Happy Thanksgiving for Canada Liberals

By Howard Williams

OTTAWA – CANADA’S Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau, appear to be surging ahead in the final week of the longest official federal election campaign in Canadian history.

Trudeau, son of the late former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, woke up on Monday (Canada’s Thanksgiving Day) with the news that his Liberal Party is six clear points ahead of the governing Conservative Party just a week before the October 19 general election. The New Democratic Party (equivalent to Europe’s social democratic parties), which had started the more than two-month long campaign in the lead, is now trailing in third position,

The poll, published in Monday’s The Globe and Mail newspaper, shows the Liberals should be in a commanding lead, but not sufficient to give them a majority in the House of Commons. To form a government they will need either a formal coalition with the New Democrats, or at least a tacit agreement with them to form a government.

The lengthy (by Canadian standards) election campaign though has so far failed to generate much excitement in the country with all three major parties running neck and neck for most of the time.

During the campaign, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper had hoped to persuade the electorate that his party alone would be able to ensure a steady and growing economy, only to have that claim sharply damaged by two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, the traditional sign of an official recession.

As public sympathy grew for the plight of Middle East (especially Syrian) refugees, Harper claimed that his government was speeding up the asylum process for allowing them into Canada. But that claim was dented severely by timely leaks from government sources that, in fact, the government was not spending already authorized resources to help the refugee process and that cutbacks had even meant that the government did not have ample resources or personnel, to handle the growing influx of refugee requests.

According to The Globe and Mail, the latest Nanaos Research tracking poll marked the 11th straight day the Liberals have polled ahead of the Conservatives, who are now below the 30 per cent mark for the third day in a row.

Even before the poll was published the New Democrats switched the focus of their attacks from Harper and his Conservatives to Trudeau and his Liberals.

With Harper trumpeting his government’s latest “achievement” in negotiating Canada’s inclusion in a new trans Pacific trade deal, which would lead to the world’s largest free trade area. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair claimed it would lead to a loss of jobs in the vote-rich Canadian auto and dairy sectors. Harper denies this while Trudeau say he wants to see the fine print in the final deal before taking a position, earning the wrath of Mulcair who says he would tear up the trade pact if elected prime minister.

The final week of the campaign is expected to be hard fought between the two opposition parties, which both appear convinced that Harper’s Conservatives are on the way out. Traditionally, the party with the biggest number of seats in the House of Commons forms the government, even if it doesn’t have an overall majority.