Peter McKenna: Canadians voted strategically to stop Scheer
By
Yakosu Umana
Oct. 23,
2019
Peter
McKenna believes he knows why Canadians voted the way they did.
The
election could have gone either way, but Canadians voted Liberal because they
didn’t trust Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, said the UPEI political science
professor.
“It was
more of stick with the devil we know as opposed the devil we don’t.”
Liberal
Leader Justin Trudeau won the federal election Oct.21, forming a minority
government with 157 seats.
The
Conservatives are the official opposition with 121, despite winning the popular
vote by about a quarter million.
The
Liberal votes were more effective than the Conservatives, McKenna said.
“The
Conservatives may have won popularly outward in the west, but the Liberals won
in more efficient areas like Ontario and parts of Montreal.”
The Bloc-Quebecois
won the third most seats with 32, roughly a 69 per cent increase from the number
of seats they held prior to the election.
A
minority government doesn’t occur often, but it isn’t unusual, McKenna said.
Pierre Trudeau had one.
It would
not pose a threat for the Liberals, McKenna said.
“There
will be some compromise, but I think the Liberals will finesse the minority government
for the next two years.”
More
minority governments may emerge, he said.
Despite
three parties winning more seats than before, McKenna said each party performed
worse than they anticipated, especially the People’s Party.
Their
performance was Canada’s response to far-right populism, he said.
“I feel
it was an outright rejection to far-right populism in Canada, as opposed to its
spread in some nations,” he said.
“No one
thought he [Maxime Bernier] would do great, but he lost his own seat. That’s
never a good thing.”
The NDP
lost 15 seats and it may have happened because their usual voters voted
strategically for the Liberals, McKenna said.
Justin
Trudeau accused the Conservatives of running the “dirtiest” campaign in
Canadian history.
McKenna
disagrees.
“We’ve
seen negative campaigns before and I don’t think these were any different.”
The fake
news from the Conservative party was new, he said.
“They
tended to make things up and create fake news. That’s not something we see in
election campaigns.”
It
looked like a sign of desperation, McKenna said.
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