Tag: election 2019

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News

Poli Savvy: Challenges of a Minority Government

It is no question that the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau has achieved a considerable victory of sorts this month, namely the “privilege” of leading the entire country of Canada. However, it is still a political step down from the party’s status prior to the elections; that of a majority government. So, what challenges will the Liberals have to face?

First, cabinet management. It is customary for all Canadian federal cabinet ministers to be representative of each province. Cabinet ministers are MPs chosen from amongst the winning party based on their province. However, given that the Liberals have lost all their representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the party effectively has no representation in the two prairie provinces. MPs from the other parties will have to be chosen for proportional provincial representation within the cabinet.

The second problem involves passing bills, specifically those related to the Liberal platform. Majority governments are formed when a given party attains 170 plus seats in the House of Commons and doesn’t face the obstacle of votes when passing a bill. Not anymore for the Liberals. They will now have to collaborate with other parties to get enough votes. Although, it is important to point out that Trudeau has ruled out any official coalition, according to the BBC.

The third and final problem, compromise. Looking at the platforms of some of the parties, it’s easy to see where some overlap; the Liberals, Greens, and New Democrats sporting clear similarities in both social and environmental policy fields. Regardless, the true success of a minority government lies in compromise, ensuring that their political partners have enough to gain to vote favourably. But where will it happen? On the matter of Quebec sovereignty with the Bloc? Doubtful, according to an article in Global News. By cancelling the Trans Mountain pipeline as encouraged by the NDP and the Greens? Not likely, reported CJME.

Anything with the Conservatives? When pigs fly.

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

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News

Understanding the federal election: what happened?

On Oct. 24, Concordia organized a conference where six political analysts discussed the outcome of the 2019 election and how we got here. 

Three days after election night, six panelists took the D.B. Clarke theatre stage one after another to analyze and debate key aspects of the campaign. The panelists were Harold Clarke, Rachel Curran, Lawrence LeDuc, Kevin Page, Carole McNeil and Jean-Pierre Kingsley.

While most polls put Andrew Scheer ahead of Justin Trudeau, it might have come as a surprise that the Conservatives did not do as well as anticipated. To truly understand the outcome of the election, Clarke argued that people need to look at the three main drivers of electoral choice.

Firstly, social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion usually get a lot of media attention. But, it is actually how the political party performs, in terms of what Clarke referred to as valence issues, that will drive the voter’s final decision.

“These are issues that everybody agrees on the goal,” said Clarke, a professor at the University of Texas in Dallas and veteran of Canadian elections studies. “Issues such as the economy, or healthcare, education, security, and now climate change as well. It’s hard to find people who want bad healthcare and so on.”

Accordingly, the fact that the vast majority of people want a healthy economy strongly played in favour of Trudeau, explained Clarke. Indeed, the latest Statistics Canada survey, released on Oct.11, showed that today’s economy held a steady 5.5 per cent unemployment rate, the lowest in 40 years.

“It’s a big plus. Prosperity is a big plus,” Clarke said.

The second driver in the electoral choice, which explains surprises such as the NDP losing seats, is partisanship. Partisanship in Canada tends to be quite fluid and people are more than willing to leave their favoured party. According to Clarke, this creates situations where there are always possibilities for last-minute, large scale change.

Last, the third electoral driver proposed by Clarke is the leader image, which he believes played a major part in this election.

“Scheer simply didn’t make the impression he needed to make to win,” Clarke said.

Theme of the election 

While affordability ended up being the main theme of this year’s election, issues put forward by the parties were somehow irrelevant, argued Curran, Former Director of Policy to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“The measures [the political parties] were offering were very cynical and very shallow vote line efforts, at best,” Curran said. “What the parties ignored was the much bigger issues that we need to grapple and resolve as a country.”

As a matter of fact, this can explain the low voter turnout of 65.95 per cent. None of the leaders actually addressed the true underlying causes of issues such as why some Indigenous communities still have no access to clean water or why cellphone charges are extortionate, Curran pointed out.

Curran also believes that the inability and, perhaps even more, unwillingness of the parties to take a clear stance on issues such as the climate crisis, led to a problematic outcome; deep, regional division.

Canada has actually been sending various, very divided messages which resulted in broken national cohesion on election night.

