Xinhua News Agency, Ottawa, September 21st News Analysis: Trudeau’s new term of office is difficult for early elections
Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Baodong
According to Canadian media reports on the 21st, the preliminary results of the country’s 44th Federal House of Representatives election showed that the Liberal Party led by the current Prime Minister Trudeau won 158 seats out of a total of 338 seats, maintaining its status as the largest party, but still failed to get it. More than half of the seats it desires.
Analysts believe that Trudeau, in order to get rid of the minority government status, held elections ahead of schedule in spite of the new crown epidemic. The result failed to achieve his goals, and his future governance will face multiple difficulties.
“Gambling” failed
Elections for the House of Representatives of Canada are generally held every four years. According to normal procedures, the elections for the House of Representatives of the current session should be held in October 2023. However, because the Liberal Party won only 157 seats in the House of Representatives in the last election in October 2019, and eventually formed a minority government, the implementation of policies was subject to many constraints. Therefore, Trudeau took the lead in the Liberal Party’s polls on August 15 this year. Announcing that elections will be held two years in advance, hoping to change the status quo.
However, Trudeau’s conduct of holding elections in advance of the party’s interests in disregard of Canada’s new wave of epidemics has been widely criticized, and the Liberal Party’s support rate advantage has rapidly diminished. In the end, the number of seats received by the five parties in the House of Representatives remained almost unchanged compared with the previous general election, and Trudeau’s hopes of getting rid of the minority government situation fell through.
Some analysts believe that the 58.5% voter turnout in this election is significantly lower than the 67% in the previous election. The reason is that many voters protested against Trudeau’s “gambling election” held during the “health crisis” by refusing to vote.
Multiple difficulties
Public opinion here pointed out that in the past 150 years since the founding of Canada, there has never been a situation where different political parties have jointly governed after elections. Trudeau’s Liberal Party will still choose to form a separate minority government with a high probability. He will not be easy in his new term and will face multiple difficulties.
The first is the serious domestic division. Canada has more parties, leading to political fragmentation and dispersing voter support. In this general election, Trudeau’s Liberal Party won the support of more than 5.17 million voters, accounting for only 19% of the total number of registered voters. At the same time, Canadians are seriously opposed to some key issues such as vaccination. Trudeau himself was even thrown stones by opponents of vaccination during the campaign.
Secondly, the plight of a few governments continues. The failure of the Liberal Party to obtain more than half of the seats in the House of Representatives means that the Trudeau government will still need to seek the cooperation of the opposition party in its governance in the future. Otherwise, not only will the bills proposed by the government be easily rejected, but even the government itself may be voted “no confidence” and collapse.
The third is that the epidemic and the economic situation are not optimistic. According to data released by the Public Health Agency of Canada on the 17th, from September 10 to 16, Canada had an average of 4,375 new confirmed cases of new crown per day, an increase of 16% over the previous week. Most of the cases were infected with the highly infectious delta virus. Strain. Statistics Canada recently released data showing that the inflation rate in Canada reached 4.1% in August, the highest since March 2003; Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.3% in the second quarter of this year, and its GDP is initially estimated to shrink by 0.4% in July. .
Some analysts pointed out that Trudeau finally won the election and achieved re-election by promising huge financial aid and stimulus. In the face of many of the above-mentioned difficulties, how he fulfilled these promises is still a problem.
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