{"id":348406,"date":"2021-10-05T00:19:13","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T21:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-close-did-the-liberals-come-to-losing\/"},"modified":"2021-10-05T00:19:13","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T21:19:13","slug":"how-close-did-the-liberals-come-to-losing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-close-did-the-liberals-come-to-losing\/","title":{"rendered":"#How close did the Liberals come to losing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How close did the Liberals come to losing?<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n The Liberal Party\u2019s pyrrhic victory in last week\u2019s federal election may have been closer to a defeat than the final tally would suggest.<\/p>\n

According to interviews with Liberal supporters conducted after the Sept. 20 vote, voters were less than enthusiastic about staying with Justin Trudeau\u2019s party\u2014but his oft-touted childcare plan may offer some clues as to why they did.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe COVID pandemic fundamentally altered the psyche of the Canadian voter,\u201d reads a memo prepared by a consulting firm, which conducted 10 focus groups across the country in the days after the election.<\/p>\n

The focus groups were conducted for a number of industry groups and companies, and not paid for by the Liberal Party. The source who provided the results asked that Maclean\u2019s<\/em> not identify the firm that conducted the research, because it was not yet meant to be shared publicly.<\/p>\n

In those conversations, the voters were keen on the idea of, as Trudeau phrases it often, \u201cbuilding back better.\u201d They were receptive to new programs, new entitlements, and new federal mechanisms to address a raft of issues: Chief among them, a rising affordability crisis, income inequality, and climate change. The deficit seemed like a far-off concern, though the firm found support for the idea of making big companies and the rich pay their \u201cfair share.\u201d There was clearly a liberal attitude in the voting public.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0The Prime Minister is sorry, okay? Really sorry.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But the focus groups found a chasm between those voters\u2019 wants, and what was being offered by the Liberal Party.<\/p>\n

\u201cVoters want tactile, comprehensible proof of action\u2014things that they can see or touch: an electric car, not a price on carbon; a $10 daycare around the corner from their house, and not an agreement-in-principle to hire more daycare workers,\u201d the summary reads.<\/p>\n

On climate change in particular, the consultants found \u201cthere was no doubting the emotional intensity of voter concern about this issue. Yet almost no one gave Trudeau credit for the hard-fought price on carbon; the existence of a soon-to-be-trip<\/a>led cheque rebate also went unmentioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

But voters were not clueless, by any measure. Some referenced a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which offered dire warnings over the need to act quickly to avert the most destructive effects of climate change, even in the short term. Many were enthusiastic about drastic action.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to see us lead rather than even just trying to keep\u2026the status quo,\u201d one Toronto voter said.<\/p>\n

One word that kept coming up: \u201cInvest.\u201d These Liberal voters were fairly blunt: Canada should be putting money into the companies, whether they be start-ups or existing oil-and-gas firms, that can innovate efficiencies. \u201cWe just wasted 600 million bucks on an election,\u201d one voter said. \u201cI\u2019m sure we can spend $600 million on investing in different types of companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report notes that a general<\/a> skepticism or indifference towards the Liberals\u2019 record may \u201cpresent an opportunity for the right actor to tap into this sentiment.\u201d Who that actor will be remains to be seen\u2014in the recently-concluded campaign, the Conservatives\u2019 climate plan used the right language but offered a farcical set of solutions; while the NDP and Greens offered soaring targets and no coherent plan on how to reach them. Climate expert Mark Jaccard assessed that, even if the targets were more modest, the Liberals\u2019 plan was the most credible<\/a> of the lot. Voters seemed to be looking for ambition and credibility, in equal measure.<\/p>\n

One of the most insightful takeaways from the consultants\u2019 study was around affordability\u2014particularly a hot, increasingly inaccesible, housing market and spiking gas prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe major party platforms nibbled around the edges of the basket, but with no leader successfully addressing this issue head-on, the electorate chose to reward none of them,\u201d they warned.<\/p>\n

Affordability and inequality have crashed together in a particularly poignant way during the pandemic. As one small-business-owner voter explained: \u201cWe\u2019re the hardest hit. And when you look at how ridiculous a lot of the restrictions were, like your basic mom and pop shops closed down and Walmart, or Costco or stayed open.\u201d<\/p>\n

There may have been an opening there for the other parties, but they clearly did not succeed in getting that point across. \u201cBanks \u2026 saw their shares increase, they saw their dividends increase, even though they took wage subsidies and business support subsidies,\u201d one Ontario voter said. \u201cSo I think that was a misstep by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

