Front Burner - Liberals win minority government, now what?

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

"We're left with a more divided country than ever...it's going to be a really hard thing for the government to address." On Monday night, Canadians voted in a Liberal minority government led by Justin Trudeau. Today on Front Burner, Power and Politics host Vassy Kapelos lays out what the election results mean, and what to expect next.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. I have heard you, my friends. You are sending our Liberal team back to work, back to Ottawa with a clear mandate.

Okay, well, there you have it. Justin Trudeau will be leading a Liberal minority government. The election is over, and there's a lot to talk about. Luckily, joining me at 2 a.m. is Vashie Kuhelos, host of Power in Politics. Hi, Vashie. Luckily, joining me at 2 a.m. is Vashi Kuhelos, host of Power in Politics. Hi, Vashi. Jamie, what's up? So we're going to try to make sense of everything that happened tonight. I'm Jamie Poisson,

and this is a very special election edition of Frontburner. First of all, I got to start tonight with the speeches that we just heard. A lot of people listening might not have heard all of them. They might have gone to bed. But everyone was talking at the same time. I've never seen anything like that. Okay, this is not how things are normally done. Generally, we all wait our turn.

So we're off to a raring start for this minority government. I've never seen anything like it either. I imagine it was a function of poor planning, which bodes extremely well for the government we're going to be faced with. But it was very, very odd to see Mr. Scheer start speaking when Mr. Singh was still speaking, and then Mr. Trudeau come out seconds after Mr. Scheer had started. I mean, the normal way of doing things is you let your opponent speak first, and then finally the prime minister comes up and gives his victory speech. It did not happen that way. And it was not pretty to look at. You've given us a job to go to Ottawa.

From coast to coast to coast. We ran an excellent campaign from top to bottom. For that, we should all be proud. We serve the people. Among some of one of the wildest moments of the night, I would say. Also, is it fair for me to say that it sounded like they were all delivering victory speeches? It's completely fair for you to say. I think my tweet after the speeches was, everyone won. Like, amazing. Isn't that great?

In Canadian sense, a pretty clear message. A clear message tonight that they want a government that works for them. Tonight, we chose to move Canada forward. We have picked up seats and support in almost every region of the country. And at the time I walked onto the stage, we are leading the popular vote, ladies and gentlemen. Which is not the case at all. Like the voters sent a very distinct message today, and that is we don't like any of you enough to win a majority of seats to form a majority government. The speeches that we heard this evening did not address that fact in

even the slightest way. There was not even a modicum of humility, which you would have expected from a, for example, Justin Trudeau, who was shut out of Alberta, basically, and much of the rest of the West. And two Canadians in Alberta and Saskatchewan know that you are an essential part of our great country. I've heard your frustration. And you also didn't see any humility from Andrew Scheer, who didn't win. Right. He essentially said this was an endorsement. With more support from coast to coast and with an endorsement from the Canadian people that we are the government in waiting. Yeah, that's what we like to call a little bit of a silver lining, try to save your job kind of speech. I mean, I think he was trying to characterize the evening in a way that allowed him to stay on as leader and sort of send a message to people who will be making that decision among his

party. But it wasn't I mean, they it was like Hillary Clinton, right? He's like, we won. It's true. This is not a not not a it is a fact that they won the popular vote. And we should say that that is interesting and significant and prompts an entirely different discussion. But at the same time, we have a system that works a certain way in this country. And they lost the election. They did not, you know, the liberals form the government. And so to all of a sudden kind of pull a Hillary Clinton and say, but wait, we won the most seats. I mean, it very much also spoke to that idea that he is he is characterizing this in a way to address the questions about his own leadership that will certainly follow.

But tonight, conservatives have put Justin Trudeau on notice. And Mr. Trudeau, when your government falls, conservatives will be ready and we will win. OK, and I want to get to that in a moment. But first, look, after the SNC-Lavalin affair, Justin Trudeau's blackface, brownface scandal, the criticisms that his government didn't live up to many of the lofty promises that it made. Is there a sense of what led voters to keep Trudeau in power tonight? I mean, I think it's going to be hard to figure that out right away. I think strategic voting had something to do with it.

