Juno News - August 11, 2020


Will there be a fall election？


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

220.4379

Word Count

1,725

Sentence Count

88

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So one of the big questions on everybody's mind is will there or will there not be a
00:00:11.120 fall election?
00:00:12.120 Now, I'm going to go through a couple of various factors that might cause an election to happen
00:00:16.640 and see if we can't figure out from these facts if there will or won't be, and I'll
00:00:20.520 tell you my opinion at the very end.
00:00:22.420 So first things first, let's look at Parliament.
00:00:25.200 Now this is a snapshot, this is from the House of Commons website, this is a snapshot of
00:00:29.040 the House of Commons, and the House contains 338 seats, there's 338 different ridings
00:00:35.040 or districts in Canada.
00:00:36.940 Now you can see here the red, this is the Liberal Party, controls slightly less than half of
00:00:42.160 the seats, you can just see by visual, you don't even need to count, but there is a nice number
00:00:45.220 at the bottom.
00:00:46.220 So they control slightly less than half.
00:00:48.660 Now this in our Westminster-style parliamentary system, which we inherited from the British,
00:00:54.120 this is a minority government.
00:00:56.540 So again, they control less than half of the seats.
00:00:58.740 So when they put a bill up, it doesn't necessarily guarantee that that bill is going to pass.
00:01:02.740 Unlike a majority situation where they'd control more than half, and then interestingly enough
00:01:06.340 you'd get some red up here or red up here, and you would have more than 50% of the seats,
00:01:11.520 so it doesn't matter if everyone else voted against you because your party is going to
00:01:14.920 vote with your bill, then it'll pass every time, guaranteed.
00:01:17.740 So we are in a minority situation, and a lot of people seem to think that if our good friend
00:01:24.240 Andrew Scheer here gets replaced by one of the four candidates, then that means that there
00:01:29.360 will automatically be an election or the Conservatives will automatically be able to trigger an election.
00:01:34.740 But that's not the case.
00:01:35.740 In this case, there are two things in the way.
00:01:37.740 They are the Bloc Ébécois and the NDP.
00:01:40.740 So why are they important?
00:01:43.340 Now again, because the Liberals do not control more than 50% of the House, you're going to need someone else to vote with you.
00:01:48.520 You can have the Green Party, which does have three seats, but still, that's not putting them over that 50% threshold.
00:01:53.520 So you're going to need either the Bloc or the NDP.
00:01:56.520 Now, the question on this one is, what is the NDP and what is the Bloc going to do?
00:02:02.520 So, first thing about the NDP.
00:02:05.520 This is a story, it's a bit older, but I couldn't find anything newer.
00:02:08.520 This is the NDP's financial position, and it basically said that they ended, they filed in 2018,
00:02:15.520 so this was a 2018 number, so it was two years ago, but no latest news yet.
00:02:19.520 And given, you know, back here, given the number of seats and the, you know, kind of fluctuating popularity of Jagmeet Singh,
00:02:25.520 I don't know if it's any different, and I haven't heard that it is, so we'll go with this for now.
00:02:29.520 But it says here, according to the story, Elections Canada posted the party's annual financial return online Thursday,
00:02:35.520 showing the NDP finished last year with assets worth $4.7 million and liabilities totaling $9.2 million,
00:02:41.520 leaving them in the negative with $4.5 million.
00:02:43.520 And it was the worst showing since 2017, where they ended at negative $3.1 million.
00:02:47.520 So what does this have to do with politics?
00:02:49.520 Trudeau is already doing badly in the polls. What does this have to do with politics?
00:02:52.520 Well, a party cannot run an election if they have no money.
00:02:57.520 It's really a simple matter of, can you afford to buy ads?
00:03:00.520 Can you afford to, you know, send people around the country?
00:03:03.520 The leader or high-profile people have to go around from tour to tour and, you know, visit different ridings,
00:03:09.520 and do different events and try and get the narrative of their party out there.
00:03:13.520 But if they've got no money, that's not something they can do.
00:03:16.520 Now, this generally isn't a problem for the Conservatives and less of a problem for the Liberals.
00:03:21.520 The Liberals may be feeling the crunch again because of some of the scandals,
00:03:24.520 but, you know, they're not in a position to decide because they're in a minority.
00:03:27.520 So, again, let's go back to our house.
00:03:29.520 If one of these parties wants to team up, that would be able to put,
00:03:33.520 it wants to take away support, or both here take away support from the Liberals, that would put them over.
00:03:39.520 But, again, if even one of them sticks with, so if the Bloc, just imagine the blue coming down here,
00:03:43.520 if one of the parties wants to stick with the Liberals, then you are stuck,
00:03:47.520 and we are going to have a Liberal minority government, basically, until the end, until their mandate runs out.
00:03:53.520 And so, for the Bloc, it's a bit different.
00:03:56.520 I mean, you have to think that they really only care about what's going on in Quebec.
