ANALYSIS: A Deeper Look at Canada’s 44th Election

Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

17 million votes, 338 ridings, and $600 million. On September 20, Canadians headed to the polls, following a snap election called by the Prime Minister in mid-August.

The 36-day campaign featured the major parties vying to form government, seeking a mandate to lead Canada through a COVID recovery.

In the end, Canada’s 44th Federal Election culminated in more or less mirrored results as produced in 2019. Canadians re-elected a Liberal minority government just as they had done in the previous election, with minimal change in the parties’ seats on Parliament Hill.

Notwithstanding the election’s groundhog-day result, there are three key takeaways Canadians should be made aware of:

1. The Far Right is here, and probably to stay.

Back in 2018, Harper-era Cabinet Minister, Maxime Bernier, left the Conservatives after losing the party’s leadership race to Andrew Scheer and founded the People’s Party of Canada (“PPC”). Positioned politically to the right of the Conservatives, the PPC under Bernier ran in the 2019 election on an anti-immigration, pro-oil and gas industry, small government, anti-globalism, Canadian nationalist platform that rejected the scientific consensus on climate change. The debuting party earned 1.6 per cent of the national vote coming just shy of 300,000 ballots, but failed to garner any seats in the House of Commons.

Despite his 2019 loss, Bernier continued to lead the PPC as an extra-parliamentary alternative party for conservative Canadians. He ran again in the 2020 York Centre by-election, finishing fourth with 642 votes, or 3.5 per cent.

Fast forward to 2021, Bernier has repeatedly spoken out against mandatory vaccination, lockdown measures, and mask requirements. In August, the PPC leader posted to Twitter that he would not receive a COVID-19 vaccine, stating “I’m 58 years old. I believe I’m in good shape”, despite the fact that health officials have continuously maintained that all eligible individuals should receive COVID-19 vaccination.

In the 2021 election, the PPC ran on a similar campaign platform to the previous election, but tapped into fringe anti-public health movements across the country, gaining support from opponents of mandatory masks and vaccination. Protests in front of Vancouver’s City Hall notably featured PPC banners.

In an official filing with Elections Canada, three of the PPC’s 250 required signatures were from individuals with known connections to far-right groups, including Shaun Walker, a formerly American Neo-Nazi who was convicted “on federal civil rights charges for orchestrating attacks on non-whites in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002 and 2003” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an American hate-monitoring group.  

“Intentionally or not, the PPC is the party largely favoured by the Canadian far and racist right,” Elizabeth Simons, deputy director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, told CANADALAND.

When the results came in, more than 800,000 Canadians had cast their ballots for the PPC, more than doubling their result from the previous election.

If there is one thing to be noted from the PPC’s 2021 showing, it’s that Canada is not immune to far-right racist populist movements as seen in other western liberal democracies over the last decade. Despite Canada’s diverse national identity, nearly a million voted for the party that calls for the “ending official multiculturalism and preserving Canadian values and culture”.

2. The Green’s had an opportunity. They Imploded.

Coming off the heels of a summer plagued with extreme weather events across North America and the heightened climate discussion, one would have thought the Green Party would have been able to walk away from this election with a record showing. With voters experiencing the impact of climate change more pointedly than ever, Canada’s environmentally-focused party would have appeared to be in a strong position to make significant gains in Ottawa.

Or at least, that’s what people thought, because the Green’s campaign under Annamie Paul was marred with party infighting that led to a poor showing at the polls.

The party had been plagued with an internal war that started in June when then Green MP Jessica Atwin crossed the floor and joined the Liberals following a dispute within the Greens over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Ever since, party officials and leader Annamie Paul have been butting heads over Atwin’s exit, with Paul receiving heavy criticism from party insiders for her alleged role.

Paul, the first Black and Jewish woman to lead a federal political party, called her critics’ attacks racist, sexist, and antisemitic, and continued to lead the Greens into the election. Some of Paul’s staff echoed these sentiments in statements to news media.

Come election day, the Greens landed two seats, one of which was former longtime party leader Elizabeth May’s Saanich—Gulf Islands riding, and the other was newly elected Mike Morrice’s Kitchener Centre.

The 2019 election left the Greens with a record three seats, nearly 1.2 million votes, or 6.5 per cent of the national vote. This time around, the Greens dropped to nearly 400,000 and 2.3 per cent of the national vote. Paul herself lost her bid for Toronto Centre.

Days after the election, Paul announced her resignation, citing relentless attacks that made being leader the “worst period” of her life. Paul, as well as her staffers who spoke with news media, revealed the party’s governing body undermined Paul financially throughout the election, thus limiting her ability to campaign. Party insiders, including former leader Jim Harris, maintain that Paul was not undermined by the Federal Council at any point during the election.

The Green Party’s civil war hindered their leader’s campaign and contributed to an election showing that failed to capture an opportunity to engage voters on their signature issue. Instead of establishing itself as Canada’s go-to environmental party of record and respect, many Canadians now ponder the party’s place in federal politics as its uncertain future unravels on the national stage.

3. O’Toole’s shift to the Centre Leaves Conservatives with an Identity Crisis

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole made notable efforts to appeal to a broader segment of voters by nudging his party over the centre. However, in O’Toole’s attempt to enlarge the already big tent party, his critics argue he caused that tent to collapse upon itself, leaving its members to question who Canada’s Conservatives really represent.

During the leadership race, O’Toole ran on what has billed as a “true blue” platform of contemporary Canadian conservatism, making promises to repeal the Liberal government’s carbon tax and firearms restrictions, only to later introduce his own version of a carbon tax plan and stating he would continue a Cabinet order banning 1,500 semi-automatic weapon models when on the campaign trail.

Party insiders, including Bert Chen, an executive on the Conservative’s National Council, have called O’Toole’s slide to the centre a “betrayal” of conservative values and demanded he be replaced as leader. Chen has since initiated a petition to have O’Toole removed as leader, but other party insiders have been hesitant to launch criticism at O’Toole’s performance.

While O’Toole’s future is uncertain, the broader issue of Conservative identity remains at a standstill. Justin Trudeau just won his third election, ousting three Conservative candidates since 2015: Harper, Scheer, and O’Toole. Political strategists and commentators drew from the 2015 and 2019 elections that Canadians were uninterested in definitively “right-wing” Tories in the Prime Minister’s seat, but with O’Toole’s failed shift to a platform closer to Mulroney-era progressive conservatism than Harper or Scheer, the Conservative Party is left with a large, unanswered question: who are we? It’s a question they should hope to answer before the next election.