Is Today the Day the Liberals Stop Spamming Me?

Years ago I joined the Conservative Party, wanting the party to take a more moderate turn and elect someone like Michael Chong. It would've been foreshadowing that he got a tiny fraction of the vote: instead, the vote was very heavily split between Andrew Scheer (an MP who claimed to have worked as an insurance broker, but only clerked in an office and did some coursework towards the designation), and Maxime Bernier, a former cabinet minister under Stephen Harper, who got the boot after leaving classified documents at his ex-girlfriend's apartment.

The rest is history: Scheer would narrowly defeat Bernier; Bernier would go on to found the People's Party of Canada (PPC), a right-wing, anti-vax, anti-immigration (like, more than the usual) party; and the Conservatives would spend the next eight years continuing to not be the government.

I left the party after the election - if they weren't going to elect a moderate leader, I had no intention of remaining - and hadn't been a member of a federal party since.

That changed when Justin Trudeau announced his intention to step down and allow the Liberal party to select a new leader. I've always been more left than centrist, but I'm still pragmatic: while if I were voting my heart, I'd vote NDP every time, I live in an electoral system where voting one's heart can lead to bad electoral outcomes, thanks to vote splitting. So, living in a swing riding, I've voted Liberal each election, and felt that given that, I may as well join the party and vote in the leadership election.

Which I did. It's been a weird one: what I'd consider two legitimate contenders (Chrystia Freeland, a former minister under Trudeau, and Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England), two whos? (Karina Gould and Frank Baylis), and one what-the-fuck (Ruby Dhalla, who I remember being involved in controversies involving caregivers - definitely the sort of skeletons you want in the closet of a future Prime Minister). Thankfully, the Liberals gave Dhalla the boot. And for the last few weeks, my email has been spammed several times a day by the various candidates ("Friend,", "[winter],", "chip in!"), trying to get my vote and maybe a few bucks. Definitely a few bucks.

I voted the first day of eligibility. I'm hopeful the candidate I voted for wins. But it's really been something seeing crisis-mode-Trudeau out in force, delivering great speeches and showing steel and spine. You can definitely tell when a politician has nothing to lose, and no fucks to give, and this version of him has been the best Prime Minister since Chretien. I'll be a little sad to see him go - not because he was great, or even consistently good, but because when things got really tough, he displayed instincts and ideas that were always spot on. He was the right leader for COVID, the right leader for dealing with the shit going on right now.

We'll see who wins, I guess. I have my hopes and suspicions, but God knows I'm often wrong about these things. And whoever wins, they'll have their work cut out for them. Before Trudeau announced his resignation, the Conservatives were in historic-majority polling. The Liberals looked like they were going to be wiped out. But then Trump went and made things interesting. Canadians, perhaps seeing something in the Conservative leadership, started softening towards them. Polls are showing the Conservatives most likely to win, but with paths to victory for the Liberals. All I can hope is that people look south, see what's going on, and stop to consider, really consider: do we want that shit up here, too? Or are we as Canadians capable of something else, something better?