Liberals’ fourth-wave election push looks crazier by the day

Risk of bad headlines if virus surprises

On Thanksgiving Monday 2019, I and other journalists tagging along with the federal Conservatives’ campaign arrived at a downtown Winnipeg hotel to find scores of hacked-off evacuees from the Lake Manitoba First Nation awaiting transportation to shelters — the result of a huge snowstorm that left tens of thousands of Manitobans without power for many days. This was an opportunity for the evacuees to gain national media attention, and they made the most of it.

“People who have been evacuated have told us, ‘you should be dealing with the crisis instead of coming here to campaign’,” one reporter posed to Scheer. “What do you say to those people who say it’s tone deaf for you to be here?”

“There are thousands of people right now who do not know where they’re going to sleep tonight,” another reporter observed. “Why do you think it’s appropriate to come to this city at this time, while it’s in a state of emergency, to ask for their votes?”

It was a bit silly. The campaign hadn’t nicked the evacuees’ hotel rooms; we didn’t even spend the night in Winnipeg. Other than his personal donation to the Red Cross, Scheer’s presence in Winnipeg seemed to make no difference at all. But when the daily campaign headlines landed, his presence in Winnipeg had completely overshadowed everything he said or did there.

I got to thinking about that day recently as I continued trying to wrap my brain around the Liberals risking their very comfortable minority government and triggering an election in the coming weeks. The more convinced everyone becomes that it’s going to happen, the loopier it seems to me — especially given reports that all parties are hoping to campaign at least somewhat as usual: leaders’ tours, rallies, door-knocking and so on.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam warned last week that parts of the country may already be seeing the beginning of a fourth wave. Daily case counts are up by at least 60 per cent, compared to their low points in July, in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, in the all-important 905 battlegrounds in the Greater Toronto Area, and in Toronto itself.

“Liberal sources said that the only way the next election will not be called in the next two weeks (is) if the Delta variant of COVID-19 causes case numbers to go up significantly,” The Hill Times reported over the weekend. Earth to Rideau Cottage: It’s already happening.

Experts seem nearly united in expecting such a wave to be far less serious than previous ones, thanks to high rates of vaccination: fewer cases overall causing far fewer severe symptoms, far fewer hospitalizations, and far fewer deaths. But news consumers and media strategists alike know that such reassuring information rarely winds up in headlines. In the absence of approved vaccines for children, many worry about the long-term effects of the virus.

The Liberals seem to be eyeing an election date within the first two weeks of the school year. The mind boggles. Every single day for Trudeau could wind up like Scheer’s Winnipeg Thanksgiving, or worse. The 2019 election happened on schedule, after all, four years after the last one. This one would be entirely Trudeau’s design.

At the blunt end of the stick, Trudeau would be asked repeatedly why his attentions were on winning re-election instead of ensuring the smoothest possible exit from the pandemic. And he would have no halfway credible answer. At the sharp end of the stick are unlikely but not-inconceivable headlines like “Liberal rally now officially a superspreader event.” If someone winds up in the ICU or dies from COVID-19 traced back to a campaign event, it would be a five-alarm catastrophe.

And for what? The only party standing in the way of Trudeau’s “build back better” agenda (such as it is) is the NDP, and all it wants is to build back better than that. Only 26 per cent of Canadians are pleased with the idea of an election in the near future, according to a Nanos Research poll for CTV News.

Strategists shudder at the notion of rally-free elections, but of course there are more modest and less crowded ways to campaign than the ones we’re used to. Particularly since political donations are so lavishly subsidized by taxpayers — you get 75 per cent of your first $400 back! — I would love to see cheaper methods tested out. But traditional campaigning is what Trudeau does best, and seems to enjoy more than anything else. So what on Earth is the rush?

“We’re too deep in to not drop the writ,” a Liberal source told the Hill Times — the sunk cost fallacy in all its glory, and obviously incorrect. Every day is a new opportunity for sanity to claw back some purchase, sparing the Liberals from unnecessary risk and the rest of us from a distraction we definitely do not need, and that few of us desire. And Conservatives champing at the bit to unseat Trudeau should be equally cautious: Just because Trudeau engineered the election doesn’t mean Erin O’toole won’t face the same criticisms Scheer did for rudely trying to win it.