Jordan (intro)
First of all, if you’ve already voted good for you. If you’re voting today, get out and do it. You probably didn’t want this election. You definitely didn’t want it at the end of summer. Even if you hated every minute of it, I hope you paid attention during this campaign. But just in case you didn’t, in case it wasn’t your job or you had a family or a life or a nice summer, we have you covered. Today, 36 days in one episode. Think of it like you recorded a game, and now you’re going to catch up, at triple speed.
Jordan
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is the big story. Cormac Mac Sweeney, our man on Parliament Hall. Hello, Cormac it’s almost over.
Cormac
Hello.
Jordan
We’re trying to take everybody through this election as fast as we can, especially for people who are lucky enough to not have to follow every single moment of it. So I wanted to ask you to start with the mood, I guess, in Ottawa and around the country as the election was called. You know, Justin Trudeau got up in front of the podium and he made a case that this election is about letting Canadians choose what the next four years will look like. And that’s why we need to do it now…
Trudeau Clip
And now, it’s time to hear your voice. The decisions your government makes right now will define the future your kids and grand kids grow up in.
Jordan
And then at the exact same time he was making that case, or maybe a few hours later, Kabul fell in Afghanistan and the Taliban took back the country. How is that for a start to a campaign?
Cormac
It was an interesting start to a campaign, for sure. I mean, looking at just the election call itself, I think there were a lot of Canadians who were just wiped out by the pandemic. And a lot of Canadians not really looking towards an election are not wanting to have an election at all at this point in time. But of course, at the same time, we were seeing the starting of the fourth wave of this pandemic. And so a lot of people were concerned that as cases started to rise, that maybe this wasn’t the right time to call an election. On the other hand, we do have this big international crisis happening in Afghanistan, with the Taliban taking over…
Afghanistan News Clip
… the fall of the capital, helicopters and black smoke visible, American diplomats, including the ambassador, evacuated to the airport, thousands of Afghans now scrambling to get out the Kabul airport…
Cormac
So this was a big distraction for the Liberals at the start of this campaign, for sure, because they had to answer questions and deal with things that I don’t think they were fully anticipating when they were planning to call this election. They started this campaign riding high in the polls, and then they saw their support quickly drop. And it’s been able to balance off since then, but they did take a beating at the start of this campaign.
Jordan
How does the tone the Conservatives set play into that? One of the things that I remember that I think was pretty surprising and became kind of a meme was Erin O’Toole with the full Conservative platform. And the plan was released, a shiny magazine type booklet with him posing on the cover…
Erin O’Toole Clip
Today, I am proud to unveil our detailed plan. Canada’s recovery plan.
Jordan
…and did that function to change the narrative around the Conservative Party heading into the race?
Cormac
I think that was probably part of the aim of that platform, and I will just point out, the NDP actually released their platform first, releasing it before the campaign even began. However, since the campaign began, the Conservatives released their platform rather early, earlier than they normally would. Normally you see that around the midway point in the campaign just before the debate. That’s when the top two parties generally do that.
But I think with the early platform release, there was two things that they were attempting to do. One is put some pressure on the Liberals and by releasing their election platform early, the Conservatives did try to hold the Liberals feet to the fire saying, ‘Where’s your plan? Where’s your plan? You don’t have a plan, Where’s your plan? You called this election.’ And they repeated that quite a bit. And so that put some pressure on the Liberals and some challenges. In the end, the Liberals, when they did release it, they had a fully costed platform and went back at the Conservative saying, ‘Well, Where’s your costing? Where’s your costing?’ The NDP as well, faced a similar issue because they were also putting some pressure on the Liberals. But the other thing is, with this cover, it was a very interesting cover. It was more like the cover of Men’s Health magazine than it was for a political platform. Yeah, you can mock the platform cover as much as you want, but it drew eyes and attention to the platform itself. And I think that was the goal with the Conservatives, and they were able to push some of their promises. Now, on the flip side of that, it also drew a lot of attention to what what was in the platform. And there were some things that caused the Conservatives some trouble.