“How do we reconcile resource development with environmental protection if we are in the business of fossil fuel, how do we address climate change in a credible way?” asked Curran. “And if we are not in the business, how do we fill the revenue hole and replace the hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs linked in the energy sector, particularly in Western Canada?”

Accordingly, we saw how cacophonic broadcasted debates were. It was arguably more of a who-can-talk-the-loudest contest than discussions on meaningful issues. It led to questions raised by a lot of media outlets as to whether the broadcasted debates are to be changed and how much impact they really have.

Jagmeet Singh was almost unanimously declared the winner after the CBC debate on Oct. 7. Yet, the NDP only won 24 seats last Monday night.

“I think we should, when evaluating the debates in the electoral campaign, avoid separating them from all the other things that we talked about in the context of the election,” said Leduc, professor at the University of Toronto. “Because even if Singh benefited from the debates, he only benefited from them being one of the several elements in the campaign.”

Leduc and Clarke both argued that the current form of debates won’t be seen again. A single debate between the two leaders of the main parties remains the innovation argued as the best.

Going Forward

Historically, minority governments never lasted more than two years. And before the evening was over, the panelists all took turns, gambling the durability of this one.

Interestingly, Clarke pointed out that Scheer might not be around that long, and the process of replacing him is going to take a while. Curran gambled that it will last at least two years.

Therefore, Trudeau is actually in a good position to hold power for a little while. Yet, losing 27 seats showed that his government needs to do better with Canadian issues.

“Climate change, healthcare and going forward with affordability, these are going to be the defining issues going ahead,” concluded CBC journalist McNeil.

 

Feature photo by Cecilia Piga

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Opinions

Editorial: Why we excluded the People’s Party of Canada from our election coverage

As we were deciding how to layout the election coverage in the News section of our paper, we were faced with a decision: do we or do we not include Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada alongside the other contenders?

We debated for a while, but settled on a unanimous opinion: we, as NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said during the English debate on Oct. 7, do not believe Bernier deserves a place on the stage.

In a tweet back in September, Bernier called 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg “clearly mentally unstable.” In fact, he went on to say Thunberg is “Not only autistic, but obsessive-compulsive, eating disorder, depression and lethargy, and she lives in a constant state of fear.”

Objectively, these are shitty things to say. These aren’t words anyone would expect from a potential leader of the country. What’s more, is he was saying these things in the context of climate change denial. He said efforts to address the climate crisis, like those undertaken by Thunberg, are “a movement that is a threat to our prosperity and civilisation. If [Thunberg] wants to play that role, she should be denounced and attacked.”

Denounced. And. Attacked.

Sorry, w h a t ?

It appears as though Bernier is a) not super into science and b) super into publicly insulting (and inciting violence towards?) children.

Furthermore, the People’s Party platform states on its website that “In a free society, immigrants have the right to cherish and maintain their cultural heritage, however, that doesn’t mean we have any obligation to help them preserve it.” It also says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has created “cult of diversity.”

Outside of the fact that a “cult of diversity” is, very obviously, an oxymoron, we at The Concordian firmly believe multiculturalism is something that should be encouraged and celebrated, not reduced to anti-Canadianism.

Everyone in this country, save for Indigenous people, is an immigrant. Let’s not pretend otherwise. The People’s Party wants to cut the annual amount of immigrants and refugees accepted into Canada in half, from 350,000 to between 100,000 and 150,000. They also want to interview every candidate for immigration to “assess the extent to which they align with Canadian values and societal norms,” according to the party’s website.

We at The Concordian believe that denying people the right to seek refuge or to create a better life for themselves is what does not align with Canadian values.

Lastly, the People’s Party website constantly uses the term “aboriginal,” which many Indigenous people have labelled problematic as the “ab” may carry the connotation of meaning “other” or “non” (think “abnormal”). When referring to Indigenous people, it’s important to ask them on an individual basis how they identify.

Despite the fact that some may be okay with the term “aboriginal,” others aren’t; so why not use a term that has not been flagged as problematic or insensitive? No other political party used “aboriginal” in their platform. It doesn’t take much to pay attention to these details, and the People’s Party’s inability to do so is concerning.

Obviously, as a newspaper, we know freedom of speech is important. But that doesn’t give a person the right to spew whatever hateful thoughts travel through their brain; especially not someone who is leading the country. The line is drawn when your opinions are inherently hateful or when they disrespect and invalidate other people’s existences.

