For New Democrats, many admitted that they had hoped to experience such an evening with a different leader, the man who had gotten them so far in the first place. It was Jack Layton's night, but the man himself was not there to celebrate it with them, leaving an unmistakable tinge of melancholy hanging over the gathering. Standing in front of the crowd of jubilant supporters and party staffers in his Outremont riding in Montreal, some with tears in their eyes as they witnessed the accomplishment of what many in the room had spent a lifetime chasing, Tom Mulcair thanked his campaign team, his staff, and of course Canadians. Borrowing the ambiguous and hokey phrase that had defined the election campaign, the newly minted 'Prime Minister-designate' proclaimed that change had come to Canada, and that change was here to stay (For such a political event, paradoxical statements are forgivable, even expected). Only hours earlier the major media networks had all projected that, for the first time in Canadian history, the New Democratic Party of Canada would form government, albeit a minority. So for once it actually seemed like the use of the word 'change' was appropriate. But the idea that Tom Mulcair would stand in front of this crowd, wearing a genuine smile on his face, with one-hundred-and-thirty-four MPs poised to join him in Ottawa, still seemed pretty unbelievable. In fact, only weeks earlier such a scene would have appeared pretty improbable.
Make no mistake, the campaign waged by the New Democrats was not a successful one, not in the truest sense of the word. Oxymoronic, sure, considering it was Tom Mulcair, not Stephen Harper nor Justin Trudeau, who stood in front of their supporters on Election Night smiling and waving, having smashed 148 years of Liberal and Conservative duality in Ottawa. The NDP was a party that found itself in a position, not unlike the Conservatives were following their birth ahead of the 2004 campaign, simultaneously trying to make themselves appealing to the wider, more moderate electorate, while at the same time keeping their more partisan, more ideological base. It was a new situation to find themselves in. A lot of voters who wanted change and wanted to see Stephen Harper finally get the boot parked their vote with the NDP, not because they were true believers but because that was the party that had the best shot to make that goal a reality. Tom Mulcair had been elected leader of the New Democrats in 2012, following the untimely passing of Jack Layton, precisely on the premise that he was the most electable candidate to centrist Canada. Here was a former Quebec Liberal who had served in the cabinet of former Quebec Premier Jean Charest, himself a former leader of the defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, who had cut his teeth in the Quebec National Assembly, a place just as if not more ruthless than the House of Commons, appearing ready to jettison just about everything that made New Democrats feel good about themselves for the last thirty-years or so. After all, to many within the new leader's inner circle, the only reason the NDP had made such a monumental breakthrough in Quebec, winning more seats than the Bloc Quebecois ever did, was because they had managed to convince a group of non-traditional NDP voters, namely Quebec nationalists, to switch over and give them a chance. Mulcair simply sought to continue those efforts in a more national strategy. The party had come first in one-hundred-and-three ridings and second in over another hundred or so others, and strategists had convinced themselves that the numbers for a broad governing coalition were there with the right message and the right leader. Compared to the alternatives seeking to lead the post-Layton NDP, like Brian Topp and Nathan Cullen, Tom Mulcair was the obvious next step. But of course, a political party that seeks to change upsets the status quo within itself, and the NDP was no different. Some, like former National Director Gerald Caplan, worried that a convert to the party like Mulcair risked the New Democrats becoming the very thing that they had defeated; Liberals.
But while the New Democrats sought to change themselves into this new and grand political party, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were content with continuing on as they were. It had led them to three straight election victories and had made Harper the second longest serving Conservative Prime Minister in Canadian history, behind only Sir John A. himself. Yet, according to the polls, the growing desire for change meant that the Tories were entering into their fourth election campaign as government as the undisputed underdogs.
