The Canadian Election in Retrospect

In the months after the November election in Canada that brought Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party control of the country, Canada briefly became popular internationally. In a poll Justin was thought the most attractive world leader, and international media applauded the country for electing such a non-controversial looking fellow.

But I voted in that election, and it certainly was not without controversy.

The majority government to Trudeau surprised everyone, but then most people seem to be pretty okay with it now. Harper made a terrible campaigning decision to focuses on leadership when he should have focused on his economic record. He thought that by pointing out that Trudeau had little leadership experience people would realize that the sitting PM of nine years was the better choice. But by focusing on leadership instead of policy, he was directing attention not just to Justin, but to himself. And after nine years, most of the country didn't like him anymore.

The other option was Tom Mulcair of the NDP, who had little personality other than anger over how people disagreed with him. Trudeau was able to capitalize on this by essentially pointing out he was young, handsome, and a nice guy that wanted to do things differently. His campaign was pretty refreshing, as it was far more positive ("sunny ways") and he seemed more focused on getting everyone's vote than just his base.

Trudeau also got elected promising a platform that is pretty radical; he said he will run up deficits for the next four years in order to overhaul Canada's infrastructure to boost economic growth. The budget is already projected to run up higher deficits than the Liberals originally projected, but people probably won't get too upset even if they got more than they asked for.

Many people in the news are drawing comparisons of Trudeau to Obama, (Obama himself remarked on it) but Trudeau does have a huge majority so will get most of what he wants without much resistance, unlike in America where Obama lost the House of Representatives two years in office.

Canada's economic situation is a bit of a mixed-bag. Most GDP growth has been due to Alberta's oil sector, which has now tanked due to the oil price. The remaining sectors seem to be doing alright (depending on the sector), and the country seems to be in only a technical recession. Most people outside of Alberta aren't feeling too much of a hit (though that province has been hit hard). The NDP provincial government has made the situation even worse as they are trying to implement environment regulation and increase corporate tax.

Harper has done some great things in the past, as he's greatly lowered taxes, making corporate taxes lower than America's while income tax is lower than before. This is effective as it is really businesses that drives economic growth not an individual's spending. He also pushed the TPP and I'm a huge supporter of free trade (raising two billion people out of poverty). But Harper's approach to the current economic problem is to me deeply flawed. He wanted to focus on balancing the budget, which I think was important before the downturn but irrelevant right now (cutting government spending, or austerity, is not going to improve the economy if there is a recession).

The NDP promised they would balance the budget but made even more promises than the Liberals (such as free childcare) so few people took them seriously. Others decided Trudeau was "the man to beat Harper." An NDP government would be even more liberal than the liberals, as they would have broken the TPP and instituted government day-care and a whole bunch of other stuff that would be difficult to implement in this economic climate.

The Liberals main platform focused on a large infrastructure spending plan, which essentially amounts to "we don't care about balancing the budget for four years." It's going to throw a lot of money at the provincial governments in the hopes it will spur spending, efficiency and overall economic growth. It's Keynesian economics, that when times are tough the government throws money, when they are good they should scale it back. Federal Banks behave the same way with interests rates. Whether it will work I don't know, and there is going to be a lot of debt at the end of the tunnel, but we'll probably manage (we still have less debt per person and by GDP than a lot of developed countries).

The Liberals are going to cut tax rates slightly for 40-80k and raise them by the same percentage for 200k+ (29% to 32% I think). There aren't any other federal tax brackets. Corporate taxes won't change but they are going to close loopholes for both businesses and individuals. The Liberals are not adding any new program like day-care, and aren't even making federal environmental law, but are instead planning on setting a new emissions target and then working with each provincial government individually to work out how the target will be met. The Liberals are honestly quite moderate in those respects, as they aren't obviously socialist or obviously conservative.

The Liberals obviously won the election. The Conservatives look to be in full repair mode, ditching Harper as leader, and tacked left on some issues to appear more moderate. For instance, the Conservative's new interim leader says they have accepted gay marriage and are only concerned about Marijuana in terms of access to children. They appear to be trying to find a balance between criticizing the new PM without alienating voters that clearly like him (he has very high approval ratings).

The NDP are in worse straights. The Liberals outmaneuvered them by promising deficits while the NDP sounded unrealistic by promising a balanced budget and more benefits. The lost they most votes, and have returned to their third-party prospects. Mulcair has been ousted as leader which will trigger a leadership race, but both the Conservatives and NDP do not have clear frontrunners.

If the Liberals avoid controversy, they will have an effective four years of leadership, and may be able to maintain more.