Election night winners and losers

It’s 2019 all over again.

After all that, let’s do a quick rundown of winners and losers from an election that changed almost nothing:

Loser: Justin Trudeau. That Willy Wonka video the Tories posted to Twitter just before the writ dropped might have been the cringiest thing in the history of the world, but its premise wasn’t wrong. Trudeau saw an opportunity to convert his minority government into a majority, and blew it. He’s still the PM, so he’s got that going for him, but he’s really in no better position than he was before this ugly, divisive and unnecessary campaign started, and his hubris cost some Liberal cabinet ministers their jobs.

Loser: Erin O’Toole. If you compare the Tories’ election night result to the polls this past summer, it doesn’t look too bad. When you compare it to the party’s 2019 results under the uninspiring Andrew Scheer, though, it’s a crushing disappointment. The CPC made some gains in Atlantic Canada, but these were offset by losses in the Greater Toronto Area.

I’m actually willing to give the guy another chance, but the knives are out. Tory Twitter is demanding a more right-wing leader next time around, which should totally get the CPC over the hump in Toronto. Right?

Loser: Jagmeet Singh. If TikTok users voted, he’d be Prime Minister of Canada today.

TikTok users don’t vote.

Loser: Yves-Francois Blanchet. The Bloc Québécois are the one party I expected to make major gains on election night, after the honour of the strong and united Quebec nation was offended by (checks notes) a question at the English-language debate. And the Blocheads did indeed gain more seats than any other party.

They increased their seat count by two.

So, no Quebec nationalist sweep of la belle province this year. But these people in Quebec’s civil service aren’t allowed to wear hijabs, so at least they have that going for them.

Loser: Annamie Paul. The Green Party still has two seats in the House of Commons. Paul does not hold one of them. And the Green vote collapsed so badly that the party won fewer votes across the country than the upstart wingnut movement led by…

Loser: Maxime Bernier. The PPC won 5% of the popular vote. That and fifty dollars will buy you some supplements from the Infowars online store. Bernier was routed in his own riding of Beauce - turns out that getting arrested in Manitoba doesn’t move the needle in Quebec - and despite some decent results here and there (in my own riding of Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, with no Conservative on the ballot, the PPC candidiate broke the 10% barrier) the People’s Party has no more representation in Parliament than the Rhinoceros Party.

This, combined with the Conservatives winning the popular vote again but losing the election, could make electoral reform a major cause for right-leaning Canadians. Left-wingers who once wanted it may suddenly decide that the status quo is okay after all.

Loser: everyone else. Are we Canadians more optimistic and united than we were before the writ was dropped? You know the answer to that one. The 2021 federal election really had no winners.

Except one.

Winner: the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). The final vote tallies aren’t in yet, but with 36 candidates compared to just 26 for the running-dog revisionists of the Communist Party of Canada, the Maoists will surely be the vanguard force that leads the great proletarian revolution poised to happen any day now.