When it comes to conscience rights for doctors, when it comes to health services, such as abortion or medical assistance and dying. That became a challenge for the Conservatives on the campaign trail. Their gun control position as well, in which they had said they wanted to end the Liberal order in which they banned many assault weapons, and that became a political issue for them. And then they sort of changed their position after releasing their platform. And that’s always difficult for a party if they have to sort of shift strategy and shift tone. So a lot of things to pick apart that the Liberals tried to do. But the Conservative’s also trying to draw a lot of attention to some of the other promises that they have in their election platform, even everything from environmental policies and their plan to create jobs and recover the economy, give people a GST break, right down to puppies and protecting animals. They actually have a very extensive animal welfare section in their platform that they tried to highlight as well.
Jordan
I wanted to ask you about the NDP now. And I’m glad you mentioned ways to attract attention to a campaign because the NDP has always needed to find ways to do that, and they took a different approach. As the Liberals and Conservatives were bickering over wedge issues. Jagmeet Singh was going viral on TikTok. He’s since joined online video game tournaments and played around with that kind of stuff. How did they attempt to use their online presence to drive their numbers and will it pay off?
Cormac
Yeah, the second part of your question is a very big question on this. But he’s popular on these social media platforms. They’ve really been focusing on a digital push in this campaign like they never have before. Party officials spoke about how they really want to make the push to get out the vote by doing things like even having Jagmeet Singh on animal crossing on Nintendo. These things are not things you normally see from Canadian federal party leaders, but they’re really making this push. We’ll find out whether it’s a winning strategy after all the ballots are cast. But some of the risks involved with this are the people that they’re attracting and a lot of people who are using TikTok who are on these gaming sites. There are a lot of people who are potential voters, but there are a lot of people who are younger who are not legally allowed to cast a ballot because they’re under the age of 18. So it’s great if you have a million TikTok followers, but how many of those people are voters and how many of them will actually head to the polls?
Earlier in the campaign, I did an interview with The Students Associations of Canada and they said that they’re worried in this pandemic vote that young voters may not actually come out even in the same way they did in 2019. In 2019 they were 13% below the national average for voter turnout. And this time around, there’s not going to be on campus voting because of the pandemic. As well, just because a lot of this campaign was held over the summer and not when a lot of people were paying attention, there are fears that the voter turnout for young people could be even lower than it was in 2019. And if that’s the case, that could be a problem for the NDP if they can’t actually get those voters to the polls.
Jordan
After those polls tightened up after the first couple of weeks of the campaign, and we started to see those wedge issues come into play. I think maybe we got the first real scandal of the campaign when Twitter decided to flag one of Chrystia Freeland’s tweets as manipulated media.
News Clip
The post contains a video which shows Erin O’Toole during the Conservative leadership campaign and purports to show him expressing his support for a public/private hybrid healthcare system. But O’Toole says this is just another example of the Liberals using divisive politics.
Jordan
And the reason I want to ask you about this is because it raised the entire spectre of misinformation and disinformation in this campaign and certainly took it down a little bit more of a dirty path, at least as far as the rhetoric goes, I guess.
Cormac
Yeah. And, you know, editing clips. And this is the big issue where there was something edited, I believe, out of the middle of the clip that they used in this tweet, that sort of changed the meaning of what they were trying to say. Now, in federal politics, you often see this sort of stuff happen. Usually it is editing so that you stop a clip right before they go on to explain things better, which is something even the Conservatives themselves we’re using in this campaign. So this raised a big question because Twitter made this label. It got headlines. It was a problem for the Liberals on the campaign trail, and it raised a lot of questions of what is and is not manipulated media and who gets to make that determination and why.
The Liberal’s said, look, we linked right back to the full clip, and we want people to watch the full answer because we still believe that this is a big issue that needs to be paid attention to. But Twitter kept this label up but didn’t label other tweets and other videos from other parties as misinformation as well. We still have the problems in this campaign of people spreading falsehoods, especially with the vaccines, spreading falsehoods about what is actually happening out there, what these vaccines and vaccine mandates will or won’t do. There are a lot of online stories that claim falsehoods. This is an issue, and not necessarily because of the political parties, but this is a broader issue that I think is becoming, unfortunately, a norm in our election campaigns and something that I think we all have to pay attention to. But as well, when it comes to the parties themselves, generally what we see with the parties is less about spreading complete falsehoods and more about stretching the truth or spinning things, which is normal in politics.
