The 2019 election has just kicked off and it’s already managed to turn into a complete farce.
Starting the day the writ dropped, the NDP has already withdrawn two candidates—one over domestic violence allegations and the other over prior social media comments—a Conservative candidate similarly had to step down following social media comments and the Green Party accepted a resignation of a candidate as a result of a Facebook post. To complete the picture, the Liberals also ousted a candidate because of online comments, but to be fair, they managed to do that a few weeks before the writ dropped.
Then there was the kerfuffle of 14 NDP candidates in New Brunswick supposedly defecting to the Green Party, which quickly turned out to be nonsense as 12 confirmed they were still with the NDP, and only a mother and son formally resigning their NDP membership. The whole situation did little to bolster confidence in either party.
Speaking of doing little to bolster confidence, on the morning the writ was dropped, the country saw further developments in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. We’ve now learned that the RCMP have been investigating the possibility that someone in the Trudeau government obstructed justice in the case. It was in the news again as a result of (former Liberal Justice Minister) Jody Wilson-Raybould being interviewed by the RCMP. Additionally, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who usually seems to enjoy peacocking at every opportunity, dodged the first leadership debate in a move that can really only be seen as undemocratic as when it was part of (former Conservative leader and PM) Stephen Harper’s playbook.
Meanwhile, looking at the other leaders, the Green Party’s Elizabeth May is using the national media to fight one of her own MPs on whether or not he’s a sovereignist and, somehow, Jagmeet Singh, leader of the NDP—you know the party known as the party of unions and, blue-collar workers—is the one wearing $2,000 bespoke suits and Rolex watches. To top all of it off, the media decided this wasn’t enough and dealt the first real blow to Trudeau when a bus ferrying journalists collided with the Liberal leader’s plane.
Perhaps that’s why we like watching the chaos caused by Donald Trump in the U.S. We can ignore the mess we’ve got going on at home.