{"id":336246,"date":"2021-09-08T04:13:07","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T01:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/federal-election-2021-the-liberal-campaigns-comeback-strategy-buy-american\/"},"modified":"2021-09-08T04:13:07","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T01:13:07","slug":"federal-election-2021-the-liberal-campaigns-comeback-strategy-buy-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/federal-election-2021-the-liberal-campaigns-comeback-strategy-buy-american\/","title":{"rendered":"#Federal election 2021: The Liberal campaign\u2019s comeback strategy? Buy American."},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Federal election 2021: The Liberal campaign\u2019s comeback strategy? Buy American.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Andrew MacDougall: It’s the \u2018most important election since 1945\u2019 and we\u2019ve been reduced to the two main parties shouting about a problem Canada doesn\u2019t have\n <\/div>\n
\n Andrew MacDougall is a director at Trafalgar Strategy, and a former Head of Communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper<\/em><\/p>\n

Given the Liberals kicked off the election without a platform or a ballot question, it\u2019s unsurprising we\u2019ve ended up somewhere nobody thought we\u2019d be: discussing the merits of semi-automatic weapons.<\/p>\n

Yes, you read that correctly. We\u2019re three plus weeks into the \u2018most important election since 1945\u2019, one being held in the midst of some serious geopolitical instability and the fourth wave of a pandemic, and we\u2019ve been reduced to the two main parties shouting about a problem Canada doesn\u2019t have: gun violence perpetrated using guns other than handguns. Well done, all concerned.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also, if you\u2019re keeping score at home, a long way from the 1988 election (current holder of the title of most important election since 1945), which featured the Liberal Party warning that Brian Mulroney\u2019s then Progressive Conservatives were going to erase the Canada-U.S. border and allow the True North Strong & Free to be subsumed into \u2018Merica. Or something. Funny, then, that Justin Trudeau and his Liberals are now turning to star spangled strategy to save their listless campaign, namely: Buy American.<\/p>\n

By importing the U.S. abortion, gun and health care debates into Canada, Trudeau is hoping to resuscitate the ghost of Donald Trump just enough to frighten the natives into thinking that decent bloke Erin O\u2019Toole they\u2019ve been seeing on their idiot boxes or internets is actually a demon in disguise.<\/p>\n

The evidence for this hypothesis is painfully thin. Which isn\u2019t to say it\u2019s non-existent. The Erin O\u2019Toole who ran to be Conservative leader was certainly a bit harder than the current variant. And even though the actual O\u2019Toole is closer to his current incarnation than his \u2018True Blue\u2019 one, it won\u2019t stop the Liberals from branding him as something more sinister. Hey, that\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

And to be fair, the Conservatives opened the door to these shenanigans by placing an item in their platform which pledged to scrap the Liberals\u2019 2020 order-in-council banning more than 1,500 gun models. If you want AR-15s in the hands of hunters you need to explain why. O\u2019Toole\u2019s problem is his ammunition on this front is being rendered unusable thanks to Liberal disingenuity and misdirection. Instead of worrying about the actual gun violence plaguing cities like Toronto, the Liberals would prefer to centre the debate on horrible exceptions like l\u2019Ecole Polytechnique and last summer\u2019s Nova Scotia shooting, both of whose perpetrators used weapons on O\u2019Toole unbanned list.<\/p>\n

But as Kim Campbell was famously misquoted as not saying, elections are no time to discuss serious issues. Or, in this case, no time to discuss minor issues seriously. The Liberals are playing on a very strong Canadian heuristic: guns are bad. It doesn\u2019t matter that the Canadian hunters and sports shooters who have the weapons in question go through a very thorough vetting process and are almost universally responsible with them, or that their weapons very rarely end up being used in crime. All the Liberals know is that when these weapons are used in a crime, it\u2019s unspeakably awful.<\/p>\n

If Canada wanted to have a serious debate about gun crime it would focus squarely on the types of weapons causing havoc in major cities and the routes those weapons take into the hands of criminals. Anything else is a distraction. Whether Trudeau likes it or not, gun crime has gone up under his watch, and it\u2019s gone up as his Ministers of Justice have set about lowering the penalties for gun crime. It\u2019s something voters might care about, if they ever got to hear about it.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Toole\u2019s recent reversal has probably done enough to dampen the debate on guns. Moreover, the classification system in Canada is in need of some clarification. But O\u2019Toole\u2019s cauterization has come at a cost, one the Liberals will now try to make steeper by importing other U.S. issues, namely abortion. With the debates coming up, Trudeau will come at O\u2019Toole all guns blazing (sorry) and the rookie leader had better be ready to parry more effectively than he has to date.<\/p>\n

Most of all, the Conservatives need to get the focus back on the unnecessary nature of this election and back on their plan to help with jobs, housing and the cost of living. This is where the voters are open to new ideas, and most likely to ignore anyone who tries to counter such talk with the debates of the past.
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