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TheEconomistOctober 26th 2019 29

1

O

n the morningafter election day, Jus-

tin Trudeau appeared at a metro station

in his Montreal constituency of Papineau

to offer hugs, kisses and selfies to commut-

ers. Perhaps he was in need of an ego boost.

Although he survived as prime minister,

his Liberal Party lost its parliamentary ma-

jority and received fewer votes than the op-

position Conservatives (see chart). The

election exposed deep regional divisions

and will compel him to seek support for his

programme from rival parties. “Canadians

rejected division and negativity,” he de-

clared after his victory. In fact, those prin-

ciples were the basis on which many voted.

The negativity came largely from Mr

Trudeau’s missteps in office. He pressed

his attorney-general to intervene in the

prosecution for bribery of snc-Lavalin, an

engineering firm in Quebec. Parliament’s

ethics minister rebuked him for that. Mr

Trudeau was also embarrassed by the pub-

lication during the campaign of photos of

him wearing brown- and blackface as a

young man. Andrew Scheer, the Conserva-

tive leader, sought to capitalise on those er-

rors with the taunt that Mr Trudeau is “not

as advertised”. It nearly worked.

Mr Trudeau would be right to claim that

Canadian voters rejected one sort of divi-

sion. The election did not turn on issues of

immigration and identity, as some analysts

had feared it might. The Conservatives did

not oppose Canada’s high levels of immi-

gration. The only party that does, the popu-

list People’s Party, won no seats. Its leader

and only mp, Maxime Bernier, lost his. Al-

though the Conservatives outpolled the

Liberals, most votes went to parties that

prefer the redistributionist policies fa-

voured by Mr Trudeau to the small-state

philosophy of Mr Scheer.

The splits laid bare by the election are

mainly regional. The Liberals lost their five

seats in the western oil- and gas-producing

provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The Conservatives won all but one of the

provinces’ 48 seats. In Quebec, Canada’s

French-speaking province, the big winner

was the Bloc Québécois, a separatist party.

Mr Trudeau’s main problem will not be

finding support for his policies in Parlia-

ment. Canada is accustomed to minority

government. The risk is that these policies

will widen the regional chasms that the

election exposed.

The Liberals’ main partner is likely to be

the left-wing New Democratic Party (ndp),

led by Jagmeet Singh. It will be no obstacle

to enacting Mr Trudeau’s main legislative

priorities. These include a fresh tax cut for

the middle class, a ban on assault weapons

and more ambitious targets for reducing

emissions of greenhouse gases. The two

Canada’s election

The chastening of Justin Trudeau

OTTAWA

The Liberal Party won, but it is weakened in Parliament and in charge of a

divided country

Just in

Canada, parliamentaryelectionresults,seats

Total=338 seats

Source: Elections Canada *Basedon99.67%ofpollsreported,October24th2019,9amGMT †Independent

2015

2019*

Bloc Green

Québécois

New Democrats

Conservative

170 seats needed

Liberal for majority

157

184 99 1044 1

121 32 24 1 †

3

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