But we did see all party leaders make claims about their opponents that weren’t quite true. Now, one thing that pops to mind that the Conservatives have been saying for weeks now is that the Liberals will tax the sale of your primary home, which is actually not the case. It’s not in their platform. They haven’t said that at all. But nonetheless, those claims are made on the campaign trail, and it becomes an issue for voters and for journalists to try and pick through what is fact and what is fiction.
Jordan
I’m glad you mentioned vaccines in that answer, because that shortly thereafter became the dominant issue on the campaign trail, and to a certain extent still is a big part of it. Once it became clear that the fourth wave was coming and was even arriving, that issue really rose to the top of voters minds. And I think first you had Justin Trudeau criticizing Erin O’Toole for not requiring or being able to get his candidates vaccinated.
Justin Trudeau Clip
If Erin O’Toole wants to be the leader of this country, I have to say it’s not a good sign that he can’t even convince his own candidates to get vaccinated.
Jordan
And O’Toole when given the chance, wouldn’t take a firm stance on vaccine mandates.
Erin O’Toole Clip
I will respect the personal health decisions of Canadians, and we can use rapid testing on a daily basis to make sure we all do our part to fight COVID-19.
Jordan
And it just seems like they went back and forth over this, spouting policies that were not that far off of one another. But it really became the issue to tussle on. Did this actually move the needle for voters?
Cormac
I think it has in a way. Because of the start of this election campaign, there were a lot of questions about what is this election even about? And the Conservatives and NDP have long argued that this is a selfish election that Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau is only doing this to try and improve his fortunes in terms of seat count in the House of Commons. But in terms of single issues, it wasn’t quite clear at the start what we’d be fighting this on, just this general idea that the Trudeau put out there, that it’s about the future. And then as the election campaign moved on, we saw more and more anti-vaccine, anti-mask protesters targeting Trudeau, and not just Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh also faced protesters as a result of his position on these things. And it sort of started to solidify. But also we saw some changes that popped up in the situation in Canada, where even towards the end of the campaign, Alberta declaring a health emergency.
News Clip
They say Alberta is heading to a worse than worst case scenario where the healthcare system will have to choose which patients to treat if this trajectory continues.
Cormac
It wasn’t long before that that Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was targeting the Liberals saying, look, you’ve got Premier Jason Kenney handled this pandemic better than the federal government.
O’Toole Clip
Premier Kenney has navigated this COVID-19 pandemic far better than the federal government has. And when it comes to getting our country back on track, the federal Conservatives can learn a lot from our UCP cousins.
Cormac
And then we see cases skyrocket in Alberta and them going into a strict lockdown again. And that puts even more of a focus on questions around how the pandemic was handled and whether or not vaccines or vaccine passports even, are the key to getting out of this. Now it’s a difference in ideologies, really. The Conservatives are long arguing that provinces get to make this choice. They don’t want to force anything on the provinces, while Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, while also noting he can’t force things on the provinces when it comes to vaccine mandates. Really wants to make this about vaccines and mandates, as well as vaccine passports by offering to pay for the vaccine passport systems for any province that wants to put it forward by saying that he wants to make vaccines mandatory for all public servants and federally regulated workers. These are big things that popped up on the campaign trail and really solidified some votes for some people. But also, I think in some ways sort of became a rallying cry for the People’s Party who has risen in popularity at least in the polls. And we’ll see whether that translates to votes, but it has risen quite a bit through this election campaign, but it’s also turned nasty.
Jordan
That’s what I wanted to ask you, it really seems like around the time the People’s Party started rising in the polls, around the time there was still a back and forth on vaccine mandates in Alberta and elsewhere, and of course, around the time that those protesters began appearing at Liberal rallies and even throwing gravel at Justin Trudeau, the whole tone started to shift. Is it fair now to call this an angry election?