PAUL WELLS:\u00a0The broken triumph of Justin Trudeau<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If the Liberals can claim one success from the campaign, it would be childcare. The consultants called it a \u201cuniversal hit\u201d with voters in their focus groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuccess on this file looks similar to cannabis: at a hyper local, neighbourhood level, Canadians can see that was a promise made and promise kept,\u201d the consultants noted. \u201cIf, by the time this voter returns to the polls, the Liberals have not delivered on childcare, then they will face trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

One Alberta voter (who doesn\u2019t currently stand to benefit from the program) told the consultants that Trudeau\u2019s childcare pledge was \u201cby far and away was the big one for me, in terms of policy.\u201d An Ontario voter seemed incredulous at the Conservatives\u2019 alternative: A new refundable tax credit. \u201cDo they know the $10 a day daycare helps a ton?\u201d The voter wondered aloud.<\/p>\n

But there is a pitfall there for the Liberals. Under their agreements\u2014which they\u2019ve signed with all provinces and territories, save Alberta, Ontario, and New Brunswick\u2014fees will be slashed by next year, but the promised $10-a-day pledge won\u2019t come into force until 2026.<\/p>\n

Trudeau\u2019s third victory, even if it was at a high cost for no great reward, does show the strength of his connection with an entire chunk of voters\u2014even if their patience is wearing thin.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a single working mom, the Liberals have changed my life. I feel a real loyalty to them,\u201d one voter told the focus groups, hailing from a B.C. riding the Liberals narrowly kept. \u201cI feel like we\u2019ve been cared for, and I want Trudeau to keep on track with working families.\u201d<\/p>\n

I put some of these findings to Lenore Zann, a rare Liberal who lost her seat in September\u2014falling behind the Conservatives in the semi-rural Nova Scotia riding of Cumberland\u2014Colchester.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe COVID lockdown, it\u2019s made people angry,\u201d Zann told me. \u201cPeople are so quick to anger these days\u2026And that has also affected the way people think and whether they want to be bothered voting.\u201d<\/p>\n

To some degree, Zann\u2019s assessment is pretty bog standard for a political venture that didn\u2019t go according to plan\u2014voters just didn\u2019t get the message. She\u2019s been there before: Provincially, she was elected as a New Democrat when her party rose to its first-ever victory in 2009, only to be turfed four years later. (Zann was one of seven New Democrats to keep their seats, which she resigned in 2019 to run for Trudeau\u2019s Liberals.)<\/p>\n

Zann likens governing as a progressive to captaining \u201ca great big huge ocean liner that\u2019s speeding along\u2014and you\u2019re trying to change it, you know, without tipping the whole thing over.\u201d From childcare to their climate plan, she was surprised to see voters neither enthused about the Liberal record, nor excited about the roadmap for a planned-for majority government.<\/p>\n

In our conversation, though, Zann started to sound like some of the Liberals in those focus groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving been on the inside, believe me [COVID-19] suddenly had to take over everything. We had to put aside personal projects that we wanted to see happ<\/a>en and just make sure that people\u2019s lives were saved,\u201d she said. In recent months, as vaccines have been deployed across the country and a light at the end of the tunnel emerged, she says the mentality has changed: \u201cSuddenly, it\u2019s like, oh my god, we have to now put all these resources to all these other things.\u201d At the same time, she notes, the inequality between those who suffered the most during the pandemic and those who have amassed a dizzying new amount of wealth, is increasingly stark.<\/p>\n

Where the Liberals appear to have failed is convincing Canadians that they have reallocated those resources to the right things, in proper measure.<\/p>\n

Paul Wells recently made the case that this election was folly precisely because it interrupted the kind of work that Trudeau continually insists is urgent, necessary, and important. I think these focus group Liberals would agree: They want the government they\u2019ve got, not the one Trudeau wants, to get cracking on it.<\/p>\n

Zann leaves behind unfinished work that her government ought to pick back up. She introduced private members\u2019 legislation to require Ottawa develop an environmental racism strategy\u2014taking into account the disproportionate impact<\/a> climate change could have on racialized and Indigenous communities. That bill, like many others, died when an election was called.<\/p>\n

All told, the focus groups offer a rare and intimate look at why people voted the way they did. They show that, even if voters aren\u2019t necessarily consuming and digesting the messages packaged for them by the campaigns, they are\u2014generally\u2014taking the time to read the platforms, get their head around the issues, and kick the tires on each party. Policy does, in fact, matter. But if Trudeau can\u2019t get a plan together to match action with his soaring rhetoric, and someone else can, these voters are unlikely to remain loyal for long.
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