So, “People’s Party,” but only if you don’t believe in the climate crisis, think bullying children is okay, and see diversity as a problem. Not our party. Not in our newspaper.

The Concordian would also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone to participate in democracy and cast their vote on Oct. 21. This year, millennials make up the largest portion of the voting population.

 

Feature photo by Alex Hutchins

Poli Savvy: Start the clocks, the countdown starts.

With one week left to go, federal leaders continue to compete for the public’s attention in the press and through their policies.

Justin Trudeau is trying hard to put the blackface controversy behind him. Obviously deflecting with new and more “a-pleasing” promises than ever, the Liberal leader is neck and neck with Andrew Scheer. However, there is something to be said about his efforts to meet the more progressive party platforms, in an attempt to keep the left-wing vote away from the NDP and the Green Party.

What do I mean when I say party platform? Well, I’m talking about the promises our leaders are making to us. Trudeau – trying to escape his long rap-sheet – is promising net-zero emissions by 2050, and a tax cut that will allow everyone’s first $15,000 in income to be tax-free. Jagmeet Singh, the second leading progressive leader is also promising major climate and economic action. Don’t get me wrong, these leaders are not interchangeable. In matters dealing with the Indigenous communities, Singh has been more favorable due to his strong stance on the clean-water issue in northern Indigenous territories, while Trudeau has been accused of doing little for Indigenous communities.

During the french speaking debate hosted by TVA, we saw four of the six candidates debate questions of foreign policy, Bill 21, and climate action. Conservative leader Scheer scrambled to connect with the Quebec audience, and through his support for the TransMountain pipeline, it’s likely he didn’t win many votes outside of Alberta that night.

As a follow up, the English speaking debate this past Monday included all six federal leader candidates. I’m not sure whether this debate was meant to replicate the dynamics of a high school classroom, but that’s besides the point. Yves-François Blanchet once again proved that he is fighting for the rights of Quebec – more specifically, their right to equalization payments.

Singh made quite an impression as the media declared him the winner of Monday night’s debate. His ability to connect with people is uncanny, and translates to a loss of votes for the Green Party; too bad it won’t be enough to become the default progressive leaders.

So in this coming week, my fellow Concordians – stay alert, listen, and most importantly: vote.

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

Categories
News

The influence of memes and bots in the electoral campaign

“Right now, we are not seeing a lot of positive Trudeau memes,” said Associate Professor Fenwick McKelvey. “So, will it influence the vote? That is something we walk in with an open mind, saying this could be totally meaningless. But then at the same time, it is an important part of how people understand and engage in politics.”

The lack of investigation of the role of memes in Canadian politics led McKelvey, from the Department of Communication Studies, to look at the content being shared on social media. While memes are usually regarded as harmless, humoristic tools, McKelvey argues that they are actually an important part of shaping public opinion and representing all the different political party leaders.

“I think the humour part is important because people look at these images and it helps them laugh or make a joke,” said McKelvey, “and then they identify closer with that party or with the people who created the joke.”

According to the research, which McKelvey is doing with the help of undergrad students, there is currently a tendency towards counter-Trudeau memes. And it is not only a right-wing phenomenon, but memes are also used by all parties to campaign with generic, negative messages.

The research identified 30 Facebook groups posting memes about the election, each focusing on different issues. It can be observed that from the left-wing, climate change is a recurring theme while the right promotes corruption-related memes. Yet, Trudeau’s various scandals, such as SNC-Lavalin and his Brownface incident, prevail above all.

On Sept. 27, in a meme-tweet style, Trudeau announced his latest environmental promise to plant 2 billion trees if he was to be re-elected. “We’ll plant 2 billion trees over the next ten years. That’s it. That’s the tweet.”

This tweet, which McKelvey argues was orchestrated by his campaign staff, was an attempt to adopt the meme trend and ended up backfiring on him. It was received more as a joke than anything, said McKelvey.

“It’s interesting to see the varying reactions, I mean at least from the students,” said McKelvey. “No one took it seriously. It came across as a joke.”

The research comes after McKelvey co-wrote a paper with Elizabeth Dubois on the role of bots in politics. Simply put, bots are the loose word to describe any automated accounts on social media that behave or pretend to be a human.