Cormac
I wasn’t around for the Brian Mulroney years, and I understand that he faced a rather nasty election as well, I believe in his second election over free trade issues. But at the same time, at least as long as I’ve been on Parliament Hill and been paying attention to elections, I have not seen such aggressiveness and violence in a Canadian campaign. As you mentioned, rocks being thrown…
News Clip
…at least one protester threw what appeared to be gravel or small stones at Trudeau while he was boarding his bus…
Cormac
People uttering threats against the leaders to the point where charges have had to be laid. There was somebody walking around, I believe, in a rally in Cambridge with a sign that showed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and depicted him about to be hanged. This is the sort of stuff we’re not used to seeing here in Canada in our election campaigns. And the question is, how do we handle this? And that was a question put to the party leaders about what they would do to deal with these situations. And through the campaign trail, we’ve seen the Liberals double down in their positions on vaccines, while the Conservatives accuse the Liberals of being divisive in this campaign and saying that they want to respect people’s personal health choices. And again, it comes back to ideology of that classic look of either the government is more involved in my life or the government’s taking a more hands off approach. And which government do you really want?
Jordan
And in a moment, we’ll get to the culmination of vaccine mandates in the last week of the race. But first, I don’t want to skip over the leaders debates. Rather than ask you to recap them because we don’t have that kind of time. I promise people we will be brief. Maybe give me if you could, what stood out to you from those debates? Whether it was performances by any of the leaders, or even just moments that came from the debates that served to catch the public eye.
Cormac
The debates, I think, were a very big turning point in this campaign because I think Liberal leader Justin Trudeau really struggled in the first half before the debates leading up to the debates. When the first TVA debate started and that bled over into the Commission debate that was French as well, Justin Trudeau really started to excel. He seemed to get some life back into him that he didn’t have in the earlier stages of this campaign. And that’s when we started to see Liberal numbers start to pick back up after the Conservatives rose at the start of the campaign at the expense of the Liberals. So we started to see a turning point there because it seemed like Justin Trudeau was starting to get his feet back under him. But I think the biggest one was the English debate. So as much as Conservative leader Erin O’Toole struggled in the French debates, which many expected him to do because it’s not his first language. He did perform better than Andrew Scheer did in 2019, and so that was seen as a bit of a win for them as well. But in the English debates, Justin Trudeau didn’t perform quite as well. And some of that was blamed on the format itself.
Debate Clip
Shachi Kurl
All right, remember, this is affordability and Mr. Trudeau, I’m sorry, we’re out of time now, sir.
Justin Trudeau
Can I answer Rosie’s question directly?
Shachi Kurl
You have 5 seconds, sir.
Justin Trudeau
We were able to lift a million people out of poverty and create a million jobs at the same time with the right kinds of investments over the past five years.
Shachi Kurl
And Mr. Trudeau, I’m sorry, sir, I have to wrap you right there.
Cormac
But I think the big thing was Quebec. And the question around secularism.
Debate Clip
Shachi Kurl
You deny that Quebec has problems with racism. Yet you defend legislation such as Bills 96 and 21, which marginalize religious minorities, anglophones and allophones. Quebec is recognized as a distinct society. But for those outside the province, please help them understand why your party also supports these discriminatory laws.
Yves-Francois Blanchet
The question seems to imply the answer you want…
Cormac
That really took a hold. The BQ was struggling a bit through this campaign, and when Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet really stood up and defended Quebec, saying that it was not a racist province. And this was an attack on Quebec, that really helped solidify some BQ votes, and they were able to turn their fortunes around a little bit after struggling in the first part of this election campaign. And that really changed the tone in Quebec because the Liberals were also flying high at that point. And afterwards you saw almost every leader quickly call for the Commission to make an apology because they felt that it unfairly targeted Quebec. And of course, that was every other leaders effort to try and make sure that they were also on side with what the BQ was saying in defending Quebec as a whole, and none of them wanted to lose any seats or additional votes as a result of that. And it did kind of change the election in a way.
Jordan
Let’s talk about the last week of the campaign, and it began with worries about increasing protests at hospitals around Canada.
News Clip
Hundreds of people demonstrating against COVID protocols, such as vaccinations, showed up across the country today. In some cases, patients needing lifesaving treatment could only enter under police escort.
Jordan
And it continued with an ongoing disaster, I think it’s fair to say, in Alberta. That prompted Premier Jason Kenny to double down on restrictions to bring in the beginnings of a vaccine passport and just sort of everything that Alberta promised that it wouldn’t do when it reopened in July. And I guess my question is, how does that impact how people will vote today? And did the last week turn it back into a COVID election?
