What You Really Really Want

There is a growing fatalism setting in about the next election. Dale Smith writes:

If you listen to Canadian political commentary, a certain kind of fatalism has sunk in: a Pierre Poilievre and Conservative Party of Canada victory is inevitable in the next election, and nothing is going to matter over the next year-and-a-bit until the next federal election is scheduled. This is possibly the worst of all possible instincts to harbour, and a sign that our media spends way too much time huffing the horse-race poll numbers that they treat as gospel, which is also why Poilievre keeps pushing for an early election, so that he can come in on a sweeping victory. But this sense of inevitability should be fought, particularly among marginalized Canadians who know that a Poilievre-led government is going to be a very big problem for them, and for their rights. 

But voters are befuddled. They like a lot of what Justin Trudeau has done. But they're tired of him:

Saying you like the Liberals’ plan but can’t vote for Trudeau won’t help you keep those Liberal plans alive. There was polling earlier this summer that found that people said they were willing to vote for Poilievre, but they also wanted all of the services that the Liberals (and, to a lesser extent, the NDP) have provided, like child care and dental care. You can’t have both. As much as he can claim to have a coherent ideology, Poilievre has internalized the so-called teachings of crypto bros on YouTube, and thinks that massive spending cuts in order to achieve a notional balanced budget is the way to a prosperous economy (mostly because from all appearances, he doesn’t understand monetary or fiscal policy). That’s going to mean a lot of painful cuts to services. A simple change in government also won’t fix most of the problems that we’re dealing with, such as the housing shortage or the affordability crunch, because many of those problems are structural in nature. No amount of empty slogans will fix those issues, and would in fact be made worse with an austerity agenda.

Things could -- as has recently happened in the United States -- change radically. But that kind of change is rare. Canadians will have to decide what -- like the Spice Girls sang -- they really really want.

Image: The Financial Post