ELECTION ENTRAILS

CANADA VOTED. I GOT THOUGHTS …

PM for now.

A few random reflections on Canada’s election …

High-level whip-round

I’ve been obsessively watching and participating in Canadian elections for 45 years and this one was a whopper.

This Substack is about antisemitism and anti-Zionism, so I’ll leave the economy, tariffs, Trump, inflation and everything else to others. This post includes a few initial reflections on what happened Monday (and in the years leading up to it) as it pertains to the security of Jewish Canadians and my country’s approach to Israel and Palestine.

The big picture (mostly for non-Canadians) …

After three terms, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was so reviled that his Liberal party was on the verge of a devastating loss. The Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, seemed poised for a landslide victory of historic proportions.

Then Trudeau resigned — and was replaced with Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Canadian political parties on the skids have tried the White Knight routine before (Liberal John Turner 1984; Conservative Kim Campbell 1993) and they have led to revival in the polls followed by collapse and massive defeats. Some of us were waiting for that to happen again with Carney. But there were a few differences.

Donald Trump turned his patented jackassery toward Canada, slamming us with tariffs and threatening to Anschluss us. Canadians rallied in flag-waving nationalist fervor (ironically a characteristic at which we usually look down our nose, viewing it as gauchely American. But anyways).

There were other things. It wasn’t all about Trump. But the election absolutely turned into a binary. For the last few decades, Canada has had four, five and sometimes six parties in Parliament. After Monday’s election, we still have five parties — but kind of just barely.

The top two parties — the Liberals and Conservatives — collectively took 85% of the vote Monday compared with about 66% in the previous election. Smaller parties saw their support evaporate as Canadians ka-thumped to support (or, no less emphatically, to oppose) one of the two largest parties.

The Liberals pretty much held a medium to large lead in the polls all the way through the campaign and by the time polls closed Monday, most Canadians were wondering just how badly the Conservatives were going to lose. Personally, I expected a Liberal landslide.

That didn’t happen.

Results as of Wednesday midday:

Liberals 169 (3 seats short of a bare majority)

Conservatives 144 (20 to 40 seats better than most of us expected — but notably Poilievre failed to win his own home seat)

Bloc Quebecois 22 (The party that seeks to break up Canada by making Quebec independent fell 10 seats from the last election)

New Democratic Party 7 (the left-wing party, which is the primary vehicle for hate-Israel extremists, fell from 25 seats and failed to gain the 12 seats required for “official party status.” Leader Jagmeet Singh, who screamed “genocide” disinformation at the prime minister during the televised leaders’ debate lost his seat and resigned as leader. Bahahaha.)

Green Party 1 (Another hate-Israel vehicle; down from 2 seats in the previous election)

Topline slapfest

At the beginning of this year, the idea that the Liberal party would win the election was a wet dream for party regulars, who watched Justin Trudeau cling to power as voters abandoned the party in droves. With Trudeau finally forced out, Canadians suddenly rethought their flirtation with Poilievre’s Conservatives.

A ton of Canadians were pretty sure Poilievre’s condemnations of Trump masked a plan to bring exactly that sort of politics to Canada. The Conservative leader’s support for the far-right “truckers convoy” and assorted not-exactly-Canadian-mainstream people and policies (defunding Canada’s national broadcaster, which elitist urban snobs like me consider a tentpole of our very civilization, for example) allowed the Liberals to paint the Conservative as Trump-Lite.

Pierre has had a topsy-turvy year.

The economic chaos sown by Trump created a perfect storm, eclipsing Carney’s complete lack of political experience with his extraordinary record as head of Canada’s central bank during the 2008 economic crisis and as head of the Bank of England during Brexit.

Poilievre’s experience — a 45-year-old with 20 years as a Member of Parliament — suddenly seemed a bit thin.

Carney’s avuncular but comparatively fresh face (I wouldn’t have recognized him at a cocktail party last January) struck a lot of Canadian as just what the moment of impending economic crisis needed. Poilievre’s negative, hysterical “The country is broken!” “The Liberals are destroying Canada” routine made it sound like he was running for head of a failed state. At a time when Canadians were pretty convinced that coming together as a nation was the right response, and that Canada was worth saving, Poilievre’s shrieky, divisive negativity was a clanger.

