Justin Trudeau follows his father's footsteps - winning a minority government

Justin Trudeau is following in his father's footsteps after Monday's federal election - emerging with a minority government in his second election after the Trudeaumania wave disappeared.

Canada emerged very divided from the election on Monday, and the first act of the three national party leaders after the results were in did not bode well for future co-operation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke in Montreal just after Conservative leader Andrew Scheer began to speak in Regina. Scheer took to the stage while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was winding up his remarks in Burnaby. The Liberals won a minority government, with 157 seats. Most of those seats are concentrated in the Toronto and Montreal areas, and in the Atlantic provinces. They were shut out in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and their B.C. presence is concentrated around Vancouver. They have no B.C. seats outside Metro Vancouver. The Conservatives have 121 seats, including all but one in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Despite numerous opportunities to capitalize on mistakes made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, they were unable to capture many seats in the Metro Toronto area and that meant their seat count was down. The NDP lost 20 seats, winning 24. Many of those losses were in Quebec, where the Orange Wave has disappeared. They now have one seat there. They are still strong in B.C. and their caucus is experienced and capable. Jagmeet Singh showed strength and resiliency in the campaign and his party will probably prop up the Liberals on a vote by vote basis. The Green Party now has a caucus of three and will be more of a voice in Parliament. No longer will Elizabeth May’s voice be the only one heard. The Bloc Quebecois won 32 seats in Quebec and will clearly be the voice of the CAQ provincial government in Ottawa. TheIr MPs will have no interest in the rest of the country. Expect the issue of equalization payments to come up a lot in the next few years. Their support of Quebec’s Bill 21, which bans people wearing religious symbols from holding a number of provincially-funded jobs, is a slap in the face for many hard-working people. The lack of debate on that issue by federal party leaders during the campaign was outrageous. Jody Wilson-Raybould won her seat in Vancouver-Granville as an independent. This was a victory for ethics - something the Liberal Party has fallen short of on many occasions in the past four years. She will be a strong voice for B.C. and particularly for First Nations people. The separatism movement will not only be revived in Quebec under the BQ, which is a sovereigntist party, but also in Alberta and Saskatchewan. It is highly likely that a western form of the Bloc will be formed, and it may be more successful than western separatist parties were in the early 1980s. People in those two provinces feel under siege by Ottawa and the environmental movement, and the huge vote totals piled up by Conservatives in ridings outside Edmonton and Calgary are indicative of the mood. None of this is good for Canada. Trudeau is fundamentally incapable of uniting the country. In my view, Singh would do a better job on that file. While he aligns with the anti-oil movement, he is much more conciliatory. The minority Parliament will likely last about two years. None of the parties want a quick election. They do not have the money or energy for one. All the party leaders, with the possible exception of May, will stay on and contest the next election. A minority government is a check on the power of the prime minister’s office, and that is very good. It also frees up committees to pursue matters more diligently than has been the case in the past four years, as no party has a majority. Remember the justice committee hearings? Stronger committees could be good as well. The Liberals will be propped up by the NDP on most votes, and by the Bloc or Conservatives on a few others. The situation will be very similar to the Stephen Harper minority governments of 2006 and 2008. Here in B.C., the Conservatives won 17 seats - one short of the 18 I predicted on Facebook on Sunday. The Liberals held onto 11 seats, a very good showing considering how poorly the party has done in the province since the 1950s. I had predicted they would hold onto eight. The NDP won 11, one shy of the 12 I had predicted. The Greens only managed to hold onto two seats they already held - I thought they would pick up one more. The NDP negative advertising on Vancouver Island hurt them. I was bang-on in predicting Wilson-Raybould would win her seat. Voters in Vancouver-Granville showed support for a strong and courageous MP. In the South Fraser area, Delta Liberal MP Carla Qualtrough did very well, winning re-election by a handy margin and defying Delta’s Conservative roots. She clearly is very well-regarded by her constituents. Three Liberal MPs held their seats in Surrey - Ken Hardie in Fleetwood-Port Kells, Sukh Dhaliwal in Surrey-Newton and Randeep Sarai in Surrey Centre. Cloverdale-Langley City MP John Aldag lost in Cloverdale-Langley City to Tamara Jansen of the Conservatives. He has been a very hard-working MP and definitely picked up votes for his work, but it wasn’t enough in a riding that is historically Conservative. The same thing happened to Gordie Hogg in South Surrey-White Rock. He lost to Kerry-Lynne Findlay of the Conservatives, a former Delta MP. The riding’s voting history was against him. He won the seat in a December, 2017 byelection, but Trudeau’s waning popularity hurt him. To nobody’s surprise, Tako Van Popta easily won Mark Warawa’s old seat of Langley-Aldergrove. The Conservative margin of victory there showed that the Trudeaumania wave of 2015 has subsided - probably permanently. Justin Trudeau is following many of his father’s footsteps. He won a majority on his first try as party leader, as his father did, and was reduced to a minority in his second election as leader (just like his father). His father’s margin of victory in 1972 was much narrower - just two seats. He was mostly propped up by the NDP for the next two years. Justin Trudeau has also angered voters in Western Canada, perhaps even more deeply than his father did (at least until 1980). The imposition of the National Energy Program after Trudeau the elder won  a majority in that year, winning just two seats in Western Canada, sparked anger and frustration which has bubbled under the surface for years. It led to a Progressive Conservative rout of the Liberals in 1984 and the rise of the Reform Party in the late 1980s. The prime minister has opened a huge can of worms. It will be very difficult to unsnarl that mess. ReplyForward Canada emerged very divided from the election on Monday, and the first act of the three national party leaders after the results were in did not bode well for future co-operation. The Liberals won a