Canada hardly needs to keep the leaders of three weakened and badly led political parties. The melee in the middle-of-the-road in this recent election was nothing but a circus. Some people were telling lies. They were trying to win on platforms that did not exist. It was an election in which Justin Trudeau failed to regain his majority. Erin O’Toole failed the conservatives that he won with the right wing because he moved to the centre. And Jagmeet Singh was just fronting a party with nowhere to go.
The truth is that the leaders of the three major political parties failed us. They won us nothing but another term of endless bickering in Ottawa. Without new leadership, the parties have nowhere to go.
It was in the leadership debates that Trudeau failed us. He failed us as a liberal. He failed to contain and defeat the leader of the Bloc Québécois. He failed to denounce the intolerance of the Quebec assembly. He failed to remove the blot of the Trans Mountain pipeline, being converted to high-pressure pumping of the toxic product of the Alberta tar sands. Leadership needs more than some greasepaint and selfies.
But if Trudeau was merely the ring master in that parliamentary circus, Erin O’Toole was the principal clown for the conservatives. He was an auguste clown, the foil, the one who takes a pie in the face from the white face clown.
Erin O’Toole went into the campaign with his private stage all set in an Ottawa hotel and his policy book printed. And then said he was surprised by the election call. He started with hypocrisy and then built on it. His policies could be converted from right wing to middle of the road at his say-so.
Apart from Premier Legault, O’Toole had little support in Quebec. He was lost in the reality of Quebec politics.
But the lost soul in this was Jagmeet Singh. He had no party really behind him and no credible policy to defend. He was the lion tamer in the circus. Never forget that the lion tamer might have a whip, a chair and a pistol, loaded with blanks, but he is also locked in a cage. Singh was entertaining the children on Tik Tok while others were reaching for the political brass ring.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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