Juno News - September 22, 2021


Is Canada moving towards the left？


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

182.83751

Word Count

674

Sentence Count

36


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 What can we say about the political pulse of the nation here in Canada after this recent
00:00:10.080 election? What can we glean from the election results in a way that helps us make a better
00:00:15.720 statement about where Canada is now sitting on the political map? You know how you describe
00:00:20.040 some countries as more leftward or more rightward, more socialist country and so forth. How are we
00:00:25.080 describing Canada now? And I think based on the results of the election and the issues that were
00:00:31.200 discussed, certainly a country that feels like it's trending leftward, although there's a big
00:00:37.360 caveat. We'll discuss that in a moment. First of all, Justin Trudeau being re-elected despite all
00:00:42.520 the scandals and so forth, a lot of frustration with him, so people still sticking with him.
00:00:47.660 Then you've got the issues that were front and center. Whatever people think about vaccines,
00:00:52.080 and clearly most people are in support of them because the majority of people are vaccinated,
00:00:56.300 vaccine passports, that's a whole different conversation. And yet Canada jumping into that
00:01:02.100 conversation two feet first and really Justin Trudeau relishing it, wanting to turn it into a
00:01:07.420 culture war, into an us versus them, a divisive issue. A lot of people clearly going along with
00:01:12.700 that, clearly okay with that. Climate change. Justin Trudeau loves to go on and on about this
00:01:17.920 as a primary issue. Perhaps the primary issue. I've said before that Justin Trudeau isn't so much,
00:01:24.280 you know, the prime minister who wants to focus on climate issues, but he's a climate activist who
00:01:29.120 just happens to also be prime minister at the same time. That's how focused he is on the climate issues
00:01:35.360 there. And yet people not batting an eyelash about this. An issue that not too long ago would be seen
00:01:40.520 as, okay, fine, yeah, we're concerned about the environment, climate, but if you just go on about it as
00:01:45.320 your top issue, well, that's a fringe party thing. That's the green party thing, or maybe the NDP
00:01:49.020 thing. Justin Trudeau very much mainstreaming it as pretty much his primary issue. Other ways that
00:01:55.700 there's a bit of a leftward tilt. Not much talk about fiscal responsibility. I mean, that's just
00:02:00.200 totally thrown out the window in terms of should there be deficit spending, how big the deficit
00:02:04.660 should be. Now, obviously we're facing extraordinary times and there's a big deficit because of the
00:02:10.400 economy being shut down last year because of the initial lockdowns and the CERB payments and so
00:02:14.920 forth. But no real, no real discussion, not even paying lip service to the idea of we got to get
00:02:19.560 this under control. This is a massive debt burden. I mean, a lot of real socialist talk about how we're
00:02:24.580 going to deal with the nation's finances right now, another leftward direction we're heading in.
00:02:29.320 But maybe, maybe that's not correct because at the same time, Justin Trudeau secured a government,
00:02:35.520 minority government situation with the lowest percentage of vote historically in the nation
00:02:42.480 for any election. And this is the second election in a row where the Conservatives have actually won
00:02:48.740 the popular vote. Erin O'Toole getting more votes than Justin Trudeau did. But of course, by the
00:02:54.980 writing breakdown, the Conservatives didn't get more seats. So what's going on here? It is a country
00:03:01.360 that in many sense, Canada moving more leftward, but at the same time, more people picking Conservative
00:03:09.180 on the ballot. It's an interesting disconnect. Does it mean we are divided as a nation? I always think
00:03:16.200 that talk about division. I think it's oversold, although Justin Trudeau certainly was the divider
00:03:21.000 in chief. We saw that the last few months. I don't want to think of my country as a divided one, but
00:03:26.040 something's really happening here where it's getting harder to gauge the pulse of the nation
00:03:31.660 in a political sense. And maybe these things are going to transition. They're going to change
00:03:38.060 in interesting ways in the months ahead in this country.