The view from Pete

Please understand that your team barely won this election. A minority government where you’re to rely on opposition parliamentary votes to pass legislation.

To be sure, Liberals could have claimed victory in any case. The day before Justin Trudeau announced his resignation, his party looked like it was racing towards the electoral cliff and the CPC leadership were measuring the drapes to the PMO.

Mark Carney took the Liberals from certain death to a contender in a stunning turn-around, but know this: he didn’t do this alone.

But…the Conservatives almost won the election too. A handful of differently placed votes or candidate missteps, and we’d be looking at a far different outcome.

There was a moment where the NDP could have pulled the pin and forced an election in the fall that would have assured defeat of the Liberals, a substantial gain for the NDP – but a likely landslide win for Pierre Poilievre and the CPC.

The interceding time allowed for a leadership change for the Liberals and their fighting chance to turn things around. It largely worked. Even if they lost by a small margin, Carney could have claimed that they did the best possible in an unwinnable set of circumstances.

Jagmeet Singh knew what he was doing. The legacy of the progress made in the previous confidence and supply agreements made between Liberals and NDP would have been torn up by a MAGA fuelled Conservative government. The sacrifice of Jagmeet Singh might have saved Canada from Poilievre.

We took one for the team. Team Canada that is.

The polling started to reflect the shift as well. NDP, Green and BQ support (those who were progressive and swing voters) begun to move, and it saved the Liberal party.

There will be some smug reactions gloating over the near miss against the Conservatives, or the stunning losses of the NDP. But this historic rescue of the Liberals took place because large swaths of NDP voters shifted to the Liberals out of fear of the CPC.

In the coming days and weeks, the Liberals owe progressive Canadians for that rescue we gave them.

They can start with electoral reform.

I am sick to death of “strategic voting”. Its an undemocratic device used by both the CPC, but mostly Liberals to scare voters into choosing their party out of fear. What it does is monopolizes democracy down to two parties…just like the American system we’re not supposed to be like.

I would argue that any system is better than this, but generally something proportional would achieve results. We are grown ups. If we vote for parties that share a relatively similar worldview, they’ll find common ground in parliament to get things done for citizens in coalitions, CASA’s etc that serve the best interests of the country…and it won’t deny the electoral voice of the people’s will.

Now, before we get into “a proportional system would allow for extremist parties”, I’m sorry but that ship has already sailed. Have you seen the CPC lately? They’ve been shifting further and further right that they’re at a point that the party would not be recognizable to what used to be the PC Party only a generation ago.

The kind of electoral system we end up with is certainly up for debate. There are several variations of electoral systems that are generally proportional, without breaking down into chaos. But we should have that debate and the legislative follow-up necessary. For most Canadians across every demographic and political alignment, their largest gripe about politicians is that they “just do as they want” (implied: not what they promised to do). Changing the system and putting voters in more direct control ads a morality layer that has long since vanished.

I’m not one who would ever give a platform to separatists (regardless of the region in question), but I would argue that separatism at its core is borne out of a sense of extreme frustration with a central government. Well perhaps a better way of choosing our leadership nationally can serve as part of the national healing that needs to take place.

We’ll also be monitoring for the inevitable conservative shift that the Liberals now that they’re in office again. In fact, its already started.

My2bits