It looked like the Liberals were headed for a romp.

The Conservative rollercoaster

The Conservatives started this year ready to oust a 10-year-old Liberal government. Poilievre would have been measuring for curtains at 24 Sussex Drive were it not for the fact that Canadians are so pinched when it comes to symbolic government spending that the prime minister’s official residence has been allowed to decline into disrepair such that it is uninhabitable and the country’s leader has to take refuge in temporary shelter. But anyways. Everyone thought Pierre would be PM. Then he got his wish.

No, not that wish. He wished to get Justin out of the PM’s office — but the Liberal Party beat Poilievre to the punch. They did the old switcheroo and the polls flipped like a cheap mattress. Carney, with no political experience, proved deft. Poilievre, who built a career as an opposition attack dog, never quite got the grasp of looking prime ministerial.

By Monday, everyone assumed he was going down hard.

Then the vote-counting started.

I will leave it to others to poke the entrails of demographic trends and turnout and WTH happened.

I’ll focus on what it means for Jews, antisemitism, and Canada’s approach to Israel.

TL;DR: Not sure.

Lessons for other countries

First of all …

The day after the election was called, I wrote that the election could hold portents for the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic left in other countries.

Turns out: Meh. Not really.

Israel and Palestine weren’t really an issue. The New Democratic Party tried to make it one, but didn’t really succeed. So the fact that his party suffered its worst defeat ever, ending Singh’s political career (bahahahaha) cannot really be credited to their extremism on this topic. Though it may have undermined the party’s legitimacy as a serious factor. But, really, the party got caught in the pincher of a two-way race.

Where do the parties that matter stand?

In the 20th century, Jewish Canadians were overwhelmingly aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada. In the 21st century, they have moved with a thud to the Conservatives.

This is entirely understandable. Under former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper and under successive (unsuccessful) leaders, the Conservative Party has made all the right noises for the vast majority of Canadian Jews and their allies on issues around security for Jewish people and institutions, and other issues of particular concern for Jewish Canadians, especially standing with Israel. When Harper was PM, Canada was not only one of Israel’s best friends on the international stage. Canada was the best friend of Israel. I can fully understand why Jewish Canadians would vote Conservative, given the situation in Canada and the world.

The problem was, putting your eggs all in one basket is never a good idea.

When the Liberal Party under Trudeau defeated Harper, in 2015, they dragged the Canadian government back to a namby-pamby, middle-of-the-road policy that tried to walk a middle path between supporting a pluralist democratic Jewish country or supporting beheading, human immolating, genocidal jihadists. (I summarize for brevity.) It was a bit of a fine line.

A lot of Jewish Canadians decided that the Liberals were an irredeemably antisemitic party no better than the NDP. That was a big mistake.

There are some seriously ideologically effed up Liberals. And there are some awesome Liberals. But when it comes to, for example, Israel and Palestine, I’d bet most Liberal MPs in the last Parliament and the next one would rather the issue just disappeared. Politically, it’s kind of a no-win. The Liberal Party is a big tent that, for all intents, has no firm policy toward Israel and Palestine.

And because Liberals are ideologically non-ideological, they fear controversy like squirrels in crosswalks. Seeing a country of Jews who want to live their lives and genocidal jihadists who want to end those Jewish lives, Liberals sort of take the middle approach and, as advocates of peace, wonder why the two sides can’t just meet in the middle.

So we’ve got a Conservative Party that is unequivocally (and I believe entirely genuinely) pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. And we have a Liberal Party (now a reelected minority government) that is wishy-washy on the issues that matter to Jews.

So if Israel’s survival — and the fact that your kid’s Jewish school in Canada is being repeatedly shot at by antisemites — is a ballot box issue for you, well, the Conservatives are rightly your guys.

Except …

Many Jews are progressive

I cannot count the number of my Jewish friends who expressed to me their discomfort at voting for the Conservatives. But almost all of them (by my count) did.

They felt forced to vote for the Conservatives based on the security and well-being of themselves, their families and their people.

But doing so, for many or most of my Jewish friends, also meant voting against plenty of things that are important to them …

A strong social safety net, compassionate immigration and refugee policies, sensible approaches to crime and justice rather than a throw-away-the-key approach and dozens of other things.

