OTTAWA -- Of all the COVID-19 symptoms, the most unexpected is election fever.
A third clinical trial ended Monday night, an election suggesting the best treatment for party leaders in these uncertain times is a snap inoculation by their voters.
Delaying the writ drop risks voter rejection as pandemic Band-aids are ripped off to heal unsustainable deficits while allowing real concerns about how governments have handled the pandemic to gain traction.
And so, a trio of solo premier acts has produced a choir of consensus that:
- Thereâs no price to pay for going to the polls early.
- There are no negatives to campaigning in a bubble, which actually delivers the positive of saving parties a pile of dough in touring costs.
- And platforms can still be safely built on costly pandemic-fighting promises with massive deficits handed to future generations to pay.
Over the weekend, B.C. went from theyâre didnât even wait for mail-in ballots to be counted before calling the majority outcome.
Results so far have boosted Horganâs share of the popular vote by 10 per cent, this despite a needlessly early election called on the flimsiest of pretexts. Voters just didnât care.
Last night, for the Saskatchewan Party under slow-and-steady Premier Scott Moe.
This was not a Horgan-like power grab. Moe merely followed the fixed-election date prescribed in legislation and had a declared majority within 35 minutes of the polls closing.
But his repeat showing confirms the march to victory through the pandemic is a cakewalk. Moeâs opponents knew the writ drop was coming and still couldnât dent his Saskatchewan stranglehold.
Add those two results to the New Brunswick campaign last month, where , as you have an undeniable pattern emerging.
Which brings us to a very different picture of the federal scene, where election fever is still above normal.
There was sobering news for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday night as
New Green Party leader Annamie Paul gave Liberal Marci Ien a night of fright before she reclaimed Toronto Centre.
And then came the shocker squeaker result in nearby York Centre which, at this writing, was barely tilting to the Liberals over the Conservatives.
The question confronting Trudeau is whether these were canaries croaking in the pandemic coalmine or simply the usual anti-government bias built into by-election results.
If the provincial elections prove anything, itâs that the voters are reluctant to throw-the-bums-out, even when thereâs no compelling reason for an early election.
But those strange by-elections signal deep disappointment with the Trudeau government record.
Whatâs worse for Trudeau is that a nasty hangover is coming from his binge of deficit spending and program rollouts.
Trudeau will soon have to end the longest stretch in history without a federal budget and produce a fiscal picture that wonât be one bit pretty.
So weâre at a point of confusing indicators on the wisdom of Trudeau seeking a third mandate during a viral rampage.
He might well have pause to rethink his hell-bent hurry to force a ridiculously premature vote by those byelection disappointments.
But itâs more likely Trudeau will take greater comfort from this fallâs all-positive result at the polls in the provinces.
As the worldâs most famous patient tweeted during his recovery with a presidential election in the offing: âDon't be afraid of COVID.â
Thatâs one piece of advice from Donald Trump that an election-fever-infected Justin Trudeau may accept, hoping the pandemic is a vaccine against electoral defeat.
That's the bottom line.