Our intrepid political sage assesses the state of the electorate during a cross-country trip.

September 6, 2021

Driving across Canada in my Mini Cooper JCW last week I was surprised how much has changed over the last few decades, yet what remains eternal. The North Shore of Lake Superior is still stunning — untouched and inspiring. The spiraling, 3,500 foot descent from Banff through the Rockies remains breathtaking. The old clichés about our nation come flowing back. The country is vast and empty. It is a series of tiny human bubbles in thousands of kilometres of empty forest, lakes and rivers.

Canada is also changed — ravaged, even. By COVID, by years of decline in the resource sector, by political neglect, and by the migration of millions of Canadians from the communities their ancestors wrested from the wild to cities, driven by their inability to support their families anymore in towns like Pembroke and Pemberton, Dryden and Dubreuilville.

Even in the 1980s, on the thousands of kilometres of the Trans-Canada between Ontario and B.C, you occasionally saw a failed motel, lonely and abandoned, a few boarded up and empty storefronts. Today it is the norm. Every few kilometres sits a vandalized former family restaurant, gas station, or motel in remote areas. In small towns, dozens of storefronts’ plywood faces are the norm. In many towns, you can see abandoned schools, churches and hospitals, sliding slowly into ruin behind the Timmys, McDonalds and Walmarts. In the aging suburbs of Western cities and their downtown cores, homelessness is visible everywhere.

But one thing you do not see is much evidence of a nation about to make a choice of government after one of the most testing peacetime years in its history. This election campaign is almost completely absent from the face or voice of Canadian communities. You do not hear it being discussed in the gas stations, restaurants, hotel lobbies or bars across Canada. You do not see lawn signs or campaign events. I counted three lawn signs crossing Saskatchewan, apart from those dumped on highway sidings.

one thing you do not see is much evidence of a nation about to make a choice of government after one of the most testing peacetime years in its history. This election campaign is almost completely absent from the face or voice of Canadian communities.

You do hear, occasionally, vehement obscene denunciations of Justin Trudeau  — but not much positive endorsement of his competitors. A favourite on the back of many pickups is a stark, black on white, bumper sticker which simply shouts, “ F(red maple leaf)CK TRUDEAU.”

I did hear, eavesdropping in a Wawa restaurant, heartbreaking family tales of COVID disaster, but little attribution of blame — or credit — to governments or political leaders. Interestingly, even in the most hardcore anti-elite working-class communities of Northern Ontario you see almost complete mask observance. Construction workers in the men’s loo, waiters in grungy fast-food joints; and every public employee, from cops to highway construction flag women. In Saskatchewan and Alberta, masks almost nowhere. Indeed, you need to avoid angry glances when masked. B.C., fully masked.

On the highway, the family car is almost non-existent — a few days before the last big summer holiday, Labour Day weekend. The provincial parks are full, most displaying signs warning off aspiring campers, but the campers appear to be keeping to themselves, not making excursions into nearby towns.

What you do see are flotillas of trucks bearing enormous steel girders; huge, impressively engineered pumps, tanks and complex pieces of heavy equipment. Infrastructure dollars are clearly pumping vigorously into local economies. You also see endless highway and housing construction, literally everywhere, another sign of the country emerging from its awful pandemic paralysis.

Restaurants and malls are full. But somehow it all appears tentative, as if we are all putting our toes in once-comforting retail waters, but not yet ready to plunge into big purchases. Car dealers are offering almost unheard-of discount terms, despite the business media reporting vehicle shortages. Restaurant pricing appears focused on the bargain-priced menu, not lobster specials. It feels like the early days of an economic spring, with many still worrying about a late frost — or a fourth wave smackdown.

What this means for our political classes is hard to tease out. Three implications seems predictable: The level of disinterest probably means that voter turnout among these angry but demotivated voters will be low, with the older and propertied classes turning out in the highest numbers, as usual. Last-minute events will have a disproportionate impact on voter choice, as many feel agitated and easily shoved from one choice to another, with the level of partisan engagement is so weak. Finally, the party that most successfully, authentically, conveys its vision for a better, safer future for “me and my family” will win. Recent research reveals that the pluses many governments – including Ottawa – gained in the first year of pandemic is now eroding quickly with the terrifying rise in cases just as kids return to schools unvaccinated. We are battered, bruised, and disheartened by these awful, apparently endless pandemic months we have endured. We want hope. We want someone to believe in — maybe someone new.

It feels like the early days of an economic spring, with many still worrying about a late frost — or a fourth wave smackdown.

That the establishment political class is nervous is visible on many highways. It is a phenomenon I have never before seen, in a lifetime of watching Canadian political signage. More like the propaganda you witness on highways and buildings in India, China, and Latin American dictatorships, today you can see across Canada: enormous, highway billboard-sized vanity portraits of elected politicians — not candidates, elected provincial politicians. Greg Rickford, a somewhat controversial former Harper MP, now an Ontario minister at Queen’s Park, has billboards that feature nothing but his name and photo, across a large tract of Northwestern Ontario. His face is perhaps ten times life-size, the colour photography lurid, and the impact cringe-inducing, as they are placed just above eye-level, immediately off the highway.

I kept thinking, “What in God’s name would have compelled him to make this bizarre expenditure: vanity, insecurity, an incomprehensible fear that after more than a decade representing these communities, many voters would not recognize who he was?” It is almost embarrassing to be subjected to such blatant propaganda efforts. His competitor in the yuck stakes, on the other side of Northern Ontario, is Liberal MP Tony Rota in Sudbury, whose own Hollywood billboards are almost as hilariously absurd.

Green Party signs were visible nowhere; but New Dems, Tories and Liberals were in rough parity. For the first time I can recall, more than two thirds of each of the major party candidates do not grant the name of  their party leader or party any prominence — sometimes no recognition at all — on their signs. More interestingly, all three gave their partisan identity only the tiniest-font size recognition. Driving by, even slowly, all that registers is a clear candidate message: vote for me, not my leader or my tribe. 

The only place I saw any evidence of the People’s Party of Canada was in the most ravaged communities in Northeastern and Northwestern Ontario, and poorer Alberta and B.C. towns. Their strategists demonstrate some campaign craft. Their signs are a direct copy of Conservative colours, fonts and style — and they place them next to the real Conservative candidates, everywhere. All but the most well-informed voter could be confused as to who was on Erin O’Toole’s team as opposed to Mad Max’s strange crew.

At journey’s end, scanning the casual opulence of Vancouver’s luxury shopping streets, one reflects on the several Canadas visible on such a trip. There is the Canada in slow decline from happier days in old manufacturing and resource hubs. The aging urban Canada with cracked garbage-strewn streets, and homeless men and women holding their begging cups up to drivers of passing luxury cars. And the majority Canada of less visible, but still seriously struggling families.

O’Toole, Singh and Trudeau have appeals to each of them. One wonders how much of the pain of the last 18 months the leaders have truly seen. More crucially, how much those resilient but battered Canadians are persuaded by their promises of a better Canada ahead.

Contributing Writer Robin V. Sears, a former national director of the NDP during the Broadbent years, is an independent communications consultant based in Ottawa.