Cormac
I think it really did. You know, we talked about a lot of issues through this campaign, whether it be Afghanistan, to gun control, to generic health care funding coming out of the pandemic. But at the same time, it really did solidify the choices that people have. And it became a big wedge issue because those hospital protests, a lot of people were upset about those and not just because of vaccine mandates, but obviously because health care workers, regardless of your views on vaccines, were there for the country anyway through this pandemic. And it became a big issue. And it became a wedge issue that the Liberals had been pushing for some time as well, that this is about the pandemic and vaccines and vaccine mandates and where you stand on this. And I think with the situation in Alberta and the crisis there getting worse and worse. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau trying to hammer home the point, and he did after Alberta declared their state of emergency when he said that choices in this pandemic and in this election matter, and he tried to really create that wedge with the approach of Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, who wants to give more freedom to the provinces to handle these situations. But that came back to really be an issue for Erin O’Toole because he faced many questions in the final days about his previous praise for Alberta. In the end, even Alberta Premier Jason Kenney apologized to the people for his handling and his approach to the pandemic over the summer months.
Jason Kenney clip
COVID is hitting Alberta harder than anywhere in Canada because we have the lowest rate of vaccination in Canada. But it has now become clear that to save lives and prevent business closures, we must go further in encouraging vaccination and reducing the chance of infection for those who are unprotected.
Cormac
And then, of course, there were many questions about that on the campaign trail and Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was thrown off message. He spent many questions being asked, ‘Do you still stand by those previous claims? What are your thoughts on Alberta state of emergency?’ and his answers almost every time were back to stock answers and talking points about working together with the provinces, not mentioning Premier Jason Kenney and not mentioning Alberta almost by name. So it became a real issue. How much that plays into the campaign, how much this will affect people’s votes remains to be seen. It’s Voting Day and we’ll find out the results either tonight or maybe tomorrow or the next day because there are a lot of mail in vows to go through as well that could delay the results of this election.
Jordan
Last question really quickly. It’s too late now to vote by mail or to head to an advanced poll. It’s Election Day. Is there anything different because of the pandemic than previous election days that people should know before they go to their usual neighbourhood polling station and wear a mask and cast their vote?
Cormac
Yes. A few things they need to know. One, Pack your patience. There is expected to be long lineups and delays as a result of new COVID protocols. There’s going to be a lot of cleaning, a lot of sanitization that happens in the polling stations. And Elections Canada is asking people to just be patient. One thing to know, though, as long as you’re in the line up before the cut off time in whatever voting region that you’re in in the country, as long as you’re in that lineup, you will be allowed to vote. They’ll have a staff member at the end of that lineup saying nobody after this point. So they will allow everybody who showed up to vote to vote at that time
Wear a mask. That’s a big thing. Because if you’re in a jurisdiction where there’s a mask mandate and most of Canada is under mask mandates right now, you have to wear a mask indoors to go vote. I know. I’ve seen some arguments that this is an infringement on charter rights. Elections Canada says no, that is not the case. We gave you the option. If you didn’t want to vote with a mask, we gave you the option of mail in ballots. You had a choice. If you’re going to a polling station, we have to abide by local public health guidelines, so you might not be allowed in if you refuse to wear a mask and you don’t have a medical exemption. If you do have a medical exemption, they will still allow you in to vote. But the most important thing is to get out and vote, make your voice be heard. They’re there’s only one way to make sure your opinion matters. And that is to cast your ballot for the party that you think is best to lead this country. Whether you like this election or not, we’re in it, and an election is happening, and you get to have a say by casting your ballot.
Jordan
Cormac as always, thank you for this. That was perfect.
Cormac
Anytime.
Jordan
Cormac Mac Sweeney, our Parliament Hill Reporter. That was the Big Story for more from us, including a last minute cram session on any policy issue you could imagine. Head to thebigstorypodcast.ca you can find us on Twitter @TheBigStoryFPN. You can find me, on our Twitter account tonight apparently live tweeting the selection. But really just hoping I don’t say something to get myself fired. And of course, to email us, [click here!]
As I said at the beginning, if you haven’t voted yet, get out and do it. It’s literally the only thing about this mess you can control.
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, thanks for listening, we’ll talk tomorrow.
Back to top of page