Breaking down Canada’s current political climate with Professor Lawrence LeDuc
Continuing the discussion on the upcoming federal elections, The Strand recently interviewed Professor Emeritus Lawrence LeDuc, an expert in Canadian elections and voting. Since Trudeau’s resignation as Liberal Party leader amidst election season, uncertainty has shadowed Canada’s political future. This article aims to demystify doubts by discussing the political forces that led to Trudeau’s resignation, what it means for the Liberal Party, and what a conservative government may look like.
The Strand: What’s happening with the Liberals and Trudeau? Why did he suddenly resign?
Professor Lawrence LeDuc: I thought Trudeau was going to stay right up until the end. Given his history and personality, he seemed like a politician who wanted to stay and fight. I don’t think he believes that any of the people in his cabinet would be as strong in a campaign. But then two things happened. One was the resignation of his finance minister, [Chrystia Freeland], whose position he obviously misjudged. Then, with the revolt in the caucus, the demands that he step down mounted. The pressures from those two sources just got to be too much. I think it was his intention to stay, but it was derailed. He decided that he had two bad options, and he chose the one that he thought would be the least bad in terms of a campaign. He’s paying the price for that, but had he not misjudged Freeland, he might have been able to hang on.
The Strand: What does this mean for the Liberal Party in the upcoming elections? Do you think this will strengthen their vote or worsen it?
LeDuc: Their position was so bad to start with that it’s hard to see that it would be any worse. We’re into an area where we just don’t know. If Freeland is the leader, it’s not going to be too much different. She bears as much responsibility for the policies of the government as Trudeau does. If it’s Carney, it’s completely unknown because he’s never been in politics. They may hope for a person from outside who’s going to come in and save the part, but it often doesn’t work. I don’t know what his strength will be like in Quebec. It’s always difficult for a party that needs a lot of Quebec seats to fight an election in Quebec with an English leader. Their intentions could be good, but historically, that has almost never worked. If it has worked, it only did for a short time as it did with Diefenbaker, in one election when he was able to win seats in Quebec and then lost them all the next time. Harper was somewhat the same way. He worked very hard at trying to build support in Quebec. He won ten seats there in his first election, which was more than anybody thought he could, and then he lost five of them the next time. Governing Canada without Quebec [seats] is pretty doubtful. Anyway, how an English liberal leader will fare against Poilievre – it’s hard to guess.
The Strand: Going into this post-COVID election, what are the main issues that are pushing most people to the ballot, and how have they changed since the previous election?
LeDuc: If we look at the polling, it seems to mainly be cost of living issues. There’s a limited amount that governments can do about that. The same was somewhat true in the US election that just took place a couple of months ago. Cost of living was the most important issue by many people, but the Democrats didn’t really have a solution. Whoever is leading the party in the next election is gonna face that problem. They might try to focus on some other issues. Right now, all of the leaders are trying to position themselves in reaction to what the US government may do with Trump. If people are now saying the main issue is cost of living, months from now it might be the Americans who are beating up on us. But from what we know right now, I don’t think the cost of living issue is going to go away, even though inflation doesn’t look bad. [Inflation has] receded quite a lot, but the polling suggests that people don’t really believe it. Economic statistics say that inflation is running around 2 percent, which is pretty normal. People look at their living costs, their rent, the cost of food, etc., and believe there is no improvement.
The Strand: What do you think is the reason for the discrepancy between statistics, and our own life experiences with high inflation?
LeDuc: I think it’s partly just time. Even if you have economic policies that are working, the process is pretty slow. For example, people renewing their mortgages may not see the effects of that yet. A year from now, they may see the effects of interest rates declining, but they don’t just happen right away. Same thing with prices. Something happens to push prices up and your policies to combat that might be fairly effective, but it doesn’t mean they’re gonna go back down. It simply means you limit the increases. Rents will come down or at least not go up, and as wages increase, people may be in a little better position, but people don’t give governments any credit for that.
The Strand: To what extent do you think housing prices, inflation, and healthcare issues have affected the younger population? As a major contributor to the voting strength of the Liberal Party, where do you think they’re going to end up going?
LeDuc: The Liberals won a majority in 2015 by doing very well among young people. The voting turnout went up in that election, and it was partly because young people came back into the electorate. They had been pretty alienated for a while. There were two issues at that time in particular that appealed to young people. One was climate change, and the other [was] electoral reform. Since then, the housing price issue and cost of rent has come in there. So looking at it through the lens of some of your constituents, they didn’t deliver on electoral reform, climate change has gone out of fashion, and now they have the housing cost issues. So it’s not surprising that a lot of those young voters who enthusiastically supported the Liberals at the beginning have slowly drifted away. It hasn’t happened all at once, and the polling shows that. The Liberals are gonna have a hard time in the coming election getting those people back.
The Strand: In your book, Absent Mandate, a key argument is the disconnect between election issues and government policies. If the Conservatives are to win, do you think that they will fail in this issue as well?
LeDuc: From what we can see, it’s going to conform to that model pretty well. The Conservatives are gonna criticise the government across the board. I doubt that they’re gonna bring in much in the way of policies. But if they do bring in a policy agenda, it’s gonna be very general. ‘We’re gonna fix the economy, bring down the cost of living, and axe the tax.’ If they’re gonna be more specific, that’s risky, because any policy they propose will be criticised. So, parties that think they have a chance to win an election don’t tend to bring in policies that are much more than generalities. If they do, they tend to bury them in a book like when Chrétien was campaigning and would waive the Red Book, which was full of general policies. It was more a prop than a policy. So the Conservatives are gonna try to get by with as few specifics as they can. And if it’s a reasonably short campaign, it might work. In power, if they do things that are not very popular, like if they cut out all of these programs introduced by the Liberals – for example child and dental care – people will feel those cuts. So, their time in government might be fairly short.