Prime Ministers grow into the job. Very rarely does Canada find a politician who can immediately occupy that kind of power and influence on day one without making some kind of slip-up. Paul Martin, Brian Mulroney, and certainly Joe Clark all struggled in their early days. Stephen Harper was no different. When the former Reformer finally settled his family and belongings into 24 Sussex, he lacked the type of confidence that defined Pierre Trudeau or Jean Chretien's stints in the job, and relied on a fairly capable group of Ministers and insiders to make up for his shortcomings, perceived or otherwise. Jim Prentice served as his de facto deputy, and was the kind of smooth talking political operator that oil executives suspicious of Harper could reach out to. Same with MacKay and Flaherty. But inevitably time marches on, and Prime Ministers gain more and more confidence, until that confidence morphs into egotism and the belief that they are capable of accomplishing all things at all times. Their focus narrows and the number of figures they rely on for counsel shrinks. Again, Stephen Harper was no different. So, after finally capturing that strong, stable, national Conservative majority government that he kept asking for in the 2011 campaign, Harper started to relax, to let his newfound confidence shine through, and the wheels started to come off the Tory bus. For the most part, the Conservatives had weathered some fairly damning scandals in their march to their majority. The Bernier scandal, the G8 "Fake Lake" spending in 2010, the Afghan Detainee question, various prorogations of parliament, Peter Mackay's helicopter misadventures, and getting found in contempt of parliament itself failed to capture the public's attention and generate any meaningful outcry in the opposition's favour. Just ask Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Ironically it was the Senate, whose reform had been one of the centerpieces of the Tories' previous platforms, which had left the deepest dents in the government's poll numbers. Unsuccessful attempts to radically reform the chamber had yielded to the appointment of dozens of Tory loyalists, cronyism which would have enraged Reformer Steve Harper. Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin all generated unflattering headlines for the boss, including forced suspension, improper expense claims, and criminal charges. Harper, usually a calm, cool, unflappable figure during Question Period, finally appeared uncomfortable under the flurry of pointed questions posed by Mulcair and the rest of the opposition. Making matters worse, Harper's loyal chief of staff, Nigel Wright, cut a $90,000 cheque for Duffy's questionable expenses, supposedly without the Prime Minister's knowledge or approval. Yikes.
Then there were the election expenses and robocall accusations. Back in 2006 the Conservatives pleaded guilty for exceeding the national election advertising spending limits. Then shortly after the 2011 election it emerged that robocalls had misdirected some voters away from the polls, culminating in the conviction of a former Tory staffer. Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and thrice is a pattern. The resignations of Conservative MPs Dean Del Mastro and Peter Penashue over illegal election spending also didn't help ease the impression that the once transparent and anti-corruption Conservatives had become far too comfortable in power.
Joining the Tories as both joint-underdogs and (If the polls were to be believed) almost frontrunners were the federal Liberals, Canada's once unstoppable political juggernaut that, as of the last federal campaign, had been relegated to an embarrassing third place in the House of Commons for the first time in the party's history. After more than a decade in power under Jean Chrétien, infighting over succession and a litany of scandals had eroded the public's confidence in "Canada's Natural Governing Party", which had only grown worse under the successive leadership stints of Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Rather than help the party move on from their tumultuous past, both Dion and Ignatieff allowed the Conservatives under Harper to further paint the party as out-of-touch from ordinary voters. With a caucus of only thirty-four MPs, barely enough to fill a storage closet, Liberals looked to someone who could help bring the party back to relevance, to garner some positive headlines, and breath new life into their dismal fundraising efforts. They instead settled on Bob Rae. That name may seem familiar, as it was Rae who had previously sought the leadership of the Liberal Party twice, in 2006 and 2008, both ending in defeat. The idea of Bob Rae as interim leader was sold to caucus on the premise that he could correct and steady the ship as they search for a new captain. Rae and his team hoped that if they did a good enough job, the third time would prove to be the charm and the party would hand the former Ontario Premier the leadership on a silver platter, as it had done with Ignatieff only a few years earlier. But the idea of a twice defeated leadership aspirant and the guy who's time as the first and only NDP Premier of Canada's largest province still produced attack ads for the Ontario PCs didn't exactly produce enthusiasm. Yes, everybody respected him, but nobody really loved him either. The man everyone wanted to run (Aside from Rae and his inner circle) was the sunny and optimistic heir to one of Canada's most familiar political namesakes, Justin Trudeau. First elected in 2008, Trudeau the younger had sworn off any interest in running for his dad's old job, and at one point even appeared poised to quit politics altogether. But the Chrétien people were gone. So were Paul Martin's. The people who had run Dion and Ignatieff's leadership offices had also quietly found employment elsewhere, having been chased out after their employer got canned. That'll happen when most of the party's MPs are defeated. Turns out it was enough for Trudeau and his own inner circle, spearheaded by Ontario Liberal insider Gerry Butts, to plot a takeover that was largely welcomed by what remained of the Liberal rank-and-file. Aside from the longshot candidacies of a few leftover MPs and his dad's ex-girlfriend, Trudeau won the job in a cakewalk, capturing over seventy percent of the vote. With little connections to the party's recent past, Trudeau's ascension saw the party's poll numbers shoot up over night, and it appeared that for the first time in a very long time Canadians were seriously looking at the Liberals as a credible option again.
