Coming Back From The Brink

How do you like them apples?

It’s now a week after the election. A big one, where people voted for a lot more than their favourite team.

We’re still at the brink, but we dodged a bullet; we are not drifting to the U.S. or Hungary. There were fears Pierre Poilievre would have taken us down that path toward Trump and Orban and the rest. Instead, we went with the safe guy, Mark Carney. We landed in a place where there is no clear decision—Carney’s government is a minority. How Canadian!

I’m glad Poilievre lost, but I’m also glad he’ll soon be back. It might seem contradictory, but Poilievre speaks for a lot of people. Getting a parliament that works is not a bad thing; having Poilievre, maybe chastened by loss (one can only dream), could help us get there.

We’re not like the U.S., where there are only winners and losers, where there is no need to work with others, no need to hear different points of view. Perhaps in being so Canadian, we’ve stumbled on something important.