Five political watchers weigh in on what to watch for in the first few months of 2024, and how it might play out
OTTAWA – After a messy end to 2023, our federal politicians are bracing for another year that will likely be dominated by an array of domestic issues and international conflicts.
The National Post spoke to five political watchers to get their take on what to look out for in the first few months of 2024, and how they think issues might play out throughout the year.
Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admits it: Pierre Poilievre has successfully linked the current affordability crisis to the carbon tax. And the Liberals seemed to prove his point when they paused the carbon tax on home heating oil after much pressure from their Atlantic caucus, prompting politicians of all stripes to ask for more carve-outs.
“I think that climate is shaping up to be the narrative that captures a lot of other things,” said Lori Turnbull, professor of political science at Dalhousie University.
She noted that Liberals have been struggling to communicate their strategy on carbon pricing and other climate policies at a time when Canadians are worried about paying for basic necessities. Meanwhile, Poilievre has been getting a lot of traction with his “Axe the Tax” slogan and his insistence that government policies are to blame for the cost of everything going up.
“They’re thinking about whether they can pay their rent or their mortgage, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, OK, fine. We have to save the climate. But why do we have to do this tax now?’”
“I think that the Liberals are going to try to build a strategy around their approach to climate and make this an all-encompassing thing that will handle affordability, generate more supply chains, a greener economy, more jobs, more sustainable industries, healthier living,” she said.
Poilievre, on the other hand, will likely accuse the Liberals of being “out of touch” as they talk about how Canadians “have never had it so good.” Turnbull predicts the attacks will be “every bit as resonant” in 2024, even if economic indicators become more positive.
Liberals have been not-so-secretly hoping that interest rates will start to go down in 2024, but that could prove to be a “double-edged sword” for them on the housing file, said Mike Moffatt, founding director of the PLACE Centre at the Smart Prosperity Institute.
While housing prices have been “relatively flat” for the past 18 months and sales “close to non-existent,” said Moffatt, “that could change if interest rates start to drop substantially because of all that sort of pent-up demand” and bidding wars might come back in force.
The federal government has been multiplying announcements to boost housing supply during the fall session, driven by a drop in the polls as interest rates rose to five per cent.
While some initiatives like regulatory violations around short-term rentals could have an immediate effect, other policies could take years to implement. Meanwhile, Canada’s population is growing substantially, said Moffatt, particularly among international students.
“So, I have some real fears that unless there are substantial changes to that program, next summer, we are going to see rents spike up in southern Ontario in particular, just because of that disconnect between a lack of rental housing and the number of students,” he said.
The public mood toward the federal government, said Tellier, is at the mercy of the economy. “And that’s the case for all governments. When the economy is not doing well, any government’s popularity will drop,” she said.
If the Bank of Canada decides to lower interest rates in 2024, Tellier believes it could send a signal that the economy is not doing so bad after all and reassure some Canadians. But it remains to be seen if that effect will trickle down to voter intentions on the federal scene.
The federal government has taken a lot of heat for its vote at the United Nations for a ceasefire in Gaza, and even awkwardly had to respond to a “thank you” message from Hamas.
But international partners are starting to think more and more about “what the next day looks like after the war,” said Mira Sucharov, political science professor at Carleton University, who said that “there’s a lot of international will right now to see some sort of solution.
The war is still ongoing, with Israel determined to eliminate Hamas at all costs. Sucharov mentioned humanitarian assistance and free and fair elections on the Palestinian side as ways that Canada could become involved but only if there is a will from the interested parties.
“The reality is that we have a very limited — marginal, at best — role to play in an eventual political process that could lead either to a two-state solution or to something else,” said Thomas Juneau, associate professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa.
“Nobody in the region is asking us to play a role. Europeans and Americans are not really asking us to play a role. And we don’t have the capabilities and the influence to play more than a very marginal role,” he added.
Instead, Canada has joined a new international mission, led by the United States, to protect ships in the Red Sea — considered to be one of the most crucial maritime chokepoints in the world, said Juneau — from an Iran-backed armed group in Yemen called the Houthis.
Col. (retired) Michel Drapeau recently told the National Post that Canada’s “rather small contribution” to the U.S.-led mission is indicative of its limited defence capacities.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh came out of his party’s convention last fall with a promise to rip up the deal with the Liberals if they did not implement a national pharmacare program by the end of the year, but he ended up agreeing to punt the deadline by a few more months.
The Liberals and the NDP have agreed to introduce pharmacare legislation by March 1, 2024.
“We’ve really heard two different things from this party: the members versus its leaders,” said Tellier. “I think that Jagmeet Singh realized that it’s easy to threaten to rip up the agreement but looking at the polls, it’s not to his party’s advantage.”
But Turnbull thinks there might be a break-up this year between the Liberals and the NDP, because the federal government has signalled that its cupboards are bare and may not be prepared to spend more billions on a recurring basis to implement yet another program.
In that case, the NDP might want to think about an exit strategy from its supply-and-confidence agreement with the minority Liberals to maintain a good relationship with its base of supporters.