Each of the three major parties sought to accomplish the impossible in the election. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were aiming to win their fourth straight election, something that no politician had managed since Sir Wilfred Laurier in 1908. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, if they wanted to finally return to power, had to gain well over one-hundred seats and leapfrog two other parties to get to first. Tom Mulcair and the New Democrats simply had to win. The latter two goals had never happened in Canada, period. When Stephen Harper called the 11-week campaign, the longest in the nation's history, every knew why he did it. The Tories were the only party with that kind of cash to burn, and if they were to convince enough Canadians that change shouldn't be the theme of the election, and that it should revolve around the economy, or defence, or whatever the issue was to keep Harper in charge, they would need all the time they could get.
Yet innovative was not a term which could be used to describe the Conservative Party's 2015 campaign. Much like the leader himself, the party machinery had only grown more insular and rigid since their majority-winning campaign four-years earlier. Rather than seek out new blood and new approaches, Harper relied on the same team that got him that majority back in 2011, with the exception of former campaign director Doug Finley, who had passed away in 2013. In his place stepped Jenni Byrne, a true blue believer and former acolyte of the Reform Party. Byrne was safe, knew what her boss wanted and how to play to his strengths. But she was also, like her boss, openly hostile towards the media, and sought to protect and retain the party base, rather than growing it. Byrne was also predictable, and her team birthed a campaign that not only sought to reject change as a central election theme, but as a potential strategy for the Tories. But things had changed. Gone was the Bloc Quebecois as an electoral force, and along with them the narrative that they would be a threat to national unity by propping up an unorthodox coalition led by either the Liberals or the NDP. Then there was the stunning lack of a signature campaign policy. No 2006 GST-cut or the like this time. Instead, the Conservative platform would read as a greatest hits album, a list of the government's record since coming to power, with sprinkles of new spending promises here and there to fill in the holes. Not exactly fresh material. Harper had also lost, either through death or through retirements, a number of his most successful and well-known cabinet ministers. Diane Ablonczy, Shelley Glover, James Moore, John Baird, and the party's own deputy leader, Peter MacKay, had all decided to sit out 2015 and return home to their families. Jim Flaherty had died of a heart attack only a year earlier. The Team Harper strategy was dead before the election even began. More and more it appeared to be a one-man show. After a decade in power, voter fatigue, and a growing number of anti-Harper special interest groups, the task of re-electing the Harper government was monumental. Monumental, but not unachievable. The Conservatives under Harper had still balanced the budget, brought the debt-to-GDP levels down to about what it had been when they first came to power in 2006, and could claim a litany of other economic successes ranging from various free-trade agreements, to tax reductions, to reversing the growth of the federal government. If 'Change' was going to be the issue offered by their opponents, the Tories would offer up leadership, security, and the economy as their alternative. Their three paths to victory. While it showed some early signs of success, the party's other strategy of limiting the media to only five questions at election events, and their initial attempts to force attendees to sign non-disclosure agreements began overshadowing Harper's narrative. It only reinforced every negative perception about the Prime Minister and the ballot question of their opponents.