This is not to say some of my Jewish friends are not dyed-in-the-wool red-meat conservatives. Lots of them are. But most of my friends who voted Conservative are former New Democrats, Greens and Liberals who got the message in no uncertain terms that only one party really cares about whether Israelis live or die — and if politicians don’t care about dead Israelis, that sends a very clear message to Canadian Jews about the value of their own lives as well — and those of their children. So, yeah. I’d be inclined to put my progressive values aside to vote Conservative too if I were them.

All eggs. One basket.

It should never have come to this.

No party that aspires to national government should ever leave a doubt in the minds of any Canadian cultural group that their lives don’t matter. But by equivocating, Liberals sent that message. And far too many New Democrats and Greens sent an even more unambiguous message that they actually kind of relish what happened to Jews on October 7. The NDP and the Greens are probably too far gone to ever be legitimately considered mainstream parties again (at least as long as we remain a society where the lives of Jews are a litmus test for politically legitimacy).

Given the world we live in since October 7, I do not blame Canadian Jews for throwing themselves in with the Conservatives. But it was a mistake to put all the eggs in that basket.

Caveat: Not all the eggs are in the Conservative basket. But most were. There are a few good Liberals and we’ll see what the new crop brings. But the fact that we can depend on the Conservatives but really have no idea whether we can depend on the Liberals to defend Israel’s right to defend itself is itself a serious problem. We should not be asking this question. The Liberals should be as unequivocal as the Conservatives both in defending Israel and in standing with Jews under siege right here in Canada. (So should the NDP and the Greens, but I also want a pony for Christmas.)

It should never have come to this. The security of Jewish Canadians — and of Israel — should never have become a partisan issue. The fact that Jewish people voted en masse for the Conservatives entrenches that situation.

This is not their fault. This is the fault, first and foremost, of New Democrats, Greens and Liberals who made it difficult or impossible for Jewish Canadians, their allies and anyone who cares about these things to support these parties.

Even so, Jews and their allies need to be clear-eyed.

Putting all your eggs in one basket may have seemed like a good plan when that basket was 20 points ahead in the polls. But on Monday that basket lost. (The Conservatives came a hell of a lot closer than polls indicated they would. But the lesson remains.)

A Conservative victory would have been a short-term victory for Jews who want a government that stands correctly on Middle East issues and promises to do the right thing about antisemitism in Canada.

But long-term success and security depends on never having to make such a binary choice. Canadians who care about these things need to make sure that any party that aspires to government — and, during our lifetimes, that appears to be the Conservatives and the Liberals — are both unassailable supporters.

Liberal-minded Jews and allies need to get involved in the Liberal Party and influence its policies. I swear, if all the Jews who told me they voted Conservative despite their progressive values attended Liberal Party conventions, the seemingly perpetually governing party would already have a very different complexion.

There is some urgency to this issue. This is a moment of opportunity. Here’s why …

How long will this government last?

I don’t think this government will last long. I give it maybe a year before we have another election.

A majority government requires 172 seats. The Liberals (as of the latest count) are at 169. So that is a very strong minority. But …

The NDP propped up the Liberal minority in the last Parliament. On Monday, voters rewarded them with … the worst showing in their party’s history. (And they were lucky to get seven seats! I predicted a complete wipeout.)

If the Liberals are able to cajole the NDP into supporting them again, they would have a workable government.

But not only will New Dems be once bitten twice shy. Their remaining caucus is an odd cluster of folks.

Palestinianist cranks like Edmonton MP Heather McPherson (who may well end up as leader of this rump of misfits) should not be permitted anywhere near the levers of power. What remains of the NDP may be even more soapbox-screaming moonbats than the last, larger caucus.

Vancouver MP Don Davies, who sadly won reelection by the narrowest margins in the early hours of Tuesday, went on a conspiracy theory bender last year, accusing Israel of “using sophisticated technology to target and kill leading Gazan academics, authors, historians, poets, artists, journalists, teachers. … This is cultural genocide.”

No. This is Marjorie Taylor Greene-level Jewish space laser conspiracy bananapants. And he now makes up one-seventh of the federal NDP caucus.