“I don’t think that they can go back and tell the base that we just couldn’t get pharmacare this time around, but we’re going to keep supporting the Liberals. I just don’t think there’s going to be an appetite for that,” said Turnbull.
There might also be another path. Both parties could agree on a framework for pharmacare where the money would not roll until at least the next election, but it remains unclear if the NDP would settle for such a solution.
The long-awaited federal inquiry into foreign interference has slowly started to get in gear, but expect it to be front and centre in the news once public hearings start on Jan. 29.
Its first phase is meant to look at the extent of foreign interference from China, Russia and other foreign states, as well as non-state actors, in recent Canadian elections, and Juneau predicts that this will be the part that will likely be more of interest on the political level.
“That (phase of the inquiry), for the opposition, will be the hammer that they will be able to hit the government with and for the government, it will be a matter of trying to defend itself to show that it didn’t do anything wrong,” said the expert in intelligence analysis.
The preliminary hearings in the first phase will take place over five days, which Juneau says could be a “missed opportunity” to dig deeper into a complex issue.
The second phase of the inquiry, aimed at looking at how Canada can better deal with foreign interference, is for the second half of 2024. Juneau said that that phase might be “the more important one” — even though it will be less spectacular from a political viewpoint.
While the commission has tried to position itself as nonpartisan, it is already under fire for rejecting the Conservative party’s request for full standing, meaning that the Tories won’t be able to cross-examine witnesses or access all evidence submitted to the inquiry.
Juneau says the work of the commission will be extremely politicized. “Even if it does the best job possible of managing this process in a technical, nonpartisan way, both the government and the opposition will politicize this to the maximum extent that they can,” he said.
The Conservative leader has been seemingly unstoppable in 2023, with surging poll numbers nearly everywhere across the country and effective political ads on social media.
But expect to see Trudeau’s Liberals ramp up their efforts to associate Poilievre with American Republicans as the United States election campaign gets underway in 2024, and to double down on their comparisons with Donald Trump if he returns to the Oval Office.
The fact that the Conservatives have voted against the bill to implement a modernized Canada-Ukraine trade deal has fuelled the Liberals’ comparisons with MAGA-inspired politics, and served as material for political ads in ridings with a high Ukrainian population.
Poilievre’s party has claimed it voted against the legislation because it mentioned carbon pricing, which is essential for Ukraine to enter the European Union.
Turnbull said Poilievre has benefited from voter fatigue with Trudeau, but to maintain his advantage, he has to present himself and his party as a credible and reasonable alternative to the current government at a time when Canadians are looking for another option.
The professor mentioned the political ads last summer in which Poilievre is presented as a family man by his wife Anaida. “But then he goes into the House of Commons, and he’s vitriolic and snarky and angry and petty. And that’s a hard thing to reconcile with that other person.”
Ultimately, said Turnbull, the question on the ballot at the next election will revolve around trust. “Do you trust Poilievre with your pension, with your health-care system? The world is a very uncertain place both in Canada and outside. Do you trust Poilievre with all that?”
STONECREST, Ga. (AP) — Kamala Harris told the congregation of a large Black church in suburban Atlanta on Sunday that people must show compassion and respect in their daily lives and do more than just “preach the values.”
The Democratic presidential nominee’s visit to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest on her 60th birthday, marked by a song by the congregation, was part of a broad, nationwide campaign, known as “Souls to the Polls,” that encourages Black churchgoers to vote.
Pastor Jamal Bryant said the vice president was “an American hero, the voice of the future” and “our fearless leader.” He also used his sermon to welcome the idea of America electing a woman for the first time as president. “It takes a real man to support a real woman,” Bryant said.
“When Black women roll up their sleeves, then society has got to change,” the pastor said.
Harris told the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke, about a man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and was attacked by robbers. The traveler was beaten and left bloodied, but helped by a stranger.
All faiths promote the idea of loving thy neighbor, Harris said, but far harder to achieve is truly loving a stranger as if that person were a neighbor.
“In this moment, across our nation, what we do see are some who try to deepen division among us, spread hate, sow fear and cause chaos,” Harris told the congregation. “The true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”
She was more somber than during her political rallies, stressing that real faith means defending humanity. She said the Samaritan parable reminds people that “it is not enough to preach the values of compassion and respect. We must live them.”
Harris ended by saying, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,” as attendees applauded her.
Many in attendance wore pink to promote breast cancer awareness. Also on hand was Opal Lee, an activist in the movement to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday. Harris hugged her.
The vice president also has a midday stop at Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro with singer Stevie Wonder, before taping an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton that will air later Sunday on MSNBC. The schedule reflects her campaign’s push to treat every voting group like a swing state voter, trying to appeal to them all in a tightly contested election with early voting in progress.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, headed to church in Saginaw, Michigan, and his wife, Gwen, was going to a service in Las Vegas.
The “Souls to the Polls” effort launched last week and is led by the National Advisory Board of Black Faith Leaders, which is sending representatives across battleground states as early voting begins in the Nov. 5 election.