with it. The liberals were very on message and it was a sharp message over the last nine days, particularly to voters who were in that progressive side of things and undecided. And most polls showed that at least a third, even of voters who had made up their minds, like I'm going to vote green or I'm going to vote NDP, could be swayed to vote liberal. And so that ended up almost manifesting, I think, to a certain degree. I don't know for sure how big of an impact that had, but I think that was part of the story. I think also, I mean, it's remarkable, and the Liberals certainly do deserve some credit, and Justin Trudeau as well, that they, you know, had all these self-inflicted wounds over the past year, year and a half, starting in India and with SNC and with brownface and blackface, and still they were able to survive it. I don't know if that says

more about Justin Trudeau and the Liberals or what it says about their opponents, the other options. But I mean, they do deserve credit for withstanding that and winning, although not a majority. And to those who did not vote for us, know that we will work every single day for you. We will govern for everyone. Another thing I wanted to touch on with you and speaking of the SNC-Lavalin affair, Jody Wilson-Raybould held on to her seat in the Vancouver area and Jane Philpott in the Markham-Stoville area did not. Of course, these were two very high profile liberal cabinet ministers who resigned in relation to the SNC-Lavalin affair and then were booted out of caucus by the prime minister. Yeah, Jody Wilson-Raybould was the center of the SNC-Lavalin

affair. She is the one who accused the prime minister of exerting undue influence and pressure on her to force her to intervene in a case. She was sort of the face of it all. This is a very significant win for her. Tonight, we accomplished together something extraordinary. We accomplished showing Ottawa, showing our political process that independent, strong voices matter and that we can do politics differently. It's really rare for an independent to win in this country. It's a big feat that she did. I think she is the only independent who won. In this election. Yes.

And as you mentioned, Jane Philpott, the other cabinet minister who resigned over the same issue, though she wasn't directly involved in it, didn't win tonight. That's not as much of a surprise considering her riding. She was in that not crucial 905 belt, which often is just a race between the Liberals and the Conservatives. So it's not a big shocker that she didn't. It would have been a real surprise if she had won. Let's talk about the Conservatives. Much has been made of the Ford factor in Ontario. The Conservatives did not do as well as they hoped in Ontario.

We've talked about on this podcast before that you needed like the GTA area in order to get to like a minority or majority government. And do you think that the Ford factor was in effect tonight? So this battle was won and lost in the 905. And the Liberals and the Conservatives knew it inside of their campaigns by Friday. And that just kept going throughout the weekend. And it really manifested today or in the election. And why do you think that was? Why are we seeing that shift? I asked myself the same question. And I'm not sure there's a simple answer to it. I do think that the Ford factor impacted the overall momentum of the federal

Conservatives considerably. I just don't know to what degree. So factor impacted the overall momentum of the federal conservatives considerably. I just don't know to what degree. So, yes, at the beginning of the campaign, the candidates were hearing it at the doors. Ford sort of went into, you know, quote unquote hiding. It seemed like some of the impact was minimized. Then we have people tonight saying maybe he shouldn't have distanced himself from Doug Ford because a lot of people like Doug Ford. because a lot of people like Doug Ford. The strategy of locking up the Premier of Ontario in his basement literally at some point becomes insulting

for the people who actually are loyal to him. It's not called Ford Nation for no reason. To me, it made no sense. I don't know to what degree that impacted things. Fair comment. People were saying the media was sort of overhyping this hatred of Doug Ford in Ontario. Right.

And I mean, some public opinion polls showed that, to be fair, heading into the campaign and the federal conservatives were hearing it at the door. But maybe that subsided over time and it just didn't permeate the way that the federal conservatives anticipated it would. I think also something that's difficult to measure, but I would guess had a big impact, is the strategic voting argument that the Liberals put forth. would guess had a big impact is the strategic voting argument that the Liberals put forth again over the same time frame that they saw their vote increase basically in Ontario over the last week. And that is in order to and we heard Justin Trudeau say it right off the bat in his speech tonight in order to stop conservative cuts. Canadians rejected division and negativity. They rejected cuts and austerity and they voted in favor of a progressive agenda. And I would argue that it appears that that message resonated as well.

Okay. Let's talk about Andrew Scheer. When he said, we are the government in waiting in his speech tonight, is he the leader in waiting or is it someone else? I think there's a question mark over that right now. I don't know for sure. I think that he has a circle of people around him who very much support his leadership, who like him a lot, who were personally really disappointed to see what happened today. I don't know if he has the level of caucus and party support to keep him in place, you know, for a long time. I take the point that it's a minority government and that they might not want a lot of upheaval. And they actually did win more seats than they did last time. And they won the popular vote, as we're saying. And we will certainly hear all about that

from Mr. Scheer in the days and the weeks to come. But the truth is that if you talk to a number of federal conservatives, as I do for my job, there were already and there had been questions about his leadership. Remember, he just narrowly eked it out over Maxime Bernier. Let's talk about the bloc. Big comeback tonight. I think we're full of life. And I look at you and I see that you're very young. Projected 32 seats.

In 2015, they came away with only 10 seats. What do you attribute that to? Is it purely Yves-François Blanchet's leadership style? I think it's a number of things. I think it's timing, certainly, while the rest of the country was sort of sending the message that they're not particularly enamored with Justin Trudeau or Andrew Scheer. Quebec is sending a similar message, except they had somewhere very distinct to park their votes. And that ended up being the Bloc Québécois.

