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Voters' message to politicians: Get to work

Murray Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-post and Saskatoon Starphoenix.

We liked things the way they were. We have serious issues you need to deal with.

You need to stop clowning around, get back to work and don't bother us again until the work we sent you to do gets done.

Woe betide the politician who missed these critical voter messages emerging from Monday's federal election results. Subject to change with counting of mail-in ballots, those results were as follows: Liberals, 158 seats (32.2 per cent of the popular vote); the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), 119 seats (34 per cent); Bloc Quebecois, 34 seats (7.8 per cent); NDP, 25 seats (17.7 per cent), Green party, two seats (2.3 per cent); and the People's Party of Canada (PPC) no seats, but 5.1 per cent of the national vote.

Seem familiar? It should. These almost mirror the results of the 2019 vote: Liberals, 157 seats, (33.1 per cent); CPC, 121 seats, (34.3 per cent); Bloc, 32 seats (7.8 per cent); NDP, 24 seats (16 per cent); Green, three seats (6.6 per cent) and the PPC with no seats and 1.6 per cent of vote.

Thank you voters for the gift of one of those great Canadian Heritage vignettes in which you bluntly told our politicians that you were mad as hell about being dragged away from the cottage for a record $610-million federal campaign ($108 million more than in 2019) and you weren't going to take it anymore.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs to get that voters just shoved his summer vanity project back into his ever-so-handsome mug. You wasted our time and money. You get nothing more than you had.

But lest Conservatives somehow view this as a victory, new leader Erin O'toole got an equally blunt message that his party deserved no better for his wishy-washy, issue-ducking campaign in which he turtled on vaccination strategy, abortion rights and even assault weapons. The Conservatives' decision to pander to the right to prevent voter leakage to the PPC was largely seen by Canadian voters as “your problem and not ours.”

Canadians had similar messages for every party and leader.

To the NDP'S Jagmeet Singh: You need to show us something other that your fantastical view of Canadian society that came to this election without proper platform costing.

To the Bloc's Yves-françois Blanchet: More than half your province doesn't much like you.

To the Greens' Annamie Paul: You're pretty much irrelevant.

And to Maxime Bernier and the PPC: Sliding down Alice's rabbit hole with those who sadly care little about a deadly virus gets you nothing more than another term of Trudeau.

And yes, Canadians even had messages to provincial leaders like Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, notwithstanding the reality that Conservatives will likely hold all 14 Saskatchewan seats (with mail-in ballots creating some questions in Saskatoon West).

Tuesday morning, Moe lambasted Trudeau for “the most pointless election in Canada's history,” adding time and money that would have been better spent “properly funding Canada's chronically underfunded health system, working with provinces to increase vaccination rates in some of our hardestto-reach communities.”

Evidently, another political casualty of Monday's election was the concept of irony.

After choosing to sit out this federal election campaign — presumably, an excellent opportunity to talk about federal health care and Saskatchewan and Ottawa's roles in ensuring northern reserve residents are vaccinated — Moe chose Tuesday morning to reinforce the notions that the election was unnecessary and Saskatchewan doesn't like Trudeau.

Yes, Trudeau chose not to do anything this summer to help get people vaccinated. But, again, the irony thing. Moe also did nothing this summer. The result? He has his own numbers problem: 519 more COVID-19 cases in Saskatchewan on Monday for a seven-day average of 491 new cases or 41 per 100,000 people; 4,672 active cases; 253 people in hospital.

Health care — and especially vaccine delivery — is a provincial issue. And right now, Moe has thousands of doses of vaccines in storage because he has not done enough to convince Saskatchewan people to take them.

Tuesday, Moe played politics, missing the vital lesson of Monday night: Voters aren't taking this political bullcrap anymore. Instead, they are telling politicians to get to work.

OPINION

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2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://nationalpost.pressreader.com/article/281672553085675

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