In the aftermath of their own inept and unfocused campaign in 2011, Liberals found their once great Big Red Machine, which had delivered Jean Chretien three straight majorities, in tatters. Gone was the Quebec base that had kept the party safe in campaigns past. Their presence in both Ontario and Atlantic Canada had been reduced to rumps. Out West he Liberal Party was virtually non-existent. Even worse the party was bankrupt. Which was why Trudeau's focus after getting elected leader in 2013 was largely spent on rebuilding. Everything. It would also provide Trudeau the opportunity to recruit more forty-something professions, much like himself, as candidates. Bill Morneau, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Harjit Sajjan, Jane Philpott, Andrew Leslie, and François-Philippe Champagne all represented the kind generation shift that Trudeau himself belonged to. No connections to the Chretien-Martin feuds of the last few decades. No connection to the Sponsorship Scandal. Fresh faced political newcomers who were experts in their respective fields. It would not be a slate consisting of lightweights or party staffers. Gerry Butts and Katie Telford, both of whom hailed from Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne's Ontario, sought to make that 'lack of experience' a strength. Team Trudeau, as it would be called, would represent "Real Change", and their leader was the best positioned of the three leaders to accomplish it. Butts and Trudeau also agreed that the Liberal campaign had to be fought on Sunny Ways. No negativity. Just gamble on providing voters a big and radical reason to vote Liberal and watch the votes pour in. For the most part it worked. Trudeau put in the work. He was the front of the party, crisscrossing the country, pledging to go into deficit spending to pay for some big and transformative policies like childcare. Voters were responding. Positively. Halfway through September internals showed the party rising fast, and the public polls confirmed it. The Liberals were in the lead, at the expense of a dropping NDP.
But then, like every campaign, an unexpected thing happened. Which led to more unexpected things.
Campaigns pride themselves at knowing the skeletons in their leader's closest. Usually they know where the dirt is, what it looks like, and how to respond to it. Sometimes that response leaves the other guy looking worse for having brought it up as an attack in the first place. In this instance, however, the Liberals were caught by surprise, and their response ended up making their guy look even worse.
On the morning of September 17th, the day of the Globe and Mail and Google Canada debate on the economy, it was reported by the Vancouver Sun that the Liberal leader, during his time as a teacher at West Point Grey Academy, had worn brownface makeup as part of an Aladdin costume. Butts and Trudeau had built the campaign around the idea of Sunny Ways, that doing politics differently and doing it better was possible. Achieving that meant making Trudeau the Prime Minister. So, discovering such a photo ran very counter to that narrative. It was hypocritical, if you were to listen to the supporters of the other parties. In the hastily-arranged scrum with reporters while campaigning in Calgary, Trudeau apologized for the incident. When asked why he had waited eighteen years to admit any wrongdoing, Trudeau appeared flustered and muttered something about it being an opportunity for everyone to reflect on their past behaviour. Pressed about whether or not there were other examples of racist behaviour, the Liberal leader, clearly annoyed, retorted that he wasn't a racist and charged the journalist to do better (Trudeau would later apologize for his response, claiming that he thought he had been accused of being a racist. Totally different). Liberal High Command was in a panic, and it appeared that their guy had been knocked off his game at perhaps the most pivotal moment of the campaign. Those fears were only confirmed later that evening as the debated unfolded. Gone was the charismatic and confident Trudeau of the first debate, and in his place was a man who was lackluster, spoke too quickly and was coming across too negative to too many pundits and journalists. He failed to push back against Mulcair's needling of his criticism of the Prime Minister for running deficits, while at the same time pledging to do the same himself. He failed to make a big enough distinction between his positions and the NDP's. His attacks against Harper came across as flat and rehearsed. It was a clear victory for Tom Mulcair, who came out looking like the real alternative to Stephen Harper. Justin Trudeau had looked like a teenager arguing with the adults.
