Canadian Prime Minister and Liberal leader Mark Carney speaks during a campaign rally in Laval, Que., on April 22.ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP/Getty Images
For dramatics, the Canadian election campaign was never going to compete with the American one.
How many campaigns do you see where one party’s nominee is the target of two assassination attempts, one of which sears his ear?
How many do you get when the other party’s nominee is in fact liquidated by his own tribe, the mutiny taking place after the poor fellow staggered through a debate trying to look like a vigorous 80-year-old while coming across as 110.
Or a campaign in which the third-party candidate, a tree-hugging Kennedy no less, dropped his bid in order to join hands with the Donald Trump. This after revelations that a worm had once gnawed on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain and that he had once carved off the head of a beached whale with a chainsaw.
With the stakes sky high, the Canadian campaign was supposed to be a barnburner, an all-time thriller. But as campaigns go, it’s been a rather quiet, pedestrian affair with few fireworks. All the drama came well before the Canadian election began via the Trump tsunami of deeds and threats that changed this country’s state of mind, and in so doing, catapulted the immensely lucky Liberals to the forefront.
The short five-week campaign brought forward no strikingly new policy initiatives or surprises. There have been no controversies worthy of smack-your-face headlines. The two televised debates were upstaged by hockey games. Mr. Trump, having previously done all the damage, kept his yap shut. And there’s only been mincing movement in the polls.
The Conservatives needed something to jolt the proceedings but couldn’t find it. In the 2006 campaign, Stephen Harper wrestled power from the Liberals with the help of a big seller, a reduction in the GST from seven to five per cent. Voters loved it, who wouldn’t? Pierre Poilievre might have grabbed momentum with a pledge to chop it again, from five to three per cent. Economists would have screamed as they did in 2006, but so what? Leave the worries about the books till after you’ve won.
It’s hard to win, however, when the other side is getting all the breaks. Predator Trump’s acts were not the only Liberal gift. There’s also been the collapse of the NDP, which did not have the good sense, after Jagmeet Singh did poorly in the 2019 and 2021 campaigns, to show him the door before this one. Additionally there’s been the attacks on the Poilievre campaign from fellow Conservatives, notably Ontario Premier Doug Ford and sidekick Kory Teneycke. The latter rammed the knife in further this week, telling the Associated Press that the Poilievre approach is “like a cheap karaoke version of Donald Trump.”
It was thought that Justin Trudeau was making a terrible mistake by holding on to power so long, not stepping down a year earlier. But amazingly, this worked out well for the party. It was his hanging around till after the U.S. election that prompted Mr. Trump, given his disdainful attitude toward Mr. Trudeau, to trot out his 51st state talk that ended up helping the Liberals so much.
But when you get the lucky breaks, you have to capitalize, take advantage. And that’s what the Liberals have done, owing to the steady hand of Mark Carney.
The election isn’t yet won. Polls could be wrong, as they have often been in the past. The Liberal lead has been shrinking somewhat. The Conservatives’ get-out-the-vote ground game could make a difference.
But thus far, the Carney gamble appears to be paying off. What a gamble it was. A leader with zero political experience. Untested in a campaign, with no time to prepare one. What was the likelihood that he would avoid embarrassing organizational foul-ups, rookie mistakes, big stumbles?
Several others who had taken over the leadership of their long-in-power parties with no time before an election ran woeful campaigns and were decimated on election day. Those who come to mind are Lester Pearson in 1958, John Turner in 1984, Kim Campbell in 1993.
They didn’t have the luck of Mr. Carney, and they also lacked his wherewithal. By comparison to Mr. Poilievre, Mr. Carney appeals to voters as a man of gravitas, a competent leader with vast economic experience, a stabilizer in these menacing times.
Blunders could have readily shattered that image. But while the Carney campaign has certainly had its shortcomings, crippling mistakes have been avoided. The image, as well as the good fortune, have thus far remained intact.