A year ago, we would never have been having this conversation. It's kind of like the big story of this election. Yves-François Blanchet didn't even become leader until January. And that was after like 3,000 people had cycled through and MPs had left the party. It's important to realize that four or six months ago, when we were still just crazy people, well, there are some crazy people that said yes,

and they're now going to the House of Commons. It was a calamity. A lot of Canadians, they were introduced to him tonight, maybe. Probably, or during the debates, right? And so he very successfully became a place for dissatisfied Quebecers to park their vote. And in Quebec, when

they do something like that, they usually do it all together en masse. And that's what ended up happening. He also was able to draw on the relative popularity of the premier of that province, François Legault, and capitalize also on a number of issues that played particularly or specifically to people in Quebec. And I'm thinking of something you and I have talked about, for example, Bill 21. Right. That is an issue in which your answer, whatever way you determine your answer is, has a direct impact on the people of Quebec.

And therefore, he was able to really capitalize on issues like that. Right. And this is the bill that stops public service workers in a position of authority from wearing a religious symbol like a hijab or a kippah. This is actually very popular in Quebec. It's been very controversial across the country. So lots of nationalism going on there. Let's touch on the Greens. Elizabeth May was hoping to be a kingmaker at the end of tonight. And the liberals are walking away with a really strong minority. So on a lot of issues, unclear if they'll even need the Greens.

Given the hype around this party sort of going into the election, what's the big takeaway on the Greens tonight? The panel I was on, Mark Toohey, editor-in-chief of Sun News, basically said she blew it. I think this election kind of proves as much as Elizabeth May grew her seat count, I think the Green Party at this point stood joke. It's so hard to judge this because I feel like particularly where the Greens were concerned, we saw all this provincial success, you know, that that hadn't happened before. And so then the question became, well, are they going to be able to capitalize on that? Because it looked like their popular support had really been driven by that provincial success.

And it was on the up and stuff. And unfortunately for Miss May, it didn't appear. Well, clearly she she wasn't able to capitalize on it. Miss May, it didn't appear, well, clearly she wasn't able to capitalize on it. I do stand before you heartbroken because Ra's al-Khoy is a spectacular Indigenous woman whose voice I wanted to hear in Parliament. Yes, she increased her seat count marginally, but not by anything. But by one, right? She's got three. And significantly in Atlantic Canada. I mean, give them that for sure. That's representation

in an area of the country that they don't normally have, that they have never had in Parliament before. So that is a credit to them. For the record books, this is the best election result that any Green Party in any first-past-the-post system has ever had. But overall, I mean, they weren't able to double or triple. They're not going to play kingmaker. In fact, they will not have the most significant role.

I would say I think she did successfully, Miss May, insert the issue of climate change in a way that only she could. I guess the phrase really is holding the feet to the fire. There will be crispy toes. I almost feel like it pushed every party to be more aggressive than they might originally have been. But at the same time, it's difficult to argue this campaign was a real success for her. And I imagine just like there are questions about Andrew Scheer's leadership, there will be questions about hers as well.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Let's talk about Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. So they are walking away with a little bit worse than what they did last time around in 2015. But considering the expectations going into this election cycle, which were dismal, this is better than what everybody thought 40 days ago. What

happens to him after this? I think he's safe. But I would say that the assessment of whether or not they had a successful campaign is like a difficult thing to pinpoint, because certainly there's no question about it. They outperformed expectations, particularly him. He sort of seemed to captivate people. Thank you so much. Thank you. However, if you look at it compared to what they came into this election with,

and remember, what they came into this election with was also considered kind of a failure for them because they were supposed to win the 2015 campaign. They had done so well in 2011, and it just didn't materialize for them. This election was not great for them. They lost representation in a massive way in Quebec. They did very poorly in Atlantic Canada. They essentially are relying on a little bit of Ontario and B.C. to continue their mandate. You know, they won in the mid 20s, which was on the low end of expectations for their party, I can say, like even their own internal polling showed them getting somewhere in the 30s. And so there is a level of disappointment there. I do not think it will lead to the same kinds of questions about Singh's leadership as it might in the case of the Greens or the Conservatives.

He was able to, I think, make a space for himself during this campaign that the excitement that we built, and the focus that we put on people, on people's struggles, continues. And so that we can play a constructive and positive role in the new parliament the Canadians have chosen. You never know how it turns out and how successful he is navigating the minority government situation. But I don't imagine there's any real big desire to throw him out right now. They also don't have a lot of money right now. So that might be part of it as well. They don't want to have another leadership race. And they can just sort of buy some time here.

