Federal election coming
La Presse gives as fact that Justin Trudeau will drop the writ Sunday morning for an election September 20.
I’ve been reprimanded before for taking note of elections other than the municipal, but we do have 18 federal ridings on the island of Montreal, including the ridings of six ministers, among them Justin himself. The issues, and the results, have things to tell us about the island we live on.
Of course this time the campaign, taking place during a pandemic, will also intersect with the municipal campaign, so it’s bound to become a bit noisy in here…
Update: Doorbell rang this morning and it was a woman (one of a party of canvassers) trying to get signatures to support the Marxist candidate in Papineau – Justin Trudeau’s riding.
And the writ has dropped.
ant6n 09:36 on 2021-08-15 Permalink
I saw an ad for the liberals on TV are 9am, when I understand the election is supposed to be called at 10am. So the Libs run ads before the election is called.
jeather 09:56 on 2021-08-15 Permalink
Have you seen this absolutely bonkers ad by the Conservatives?
I assume all the other parties will harp on how calling an election less than 2 years into a mandate in the middle of a surging pandemic because you think now is the time to get a majority is a terrible, dangerous idea. I cannot believe this is happening and I hope the liberals lose seats for this.
Kate 11:05 on 2021-08-15 Permalink
That ad is getting a lot of attention. It’s a horror.
I don’t blame the Liberals – governing with a minority is always unstable, it was never going to go to 4 years, and they’re probably pretty confident that the current version of the Tories is too unattractive to gain more seats than they already have. I bet they’re even strategizing around a low voter turnout.
ant6n 11:15 on 2021-08-15 Permalink
What’s cringy is that they harp on budgets and higher taxes, as if this election is between conservatives (as in the Conservative party) and progressives (as in the Liberal party). In reality it should be between conservatives (as in the Liberal party) and progressives (don’t really have a strong party), but unfortunately the media and the Liberals and the Conservatives like the fairy tale of the right vs left Liberals vs Conservatives fairy tale.
JoeNotCharles 15:50 on 2021-08-15 Permalink
But it’s not a “surging” pandemic. The pandemic is on the downswing.
https://datagraver.com/corona/#/?regions=quebec:hex0AC8C2,canada:hex14F03E&logScale=false&perCapita=true&cutYaxis=false&cumulative=false&types=2&mapp
Of course the unvaccinated are still at risk, but there aren’t enough unvaccinated people for the pandemic to break out again in a major way unless it mutates. The main risk to society now is that the virus could circulate enough among unvaccinated people to mutate, and a mutation could cause the vaccines to become ineffective. And, of course, some people can’t be vaccinated because of allergies or compromised immune systems or whatever. So it’s important to keep taking basic precautions and keep vaccinating more people to drive the prevalence of the virus down even further, but at this point that’s for managing long-term risk, not to directly prevent major outbreaks.
thomas 16:30 on 2021-08-15 Permalink
The conservative ad seems to be an attempt to game the Facebook algorithm.
https://twitter.com/jacquesleger17/status/1426892823715061764
MarcG 18:23 on 2021-08-15 Permalink
@thomas: Thanks for sharing that. I was about to put the ad on reddit’s /r/TheRightCantMeme but now I won’t.