“My father used to say, a ‘voteless people is a powerless people’ and one of the most important steps we can take is that short step to the ballot box,” Martin Luther King III said Friday. “When Black voters are organized and engaged, we have the power to shift the trajectory of this nation.”
On Saturday, the vice president rallied supporters in Detroit with singer Lizzo before traveling to Atlanta to focus on abortion rights, highlighting the death of a Georgia mother amid the state’s restrictive abortion laws that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court, with three justices nominated by Donald Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade.
And after her Sunday push, she will campaign with former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
“Donald Trump still refuses to take accountability, to take any accountability, for the pain and the suffering he has caused,” Harris said.
Harris is a Baptist whose husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish. She has said she’s inspired by the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and influenced by the religious traditions of her mother’s native India as well as the Black Church. Harris sang in the choir as a child at Twenty Third Avenue Church of God in Oakland.
“Souls to the Polls” as an idea traces back to the Civil Rights Movement. The Rev. George Lee, a Black entrepreneur from Mississippi, was killed by white supremacists in 1955 after he helped nearly 100 Black residents register to vote in the town of Belzoni. The cemetery where Lee is buried has served as a polling place.
Black church congregations across the country have undertaken get-out-the-vote campaigns for years. In part to counteract voter suppression tactics that date back to the Jim Crow era, early voting in the Black community is stressed from pulpits nearly as much as it is by candidates.
In Georgia, early voting began on Tuesday, and more than 310,000 people voted on that day, more than doubling the first-day total in 2020. A record 5 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that the mobilization effort launched last week, not Oct. 20.
VANCOUVER – Predictions of a close election were holding true in British Columbia on Saturday, with early returns showing the New Democrats and the B.C. Conservatives locked in a tight battle.
Both NDP Leader David Eby and Conservative Leader John Rustad retained their seats, while Green Leader Sonia Furstenau lost to the NDP’s Grace Lore after switching ridings to Victoria-Beacon Hill.
However, the Greens retained their place in the legislature after Rob Botterell won in Saanich North and the Islands, previously occupied by party colleague Adam Olsen, who did not seek re-election.
It was a rain-drenched election day in much of the province.
Voters braved high winds and torrential downpours brought by an atmospheric river weather system that forced closures of several polling stations due to power outages.
Residents faced a choice for the next government that would have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago, between the incumbent New Democrats led by Eby and Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives, who received less than two per cent of the vote last election
Among the winners were the NDP’s Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon in Delta North and Attorney General Niki Sharma in Vancouver-Hastings, as well as the Conservatives Bruce Banman in Abbotsford South and Brent Chapman in Surrey South.
Chapman had been heavily criticized during the campaign for an old social media post that called Palestinian children “inbred” and “time bombs.”
Results came in quickly, as promised by Elections BC, with electronic vote tabulation being used provincewide for the first time.
The election authority expected the count would be “substantially complete” by 9 p.m., one hour after the close of polls.
Six new seats have been added since the last provincial election, and to win a majority, a party must secure 47 seats in the 93-seat legislature.
There had already been a big turnout before election day on Saturday, with more than a million advance votes cast, representing more than 28 per cent of valid voters and smashing the previous record for early polling.
The wild weather on election day was appropriate for such a tumultuous campaign.
Once considered a fringe player in provincial politics, the B.C. Conservatives stand on the brink of forming government or becoming the official Opposition.
Rustad’s unlikely rise came after he was thrown out of the Opposition, then known as the BC Liberals, joined the Conservatives as leader, and steered them to a level of popularity that led to the collapse of his old party, now called BC United — all in just two years.
Rustad shared a photo on social media Saturday showing himself smiling and walking with his wife at a voting station, with a message saying, “This is the first time Kim and I have voted for the Conservative Party of BC!”
Eby, who voted earlier in the week, posted a message on social media Saturday telling voters to “grab an umbrella and stay safe.”
Two voting sites in Cariboo-Chilcotin in the B.C. Interior and one in Maple Ridge in the Lower Mainland were closed due to power cuts, Elections BC said, while several sites in Kamloops, Langley and Port Moody, as well as on Hornby, Denman and Mayne islands, were temporarily shut but reopened by mid-afternoon.
Some former BC United MLAs running as Independents were defeated, with Karin Kirkpatrick, Dan Davies, Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka all losing to Conservatives.
Kirkpatrick had said in a statement before the results came in that her campaign had been in touch with Elections BC about the risk of weather-related disruptions, and was told that voting tabulation machines have battery power for four hours in the event of an outage.
— With files from Brenna Owen
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
VANDERHOOF, B.C. – British Columbia Conservative Leader John Rustad has been re-elected in his riding of Nechako Lakes.
Rustad was kicked out of the Opposition BC United Party for his support on social media of an outspoken climate change critic in 2022, and last year was acclaimed as the B.C. Conservative leader.
Buoyed by the BC United party suspending its campaign, and the popularity of Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives, Rustad led his party into contention in the provincial election.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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