The Guardian Weekly

Eyebrows were raised when Canada’s Justin Trudeau announced a snap election last month,

By Leyland Cecco TORONTO

giving the country just 36 days to decide whether to back or sack the Liberal prime minister. As next week’s vote looms it’s unclear as to whether Trudeau’s gamble will pay off, with polls showing him narrowly trailing his Conservative rival Erin O’Toole. Leyland Cecco sets the scene and profiles Jagmeet Singh, the progressive who could prove to be kingmaker.

When he was pelted with a handful of gravel by anti-vaccine protesters last week, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, joined an illustrious list of political leaders who have had things hurled at them by disgruntled citizens. His father, the former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, had stones (and tomatoes and eggs) thrown at his train carriage in the 1980s.

But the gravel incident has thrust the image of prime minister on the defensive to the forefront of an election that, for many, is both unwanted and has so far lacked a coherent theme.

Trudeau called the snap election in late August, prompting grumbling that the country would be casting ballots during the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic. He defended the move, saying that after weathering a deadly pandemic, Canadians should have a say in the country’s future.

“After making it through 17 months of nothing like we’ve ever experienced, Canadians deserve to choose what the next 17 months, what the next 17 years and beyond, will look like. And I know that we have the right plan, the right team, and the proven leadership to meet that moment,” he said. “So to

‘As much as the pandemic may have boosted Trudeau’s image, you can’t resist gravity’ Aaron Wherry CBC political analyst

the other parties: please explain why you don’t think Canadians should have the choice. Why you don’t think that this is a pivotal moment?”

The initial response was a collapse in the polls for the incumbent prime minister, who is seeking his third term after six years in office. Days before the country votes, numerous polls suggest that most Canadians don’t believe the election is necessary. Last weekend, Trudeau trailed the Conservative leader, Erin O’Toole, a former air force pilot, by an average of three points in national polls.

O’Toole, who has run a middleof-the-road campaign with an emphasis on workers’ rights, has argued that Trudeau’s political ambitions in parliament – not the health of the country – are the reason why Canadians face their second federal election in two years.

“Leadership is about putting others first, not yourself,” O’Toole said during the only English-language debate.

Despite his stumble in the polls, however, Trudeau’s political fate isn’t necessarily tied to the horse-race nature of public opinion. Conservative support is strongest in areas, like Alberta and Saskatchewan, where fewer seats can be won. The Liberals, conversely, do well in seat-rich provinces such as Ontario and Quebec. In 2019, for example, the Liberal party won 157 of parliament’s 338 seats, despite losing the popular vote to the Conservatives by 1.2%, or 220,449 votes. The Conservatives only won 121 seats.

And with the early days of the campaign playing out during the Canadian summer, most voters have only started to pay attention to the final weeks of a blazingly short 36-day drive.

In recent weeks, a wave of protests have drawn attention to a virulent anti-vaccine movement, as well as growing influence of the far-right People’s Party of Canada. Led by former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier (who himself was recently hit with an egg), the party has campaigned for years on an antiimmigrant, Islamophobic, populist platform with little electoral success.

But months of public lockdowns have given the party an opportunity to channel mounting frustrations, largely among male voters.

“[The People’s party] has taken this anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown, anti-mask platform and connected a more traditional, hard-right agenda. And that’s given them a lift in the polls that we haven’t really seen before,” said Andrew McDougall, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “Whether or not those supporting the People’s party will show up on election day is an open question. We don’t know what effect this party will have. People are still trying to make sense of it.”

Sensing an opportunity to shift the narratives of the campaign, Trudeau has repeatedly attacked O’Toole’s refusal to embrace vaccine mandates as Covid-19 cases rise – and tried to link the Conservative leader to the antivaccine protests.

O’Toole has repeatedly condemned the protests, but been dogged by questions from reporters about unvaccinated members of his own party. While the party has said it encourages vaccines, it has stopped short of mandating them, instead suggesting the decision should be one of personal choice.

The protests have nonetheless given Trudeau’s campaign something

that has been missing, said Aaron Wherry, a veteran political journalist at the CBC and author of Promise and Peril: Justin Trudeau in Power.

After a recent event was cancelled due to protests, Trudeau met reporters. “That was the first time it felt like he got some real energy,” said Wherry. “Until then, it felt like he’d been grasping for an idea or a narrative.”

When Trudeau lost his parliamentary majority in 2019, party leaders gently pulled him back from the spotlight. But the shooting down of a plane full of Iranian Canadians, national anti-pipeline protests and a global pandemic meant his retreat from the public eye was short-lived.

Two years later Trudeau is in the same position as before the last election: facing accusations from progressive voters that his government hasn’t done enough on social issues and climate change, and a vote that will probably be fought over those issues.

A weak result for the Liberals, however, could upend the powerbrokering in parliament. In 2019, Jagmeet Singh, leader of the leftwing New Democratic party, ruled out working with the Conservatives. This time round, he has expressed more openness to cutting deals with O’Toole, who shares a focus on affordability and workers’ rights.

But Singh and Trudeau are more natural allies. A narrow win could help Trudeau cement a legacy with Singh’s help. Trudeau’s climate plans, despite coming under attack during the most recent debate, have won plaudits from both economists and a former top Green party leader.

Before his election in 2015, Trudeau was able to convert fatigue with Conservative policies into a surprise parliamentary majority. Soon after, the election of Donald Trump as US president offered the perfect counterpoint to Trudeau’s image as a progressive leader. But the forces that thrust him into the highest office – his promises of change, his youthful appearance and his fame – could work against him. “You’re not just going out and making promises and talking about how great things are going to be – you have to defend whatever has happened over the past six years,” said Wherry. “Inevitably, there’s just wear and tear. As much as the pandemic may have boosted and reset his image, you can’t resist gravity.”

A Week In The Life Of The World/Inside

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