The entire situation had also provided Mulcair and the New Democrats the chance to shift focus away from an issue that McGrath and Lavigne had worried would prove fatal to their campaign; the niqab. Only a few days prior to the blackface scandal, occurring simultaneously with the release of the NDP costing platform announcement, was a Conservative announcement by Denis Lebel, Harper's Quebec Lieutenant Denis Lebel that the government would appeal the previous day’s Federal Court of Appeal ruling allowing women to take their citizenship oaths while wearing the niqab and reinstate their ban on the practice within one hundred days of being re-elected. The Tory position was incredibly popular in Quebec, and Mulcair's firm opposition to it threatened to lead to the complete collapse of NDP support in the province, leading to the possibility of a resurgent Bloc. The blackface photo began to steal focus away from the issue. Media coverage over the issue had led to more clicks and more viewers, so more and more journalists began writing about it. Even Stephen Harper began to talk about the importance that the occupant of the Prime Minister's Office demonstrate moral as well as economic leadership.
And then, just a day prior to the Consortium debate, a second photo of Trudeau in blackface emerged. Then a third was posted on Twitter by Robert Fife. Liberals cried foul, but the damage was already done.
It was if someone had saved them just for the occasion, and decided to release them to make the most impact on the election. Trudeau's refusal to admit that there were additional photos after having been asked by reporters only compounded problems further. A large portion of the anti-Harper vote, which comprised something like sixty-five percent of the previous vote, were looking to back whoever they thought had the best chance to defeat Stephen Harper and get him out of Ottawa. As more and more compromising photos of Justin Trudeau were leaked, Tom Mulcair, boring and middle-of-the-road, was appearing the safer bet. Trudeau spent more time apologizing for past deeds, chalking them up to the youthful ignorance of a twenty-nine year old, and began backpedaling on the Liberal strategy of Sunny Ways. His stump speech was meaner, sounded more cynical, and seemed like a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding to the NDP, who in turn had recaptured some of that happy warrior magic that had lifted Jack Layton to Stornoway. Mulcair was energized, hungry, and his team decided to go all in. There wasn't going to be a better opportunity for a closing argument than this. Trudeau was young and naïve. Good intentioned, but too much of a risk. Tom Mulcair was a seasoned statesman. He could kick the Conservative's teeth in one moment, and have a bear with you the next. It was an unexpected end to a very long and bitter campaign. All the leaders returned to their home ridings to bask in the unbiased adoration of their die-hard supporters as they prepared to kick their feet up and watch the returns come in.
On Election Night voters opted for some change. After the results got through Atlantic Canada, which all the parties had understood to be the last great bastion of support for the federal Liberals under any scenario, Quebec surprisingly put to bed any doubts as to who would voters had trusted as the main Harper alternative. Winning sixty seats, Mulcair had surpassed Mulroney's 1984 showing in La Belle province, leaving the Liberals in a very distant second with seven. Ontario, demonstrating the strength of the Tories' strategy, split their vote almost evenly between the three parties and handed Harper almost sixty of their seats. It wouldn't be until the results came in from British Columbia, where the province narrowly broke in favor of the NDP, that the networks could finally call it. It wasn't enough for anyone to be even close to a majority, but enough that the drivers of that change would be that funny orange party led by that guy with the beard.