Even if NDP didn’t see Monday’s election results as a smackdown for being the Liberals’ Neutered Democrats, it would be scary as hell to see what the Liberals would have to promise to get their buy-in. (Frigates for Hamas?)

The separatist Bloc Québecois is the third rail in Canadian politics. It is hard to imagine any government trying to make a deal with a party that seeks to split the country in half.

And there isn’t a damn chance that the Conservatives are going to work with the Liberals on anything of substance.

So I suspect this will be a less stable government the in the last two minorities and it may not last very long.

Reasons to celebrate

The worst of a bad bunch were defeated Monday night. Anti-Israel wingnuts Niki Ashton, in northern Manitoba, and Matthew Green, in Hamilton, Ontario, were sent packing by voters. Both of these New Democrats were shills for Palestinian extremism. They are now free to wave their keffiyehs fulltime.

Bub-bye now

Also-rans: The Green Party

Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May managed to hang onto her seat, even as she drove her party into the ground, taking about 1.2% of the vote.

She and her co-leader Jonathan Pedneault were excluded from the televised leaders’ debate, so that didn’t help.

May is the “leader” who famously declared: “I take my marching orders from the permanent representative of Palestine to Canada.” (Talk about dual loyalty!)

May was previously the Green party leader, then retired and was replaced by Annamie Paul, a Black, Jewish woman who was terrorized by antisemites, racists and misogynists inside and outside her own party. Paul was chased out of the leadership and May swooped back in, returning as co-leader with Pedneault, a nobody who went down to defeat in Outremont, coming dead last, with less than 10% of the vote. Bahaha.

The Greens did not win any seats outside of May’s own British Columbia riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. The only other Green MP, Ontario’s Mike Morrice, lost by the narrowest margin. Fortunately, Paul Manly, who previously served as a Green MP, lost in his bid to reclaim the Vancouver Island seat of Nanaimo-Ladysmith. Manly’s career in the Green party began after the NDP decided his anti-Israel wackiness was too extreme even for them.

To recap: Too extreme for the NDP on Israel and Palestine. Sheesh.

The big lessons

1. Never write off a leading political party.

Jewish Canadians and their allies assumed they were safe when Conservatives were ahead 20 points in opinion polls. Things changed. Now we have another Liberal government and not that many Jews or allies on the inside of the government or the party.

If Jews and allies continue to eschew the Liberal Party, we will abandon it to our enemies.

2. The NDP is down but not out.

On the one hand, the NDP is, for now, a spent force. But we should not forget that it was when the party was at its last lowest ebb, after 1993, when it won nine seats, that it was truly taken over by anti-Israel extremists led by Svend Robinson. The NDP’s devastating result this week could spell disaster or opportunity. If an anti-Israel crank like McPherson becomes leader, that holds the potential for an unfortunate spotlight on hatred. On the other hand, perhaps some people might think that it’s time the party confronted its Jewish problem. (I doubt it.)

3. Pierre Poilievre is not done

If the Liberals had won a majority government, and with Poilievre losing his own seat, he would probably have been finished for good. But expectations have been weirdly upended repeatedly. At the start of this year, we expected Poilievre to become PM. Then, by last weekend, we were expecting him to be the victim of a Liberal landslide. Then, when votes were counted, he may have bought himself a little time. By the standards of New Year’s Day, the Conservative outcome was catastrophic. By the standards of last weekend, it was a near-miracle.

Despite the loss, some commentators say Poilievre has such a stranglehold on his party — unlike the last two leaders — that he may be able to hang on and fight another day. The fact that he lost his own seat would require him to get elected in a by-election, probably by asking one of his colleagues to resign on his behalf. The possibility that we could have another election in a year or two allows him to make the case that, while Monday’s election was a disappointment, it was just the first step on the ladder to victory.

4. What does it mean for the Jews?

That’s kind of up to them (and their allies — like me). This should not be the case. No cultural community in Canada should need to activate themselves just to be respected and represented by a governing party. But that’s where we’re at.

Jews and allies who are inclined to support Liberal policies in general need to get involved in the Liberal Party and force them to take moral positions on the things that matter to us.

No one should ever feel forced to vote for a party that they are not ideologically committed to based on the fact that the other parties don’t seem to care whether their people live or die.

What are your thoughts?