In politics, the worst scenario could be where bots push for a story to become more popular than it should be, whether false or not, impacting public perception directly. It can become terrifying knowing that, according to a study by the University of Southern California and Indiana University, nearly 50 million Twitter accounts are run by bot software.

Although, under the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, political parties worldwide have now agreed to obey a code of conduct that states full disclosure on their use of bots.

Yet, while Jagmeet Singh and Andrew Scheer took the pledge, neither Justin Trudeau, Elizabeth May nor Maxime Bernier’s names can be found in the online agreement.

What about their roles in spreading false information?

Since the 2016 United States election, the existence of online-interferences from automated agents is not a secret anymore.

In fact, parts of McKelvey’s research on the role of bots was to recognize the capacity of bots to manipulate the content on social media, but also acknowledging that bots can serve important public functions, along with the public interest.

“We have the CBC using bots to help people understand how disinformation spreads online,” said McKelvey. “We also have a bot that is called the Parity Bot. So, whenever someone tweets something negative or abusive to a woman in politics, it will automatically tweet something positive. It’s a way to counter interact negativity online.”

And when it comes to memes, McKelvey argues that analyzing false information being spread through them doesn’t look at how people share information they know to be false but believe anyway. Instead, he believes in trying to think about this sharing process more as social identification; how people come to understand themselves and politics.

 

Graphic by Victoria Blair

Categories
News

Political Analysis: Will Trudeau’s black and brown face scandal swing youth vote?

“The picture does not change what he’s done during his tenure as Prime Minister. It will not really change my vote,” said Michel Maginzi, a 22-year-old student from Sherbrooke University.

“The first time I saw it, I was shook,” he said, admittedly. “Because that’s not something you expect to see from the Prime Minister, who’s the head of the government, head of the country. It’s very offensive. It’s racist, and I understand how people get offended. But at the same time, I’m personally not offended by it.”

“They found it and decided to use it as a weapon,” Maginzi continued. “It’s something that he’s done in the past. People are just trying to destroy his image.”

In an interview with the CBC, CEO of Abacus Data, David Coletto said that Canadians between the ages of 18 to 35 could make up 37 per cent of the electorate this federal election.

But, most Canadian youths have a tendency not to vote. Though the youth vote in the last federal election went up by nearly 40 per cent since 2011, they were still the age group with the least amount of votes according to Elections Canada.

Daniel Weinstock, director of the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, said no matter the public youth opinion of Trudeau, it will probably not make much of a difference come election time.

“Younger demographics tend to have markedly lesser participation rates in elections,” said Weinstock. “That might have a dampening effect on whatever contribution the youth vote might make, to swing the election.”

“Right now it doesn’t seem like the effect is that huge,” he continued. Weinstock said the last poll he saw from a reputable source showed a small movement away from the Liberals, but within the margin of error, between 1 to 2 per cent.

“The news cycle doesn’t seem to be dominated by it anymore,” said Weinstock. “We’re still almost four weeks until the election I think that if it stays where it is now, I don’t see it as a major factor, more of an embarrassment than anything else.”

Weinstock does admit Trudeau’s numbers as a leader have taken a hit but said it could be due to any other of his scandals.

“SNC-Lavalin, the infamous India trip,” said Weinstock. “His personal leadership numbers have really gone down, but I think a lot of voters here are mature enough to distinguish between the leader and the party. They might say well, he may not have the best judgment, but as I compare platforms, I think the Liberal support, looking at the party as a whole, is not taking a hit.”

Jean-François D’Aoust, an assistant professor at McGill and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy Citizenship reflects this sentiment. D’Aoust said the controversy may have affected Canadian votes, but in a minor way, and explained that this event was not the only affair to have tarnished his image.

“There were already other scandals, such as SNC-Lavalin, which damaged his integrity image,” said D’Aoust. “Other scandals damaged his First Nations-friendly image.”

Could vote splitting between NDP and Liberals lead to a Conservative win?

Weinstock said Canadian voters know how the political system works and that they know what happens when there is vote splitting, so he doubts it could happen. In 2011, ridings, where voters were split between the NDP and Liberals, saw how the Conservative won because of it.

”I think a lot of people might say, you know what, I’d be inclined to vote for the NDP if they were a bit higher in the polls,” said Weinstock. “But four weeks is a long time. A bandwagon effect could happen, but right now I’m not seeing it in the numbers.”

 

Collage by Alex Hutchins

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