Stephen Harper was now gone. The man who had dominated Canadian politics for much of the previous decade announced his resignation as leader without actually having said it in public. Old habits die hard and all that, and it was typical of Harper, who had long given up any pretense that he had any respect for journalists, whom he viewed with either suspicion or outright distain. Left in Harper's wake was a gigantic hole. Stephen Harper had effectively created the Conservative Party, won the leadership of the party, and had for the last eleven years been its ideological soul and reason for staying together. Without him, the Tories had to now ask themselves a very important question; who were they and what did this new Harper-less party now stand for? Luckily for the party, the outgoing boss had left them in pretty good shape. After nine-years in power, four of which as a majority government, the Tories still had 119 seats in the House of Commons. That was about twenty more than they had after their first outing as a party in 2004, and fifteen behind the newly minted NDP government. After nine-years of Brian Mulroney (and a few months of Kim Campbell), the PC Party found itself broke, with only two seats, and no future in sight. So not bad, all things considered. Before they could answer any big and meaningful questions about the future of the party and the Conservative movement, the newly minted caucus of Tory MPs would have to do the obvious and first pick an interim leader, someone who could lead the party for the next several months. That person would be barred from seeking the permanent leadership of the party, would face the unenviable task of trying to heard a caucus not held in-check by the fear of Stephen Harper, face-off against Tom Mulcair during Question Period, and then go back to being a normal MP at the end of it. Surprisingly a number of candidates decided to step forward and offer their services. Rona Ambrose, Dianne Finley, Candice Bergen, Mike Lake, Julian Fantino, Erin O'Toole, Rob Nicholson, John Williamson, and the tag-team consisting of Michelle Rempel and Denis Lebel rounded out the field of candidates who thought they would be best suited for the job. Despite the Tories' professed love for the first-past-the-post system, the contest would be decided through a preferential ballot, with only elected Tory Members of Parliament allowed to cast votes. Opting to keep the grey hair and same bland style, albeit with a newer, nicer tone, former Veteran's Affairs Minister and Durham MP Erin O'Toole ended up as the last man standing. First elected in 2012 following the resignation of Bev Oda over her preference for charging taxpayers for her expensive orange juice, O'Toole was seen as a steady hand who had helped bring down and temperature in the Veteran's portfolio after the unrest under his predecessor, Fantino. Such an accomplishment appeared attractive considering the circumstances. A veteran himself, O'Toole promised to hold the new government to account and pledged to pass onto the next leader a fully united party ready to take back power. Quebec MP and Libertarian firebrand Maxime Bernier had already indicated his intention to stand for the job, which came as a surprise to absolutely no one.
Justin Trudeau meanwhile found himself very much where he had started. Back in third place. Yet the case for keeping Trudeau was fairly obvious. The Liberals had risen from thirty-four to seventy-eight seats, more than doubling the size of their caucus. If Trudeau resigned, the party would simply have to elect another rookie leader, who would have to go through the process of starting all over again. At least the current guy had the name recognition and had now gotten the experience of fighting a national election. There was also the fact that there was no obvious leader-in-waiting, no Paul Martin or Michael Ignatieff type figure waiting in the wings. Justin Trudeau was now the face of the party, end of story. He could learn the lessons of his defeat and apply them in the next campaign (whenever that would be). Yet the membership, specifically the old guard type who proudly call themselves Liberals and not progressives, were pissed. There had been high hopes that Trudeau would be able to pull off the impossible, and for several moments during the campaign it looked like he would. Then blackface scuttled those plans, and shepherded enough of the anti-Harper vote to the NDP camp. That was now two elections in a row where the Liberal Party had ended up in third place. If it happened again, insiders worried about the continued existence of the party. It would also mean that Trudeau would definitely be out of a job. So, for the time being, the Liberals would assist the New Democrats where they agreed and prove to Canadians that it was the party of Sir Wilfred Laurier, not the party of Tommy Douglas, who had the maturity to usher and guide effective change through parliament, and hopefully not lose the progressive vote to the new government in the process.
As for the new government, Prime Minister Mulcair basked in the glory of the global media's coverage. The BBC and its affiliates declared it the beginning of the rise of unabashed social democracy in North America. CNN and MSCNB asked what it meant for the unfolding Democratic primary and whether it would benefit Bernie Sanders in his fight against Hillary Clinton. Fox News decried it as proof socialists had begun to infiltrate North America, and that the United States was their next target. Phone calls from various world leaders pored in congratulating him, including an invitation from President Barack Obama for a visit to the White House (Sure, it wasn't a state dinner, but it was the next best thing). Praise poured in from across the punditry for his decision to name a gender-balanced cabinet. It was about time, after all. With the help of the Liberals, the New Democrats would finally be able to get at least some things on their wish list through parliament. This was all the better for Mulcair and his team, since it meant he wouldn't need to rely on the party's more radical socialist members to support him. But the New Democrats had a long list of election promises to fulfill, and likely not a lot of time to implement them before the opposition decided to pull the plug on his government. It was time to get to work.