We're talking about, you know, these guys and their job prospects. But, you know, it strikes me we haven't yet talked about the prime minister. We haven't talked about Justin Trudeau. I know he's walked away with a strong minority tonight. But is this a win for him? Like, is his job safe? Well, according to him, it's a clear mandate, which also struck me in his speech. Everybody wins.

Yeah, everybody wins. Back to Ottawa with a clear mandate. We will make life more affordable. We will continue to fight climate change. I didn't read it necessarily the same way. I mean, a strong minority is a strong minority and credit where credit is due. But that isn't the same thing as a majority mandate. And I don't think at this juncture, his leadership is in peril at all. I think that, you know, they made it this far. They're not going to rock the rock the cradle right now.

I don't know how far that goes out into the future, though. And I can tell you also from speaking to liberals, just like there were people speculating about who might replace Andrew Scheer. There was a lot of talk among a lot of liberals about, for example, Chrystia Freeland and her leadership aspirations or their aspirations for her leadership. That talk existed. I think winning a strong minority definitely quells the talk, but that doesn't mean that it ceases to exist. Okay. Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada. Out of a job.

Out of a job. He is legitimately out of a job. He lost his seat in Beauce, Quebec. We're done, yeah. But, you know, he said tonight that this isn't the end of the People's Party of Canada. We are the fastest growing political party in Canadian history and we will continue to grow in the coming months and years. Do you think that this is the end of the People's Party of Canada? He was also somehow miraculously able to frame this as a win. Like

everybody found a way to make this a win. Apparently, according to him, a movement has started. So that is the win. The issues that we raise during this election will not disappear. And we will be there to criticize the government and offer better solutions. I mean, they got a very small portion of the popular vote. That's something worth noting. And he lost his seat. I mean, he lost his seat to the conservatives. The very people he said were morally bankrupt and morally corrupt and, you know, aka the worst people in the entire world. I'm paraphrasing. I'd be hard pressed to believe

that his party as it stands and his leadership of that party continues as any kind of real political threat in this country. The last thing that I want to talk to you about tonight is I look at this map and I see a divided country. I see a country even more divided than 2015. The West is an entire sea of blue. The liberals are holding major urban centers. The Bloc is back in Quebec in a very big way, in a way that it hasn't been back in many years. Is that fair for me to say? I think it's totally fair. And I think it's also fair to say that this campaign got the country that it was meant to produce in a way.

Like there were leaders drawing on those regional differences at all points during this campaign, pitting kind of or trying to appeal to specific interests in specific parts of the country in the name of the campaign, in the name of winning the election. And as a result, like you said, we're left with a more divided country than ever. It's going to be a really hard thing for the government to address. The fact that there is no representation of the government in Alberta.

Not a single MP. Ralph Goodale, long time cabinet minister, like a stalwart in Saskatchewan. To all of you, thank you. Good night. Goodbye. It says something that I think is really hard for people to understand outside of those provinces. The quote-unquote frustration, and I know Nenshi on your panel talked about this. It's not just frustration.

There's something more out there. And I don't even know perfectly how to describe it. But having lived there, I know it's different even from when I lived there. People were mad then. We keep saying, you know, give us some help here. Help us think about diversifying our economy. Help us support our energy sector. Get those pipelines built instead of just talking about it so much. And we feel often that we're just screaming into a vacuum. And I just think that it's not just a problem for the prime minister. And yes, he will, he eventually addressed it in his speech and he and his government will have to find a way to get at it. And I want to be there to support you.

Let us all work hard to bring our country together. But it's like, it's actually a really heartbreaking situation for this country. The fact that there are people who want to leave it because they feel so ignored and so alienated from the center of power. Right. There's a real conversation happening about Western separation. Yeah. And even that Quebecers feel like only a government or a party that represents solely their province will address their needs. Like, I wish I'd sounds naive again, but like, I wish it wasn't that way because we are such an amazing country. And the job of putting it back together now just seems like a really, really hard one for any government, much less a government that, you know, might struggle to do that in the first place. Okay. Vashti Kapelos, thank you. Thanks, Jamie. That is it for today.

We're going to have more election analysis tomorrow with the CBC's Erin Wherry. And I just want to say on a personal note, this is the first major federal election that I have covered. It has been a great pleasure. I know this sounds a little bit cheesy, but it has been wonderful to watch Democracy in Action. And I'm really honored that I've had the chance to do it. I'm also so grateful to Vashi Kapelos, who has been on the show so many times and has been so gracious with her time and has, you know, tried to make sense of all of this. And she's so excellent at it. Anyways, I'm a big fan. I'm Jamie Poisson. This is From Berner and see you all tomorrow.