Canada’s Consequential Election Was Also a Snorefest

Canada’s current election has huge ramifications for the future of the country. Somehow, it was also a really boring election.

Advanced voting is over and election day is just days away, so we decided to take stock on how the election went up to this point.

When the election was called, I basically predicted that the election was going to be as important as it was going to be crummy. This while critical digital rights issues are likely to take a back seat in all of this. In typical “Drew Wilson was right” fashion, those predictions ultimately came true. The only thing that I didn’t predict was just how boring this election would actually end up being.

First, of course, let’s briefly talk about what I ended up getting right. The easiest prediction was that this election was hugely important. Yeah, that was obvious. With a far right lunatic taking the White House and aiming to be the most horrible, destructive, and corrupt American government in history, having a strong Canadian government was going to be vital to our interests. The fact that the current president is also actively trying to conduct a hostile takeover of Canada by tariffing our nation to try and bankrupt our country meant that the US has become a hostile nation towards Canada. The friendly relationship each nation had was clearly over. So, Canada seriously needed a government that would stand up for our interests.

This very much played out in the election campaign with all political parties being very vocal about how they would deal with Trump (to varying degrees). Without a doubt, the future of our nation became the ballot box question.

Second, this election was gearing up to be a very crummy one. Canada has numerous problems on its hands. This includes climate change that is literally setting the country on fire and burning down parts of towns, or in the case of Lytton, whole towns. Housing continues to be a massive issue as a simple house or condo is going for obscene prices and, as a result, housing has basically become completely unaffordable for anyone who isn’t already a Boomer who set some cash aside for later in life. Jobs continue to be elusive for those of working age and when a job does become available, it is grossly underpaid and does not sustain someone as a result.

All of this over top of the massive list of digital rights issues such as the complete lack of any real privacy rights, the ridiculous prices people have to pay for high speed internet and cell phones (it makes American prices seem like a bargain by comparison), the lack of high speed and cellular access in rural and indigenous communities, the crisis in journalism thanks to the destructive Online News Act, the impending crisis for creators with the Online Streaming Act coming down the pipeline of implementation, the trade challenge from the US as a result of the Digital Services Tax, and a whole lot more. The digital issues that needs tackling by the government is massive.

That ultimately played out in this election. Political parties made passing mentions of some of the non-digital rights issues, but those actual promises to fix different issues largely disappeared as quickly as they cropped up. Digital rights issues barely got a mention at all, only relegated to the odd note here and there buried in the pages of some political party platforms if they got mentioned at all.

So, if you were looking for something substantive in this election apart from fighting back against the rising fascist tide of the Trump administration, you were largely out of luck. As a result, this election also turned out to be an extremely crummy one.

What I didn’t quite see coming was the snorefest that this election ultimately became. If you don’t follow Canadian politics, or are a Canadian who has been asleep the entire time, the only thing you really needed to know about what happened in this election is that Trump threatened the sovereignty of Canada, Justin Trudeau stepped down, Mark Carney took Trudeau’s place, and Carney is the guy that Canadians are seemingly choosing to be the next Prime Minister if the polls are any indication. That’s it. That’s basically the whole election cycle.

If one insisted that something had to happen during that whole time, well, the only thing I got was the Conservative leader committing political suicide part way through the election by promising to use the notwithstanding clause to carry out his MAGA-lite agenda (the same kind of agenda that is ripping up the US right now). It was basically an indication of just how illegal some of his policies are likely to be since it requires the overriding of the Canadian Charter to carry out.

The only thing that could possibly happen at this point that would make things interesting is if there was a surprise result after election day, then it would be an outcome almost no real analyst saw coming. After all, the polls are suggesting that there is a good chance that the Liberal party is on the verge of winning a majority government with some possibility of it just being a minority government. Anything outside of that would be as surprising as it is unlikely.

Honestly, this particular outcome of this election being this incredibly boring was not something I saw coming. I mean, given the stakes, you’d think the parties would be fighting with everything they got. Instead, the Conservative party were running ads calling Liberals “clowns”. No real reason why, just that they are a bunch of “clowns”. This while implying that voting Conservative would improve your golf swing… somehow (the ad probably should’ve included a disclaimer that voting Conservative won’t actually improve your golf swing).

When that ad campaign predictably fell flat, they resorted to bringing back the hugely controversial former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to give a creepy fake smile at the camera and tell people that both party leaders worked under him, but to vote Conservative. This in the dying days of this campaign. The advertisement was clearly improvised and not well thought out given that, at the very least, it was an accidental endorsement of Carney because why else would Carney be under your wing if you didn’t think he was right for the job in the first place?

You would think there would be a well thought out unifying narrative by at least one party where the message would be along the lines of “America is attacking Canada economically, so here is how we can stand on our own two feet beyond just issuing counter-tariffs.” This and actually sticking to that message. Instead, parties only gave, at most, passing reference to real issues. This while sticking to warm fuzzy feeling ideas. The NDP was talking about how the Liberals and Conservatives aren’t making your life easier, so vote NDP. Meanwhile, the Green Party simply asked people to vote for what matters to them while putting a green disc into a ballot box. There was very little “here’s a very real problem Canada faces and here is how we plan on fixing it.”

Seriously, where’s the fight? Where’s the intellectual arguments? Where’s the well thought out strategy that the political party money making machine can make happen? I mean, if the political parties gunning to replace the Liberal’s aren’t all that interested in this election, how are voters supposed to be interested in their campaigns besides the hardcore dedicated ones? As a result, if the outcome ends up being a Liberal sweep, it wouldn’t be surprising because the other parties generally let that happen.

The fact that this election would also turn out to be this incredibly boring was probably the biggest surprise for me. It’s kind of ironic given the high voter turnout for the advanced voting polls. I would’ve thought that the election would get heated at some point – even nasty – but it was probably one of the laziest campaigns on the part of the political parties. With down to earth issues not even getting any real time in the spotlight outside of a quick flash here and there, this was definitely an election you could fall asleep to.

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