My Local Politics is National

Coming home to Canada days before the election, and, on the drive from the airport, I saw plenty of Poilievre and Carney signs.  But not because they are their party leaders but because the route went through PP's riding and the riding (district for Americans) that Carney is running in.  I live in the latter and bike through the former (not today as I am a fair weather biker, so the cold rain will deter me).  

The election has stakes nationally, and, locally, who wins my riding really matters not just in terms of one seat more or less but whether the leader of the party gets to sit in parliament and have legitimacy to serve as the Prime Minister.  Right now, Carney has no seat, and that has happened before, as party leadership can shift in between elections, but he couldn't carry on as PM if the Liberals win but he does not (a very unlikely outcome).  

I don't know Carney, never met him.  He does have a heap of credentials, and he has run a very solid campaign.  I have met his Conservative opponent (the NDP candidate is barely visible and has no chance).*  Barbara Bal was knocking on doors last August, and I happened to be home.  I was not impressed. This was at the same time that the Republicans were inciting violence against Haitian immigrants re the supposed missing dogs and cats, so I remember the timing and content of this conversation well.

What did we talk about? She asked me if I would vote for the Conservatives.  Since she didn't know who I was and hadn't read my blog/bluesky posts (nor did I expect her to), she had no reason to expect she was going to get some pesky questions/opinions from, yes, a political scientist.  I responded first by saying that a politician who weaponizes hate against a vulnerable minority, trans people, is not worthy of my vote, like the way the GOP is behaving in the US.  She made a side comment about having spent time in Haiti so she didn't find the GOP hate-mongering to be problematic.  She then talked a bit about parental rights, and I said that was a canard used to appeal to the far right.  

The other topic that came up, although I forget how, is that I also said that I didn't like how her party was undermining the oversight over intelligence by its stances re the relatively new effort to create a hybrid oversight committee.  She had no idea what NSICOP is, which is not that surprising since, yes, my work with Phil Lagassé has focused directly on parliamentarians preferring to know less and speak more than know more and speak less--the original title was "Ignorant Critic or Informed Overseer." So, not really that disqualifying that she didn't know about the role of parliament in intelligence oversight, although since her party was sabotaging that effort, one might think she would have some awareness.

Sidenote: The issue of preferring to be ignorant has come up in this election as Poilievre has refused to get a security clearance.  Party leaders tend to get these, it has become more important lately with foreign election interference, as it has been the position of the government that each party should police the interference within their own party.  PP can't do that without knowing stuff.  But he refuses as he claims this would prevent him from being critical of the government.  This is, of course, bs as there are plenty of Westminster systems where party leaders get access to some info but can still criticize the government.  It would just require him to be, dare I say it, responsible. 

Obviously, I wouldn't vote for a Conservative Party candidate at a time where that party is promising to cut higher education and research funding, but my vote was determined in 2022 when Pierre Poilievre welcomed the far right anti-vax convoy that disrupted live in Ottawa for two months with donuts and smiles.   A more moderate CPC might get my vote after, yes, ten years of Liberals in power (democracy requires alternation in my mind, but the LDP of Japan might disagree), but that was never in the cards given PP's ascendance.  I have also taken to calling him the Ted Cruz of Canada--willing to support many far right causes just to get a bigger crowd, to appeal to those to the right of the traditional Conservative Party.  And just being someone who is easy to hate.

Anyhow, Bal didn't know what she was getting when she knocked on my door, but I do have a good understanding of what would happen if she won--she can't win without the Conservatives getting a sweeping victory--which wouldn't necessarily mean selling the country out to Trump. It would just mean selling the country out to far right causes, and that is a very good reason to vote against her and her party. 

*  Canadians get strategic voting--that because it is a first past the post (whoever gets the most votes in a riding wins) rather than proportional representation or another form of allotting seats, those who would prefer a 3rd or 4th party often will vote for the lesser of two evils.  In this election, the NDP, the Greens, and the Bloc are polling poorly for a number of reasons (the NDP leader is not seen as a good politician, for example), but one of those reasons is that these voters really care that the right wing party does not win at this moment.  This is much to do with Trump but not entirely so as Poilievre is both personally pretty easy to hate and has taken stances that position him much further to the right than his predecessor (including the aforementioned transphobia).