00:04:00.520 And so they have that benefit where their messaging, their fundraising, everything that they're doing is very, very focused on one,
00:04:07.520 it's entirely focused, actually, on one province.
00:04:09.520 And so they don't really have to think about anything else.
00:04:11.520 Now, again, certain things, the way we conceive of them,
00:04:15.520 SNC Lavalin is a very big company in Quebec, employs many, many people.
00:04:18.520 Maybe that will have an effect in Quebec.
00:04:20.520 Maybe that speaks differently to Quebec voters.
00:04:22.520 The WE Charity, maybe that speaks different to Quebec voters, depending on what WE was doing in Quebec.
00:04:28.520 I don't know, I'm not in Quebec, I don't have kids that go in the Quebec school system,
00:04:31.520 but I do have kids that are in Ontario and are in the Ontario school system, so I know what happens here.
00:04:35.520 So, things are very, very different, according to the party.
00:04:39.520 Let's look at the Conservatives, though.
00:04:41.520 So, again, across from the Prime Minister, you have the Conservative leader, the leader of the opposition right now,
00:04:45.520 because the Conservatives are the second largest party, so they form the opposition.
00:04:49.520 And the opposition, just as a quick note, many people think they're just there to oppose the government,
00:04:54.520 but they're there to basically be a government-in-waiting.
00:04:57.520 You might have heard that term.
00:04:58.520 And so, they would have shadow critics, so people who are, for example, you know,
00:05:01.520 they may even sit opposite, and they'd have a shadow finance minister or a shadow finance critic.
00:05:06.520 So, people that are ready to assume that role if they were to suddenly become a government.
00:05:10.520 But let's look at the four people.
00:05:12.520 I'll give you kind of my four theories really quick before we wrap things up.
00:05:15.520 So, on Aaron O'Toole, since he's starting with the left here, on Aaron O'Toole, that one is tough to call.
00:05:20.520 Now, he does have a seat in Parliament, which is a big strength for him, because he's able to start hammering Trudeau on day one.
00:05:27.520 But he was also in the Harper government, so there may be some baggage that we're not aware of.
00:05:31.520 The Liberals might some, you know, pull out some stories out about him.
00:05:34.520 He's been a politician again for a bit, and so, you know, he's got a track record.
00:05:38.520 And so, that, you know, maybe a plus, maybe a minus.
00:05:40.520 Could be a double-edged sword.
00:05:42.520 Lesley Lewis is a really interesting case, because she is not a politician.
00:05:46.520 So, on one hand, if I were less than the people, I might say, let's push for an election as soon as possible.
00:05:50.520 That way, they can make the narrative about her, she's come a long way, she's achieved a lot professionally.
00:05:57.520 And so, that's a really good narrative, especially in contrast to Trudeau's, you know, his fake feminism and a lot of those things.
00:06:04.520 Peter McKay, again, well-known, a lot of good name recognition, but same thing.
00:06:08.520 You know, he's got some history, some political baggage that the Liberals might try and bring up.
00:06:13.520 He doesn't have a seat in the House of Commons.
00:06:15.520 That doesn't necessarily matter, because again, if we're going into an election right away, then it might not make any difference,
00:06:20.520 because he would either get a seat, and if, you know, if the leader loses a seat, that's pretty embarrassing.
00:06:24.520 And that could happen to anyone, any of these four, so that's just not just a Peter McKay thing.
00:06:28.520 Derek Sloan, again, he's probably the more unknown of the bunch in terms of the broad Canadian public.
00:06:35.520 He's taken a lot of tough stances, a lot of important stances in many, many ways, in many particular things.
00:06:41.520 But again, you know, he does have some history as a politician.
00:06:45.520 Will he be able to, will he be able to capitalize and really get things moving? It's unknown.
00:06:52.520 So, you know, these four, there's four different perspectives.
00:06:55.520 Personally, I don't actually think there's going to be a fall election for this year.
00:06:59.520 Fair fact, again, looking over here, that the NDP is not, I don't think they're going to be ready.
00:07:04.520 They're in, you know, they're behind, they're behind the block in number of seats.
00:07:08.520 So the block has 32, the NDP has 24 down here, you can see at the bottom.
00:07:11.520 I don't think they're ready to move for an election, because if you recall, prior to this, they were the opposition.
00:07:16.520 So they had, I think, around 100 seats, they were the opposition.
00:07:18.520 So I don't know if they're going to be ready.
00:07:20.520 And the NDP alone is enough to prop up the government, and that's it.
00:07:23.520 So, you know, even if that alone, again, the block is not really my wheelhouse.
00:07:27.520 But the NDP alone is why I don't think there will be a fall election.
00:07:31.520 But what do you think?
00:07:32.520 Let's, you know, post some thoughts in the comments.
00:07:33.520 What do you think?
00:07:34.520 And what do you think the different strategies will be for the four candidates even before that is over?
00:07:39.520 What would you do if you were their newly minted political advisor?
00:07:44.520 So for True North, I am Sam Ashkenazi.
00:07:46.520 I hope you enjoyed this video.
00:07:47.520 Thank you so much for watching and have yourselves a great day.