minority government, with 157 seats. Most of those seats are concentrated in the Toronto and Montreal areas, and in the Atlantic provinces. They were shut out in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and their B.C. presence is concentrated around Vancouver. They have no B.C. seats outside Metro Vancouver. The Conservatives have 121 seats, including all but one in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Despite numerous opportunities to capitalize on mistakes made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, they were unable to capture many seats in the Metro Toronto area and that meant their seat count was down. The NDP lost 20 seats, winning 24. Many of those losses were in Quebec, where the Orange Wave has disappeared. They now have one seat there. They are still strong in B.C. and their caucus is experienced and capable. Jagmeet Singh showed strength and resiliency in the campaign and his party will probably prop up the Liberals on a vote by vote basis. The Green Party now has a caucus of three and will be more of a voice in Parliament. No longer will Elizabeth May’s voice be the only one heard. The Bloc Quebecois won 32 seats in Quebec and will clearly be the voice of the CAQ provincial government in Ottawa. TheIr MPs will have no interest in the rest of the country. Expect the issue of equalization payments to come up a lot in the next few years. Their support of Quebec’s Bill 21, which bans people wearing religious symbols from holding a number of provincially-funded jobs, is a slap in the face for many hard-working people. The lack of debate on that issue by federal party leaders during the campaign was outrageous. Jody Wilson-Raybould won her seat in Vancouver-Granville as an independent. This was a victory for ethics - something the Liberal Party has fallen short of on many occasions in the past four years. She will be a strong voice for B.C. and particularly for First Nations people. The separatism movement will not only be revived in Quebec under the BQ, which is a sovereigntist party, but also in Alberta and Saskatchewan. It is highly likely that a western form of the Bloc will be formed, and it may be more successful that western separatist parties were in the early 1980s. People in those two provinces feel under siege by Ottawa and the environmental movement, and the huge vote totals piled up by Conservatives in ridings outside Edmonton and Calgary are indicative of the mood. None of this is good for Canada. Trudeau is fundamentally incapable of uniting the country. In my view, Singh would do a better job on that file. While he aligns with the anti-oil movement, he is much more conciliatory. The minority Parliament will likely last about two years. None of the parties want a quick election. They do not have the money or energy for one. All the party leaders, with the possible exception of May, will stay on and contest the next election. A minority government is a check on the power of the prime minister’s office, and that is very good. It also frees up committees to pursue matters more diligently than has been the case in the past four years, as no party has a majority. Remember the justice committee hearings? Stronger committees could be good as well. The Liberals will be propped up by the NDP on most votes, and by the Bloc or Conservatives on a few others. The situation will be very similar to the Stephen Harper minority governments of 2006 and 2008. Here in B.C., the Conservatives won 17 seats - one short of the 18 I predicted on Facebook on Sunday. The Liberals held onto 11 seats, a very good showing considering how poorly the party has done in the province since the 1950s. I had predicted they would hold onto eight. The NDP won 11, one shy of the 12 I had predicted. The Greens only managed to hold onto two seats they already held - I thought they would pick up one more. The NDP negative advertising on Vancouver Island hurt them. I was bang-on in predicting Wilson-Raybould would win her seat. Voters in Vancouver-Granville showed support for a strong and courageous MP. In the South Fraser area, Delta Liberal MP Carla Qualtrough did very well, winning re-election by a handy margin and defying Delta’s Conservative roots. She clearly is very well-regarded by her constituents. Three Liberal MPs held their seats in Surrey - Ken Hardie in Fleetwood-Port Kells, Sukh Dhaliwal in Surrey-Newton and Randeep Sarai in Surrey Centre. Cloverdale-Langley City MP John Aldag lost in Cloverdale-Langley City to Tamara Jansen of the Conservatives. He has been a very hard-working MP and definitely picked up votes for his work, but it wasn’t enough in a riding that is historically Conservative. The same thing happened to Gordie Hogg in South Surrey-White Rock. He lost to Kerry-Lynne Findlay of the Conservatives, a former Delta MP. The riding’s voting history was against him. He won the seat in a December, 2017 byelection, but Trudeau’s waning popularity hurt him. To nobody’s surprise, Tako Van Popta easily won Mark Warawa’s old seat of Langley-Aldergrove. The Conservative margin of victory there showed that the Trudeaumania wave of 2015 has subsided - probably permanently. Justin Trudeau is following many of his father’s footsteps. He won a majority on his first try as party leader, as his father did, and was reduced to a minority in his second election as leader (just like his father). His father’s margin of victory in 1972 was much narrower - just two seats. He was mostly propped up by the NDP for the next two years. Justin Trudeau has also angered voters in Western Canada, perhaps even more deeply than his father did (at least until 1980). The imposition of the National Energy Program after Trudeau the elder won  a majority in that year, winning just two seats in Western Canada, sparked anger and frustration which has bubbled under the surface for years. It led to a Progressive Conservative rout of the Liberals in 1984 and the rise of the Reform Party in the late 1980s. The prime minister has opened a huge can of worms. It will be very difficult to unsnarl that mess. ReplyForward Justin Trudeau is following many of his father’s footsteps. He won a majority on his first try as party leader, as his father did, and was reduced to a minority in his second election as leader (just like his father). His father’s margin of victory in 1972 was much narrower - just two seats. He was mostly propped up by the NDP for the next two years. Justin Trudeau has also angered voters in Western Canada, perhaps even more deeply than his father did (at least until 1980). The imposition of the National Energy Program after Trudeau the elder won  a majority in that year, winning just two seats in Western Canada, sparked anger and frustration which has bubbled under the surface for years. It led to a Progressive Conservative rout of the Liberals in 1984 and the rise of the Reform Party in the late 1980s. The prime minister has opened a huge can of worms. It will be very difficult to unsnarl that mess. ReplyForward