and I was asking about key battle grounds. They say some of the key battle grounds that we really need to watch, which can kind of be like a weather vein of where this election is going to head, whether the Liberals can get their majority that they’re after, or whether we see another party potentially looking to form government is the belts around Vancouver and Toronto, those suburban ridings that are often swing ridings. Those will be important, but probably the biggest will be Quebec. And I know some people will say, oh, Quebec, it’s a political cliche that you need to get Quebec. But it’s true. There’s a large voting block that just shifts. And again, 2011 was the Orange wave, thanks to Quebec. 2015, the Liberal majority, thanks to Quebec voting Liberal. The Liberal minority thanks to Quebec going to the BQ. If the Liberals can take Quebec, we could see a totally different scenario here. If Conservatives can make some gains in Quebec, if the NDP, if the Bloc, who’s predicting that they’re going to gain, see if the Bloc can come out strong in Quebec, then there are just so many different avenues that this could go down. But it’s fascinating to see. And I think I’m going to be keeping my eyes on the polling numbers as we get closer to voting day, see where it goes. But there’s only one poll that matters, and that’s taken on Monday, September 20, with your ballots, and that’s the one that will determine our next federal government.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: There you go. Thank you so much, Cormac. I’m sure we will check in with you and see how tired you are in a couple of weeks.

Cormac Mac Sweeney: Anytime.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings: Cormac Mac Sweeney covering the campaign at Parliament Hill. That was The Big Story for more, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can find all of our politics episodes on there. There are more to come, I promise, over the next several weeks. You can also find us on Twitter to complain that we are partisan against your favourite candidate, we are at @TheBigStoryFPN. and you can always email us. I love long, detailed screeds about imagined policy positions. Love them. Find us at thebigstorypodcast, all one word, @rci.rogers.com click here!]. And of course, this podcast is in every podcast player across the world, on the Internet, in your smart speakers. Wherever you get your podcasts, all that good stuff.

Thanks for listening, I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.