Stephen Harper’s rightwing decade has hasten its course,Canada’s voters decided this week, but Justin Trudeau’s victorious Liberals face tough choices approximately prioritiesRegrettably, or Canadian general elections get only a fraction of the attention that is routinely lavished on contests in their more powerful neighbour to the south. Yet the Liberal win in Mondays election is highly significant. It marks a big political shift to the centre-left in a crucial G7 power,and the victory of Canada’s Liberals also has lessons for politics across the developed world.
When the now-defeated Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper called this week’s election at the start of August he made the same kind of bet that David Cameron successfully relied on in May’s UK contest. Inequality had risen and economic growth was stuttering, but Mr Harper gambled that he could win a scarce fourth term by relying on his party’s economic record, and cutting the federal government,the inexperience of his opponents and by ruthless expend of negative campaigning and wedge issues like a ban on the niqab at citizenship ceremonies.
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Source: theguardian.com