Parliament is dissolved, and the 44^th General Election has begun. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau characterised the election as a chance for Canadians to weigh in on the direction they want to see the recovery, calling it the most important election since 1945 – and he didn’t go the route of pointing to just how toxic the House of Commons was all spring as his justification (though he easily could have), because this is Campaign Trudeau™, and everything needs to be upbeat and positive. He also put mandatory vaccinations (for areas under federal jurisdiction, including air travel) as one of the centre planks of his campaign and dared people to contrast it to the other parties, with both Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh spending the weekend prevaricating and talking around it, so even though it may seem that the distinctions between them are subtle, they are there.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1426929811071635458

Erin O’Toole has pretty much retreated to his studio in downtown Ottawa, and spent the first day holding telephone town halls from there, and will do so again today. His pitch has been that the election is pretty much a vanity project by Trudeau in the hopes of a majority, but the fact that he has so far stumbled out of the gate, both with a disastrous shitpost video and his waffling on mandatory vaccinations, has not been terribly auspicious.

What rights and freedoms the vaccinated, willfully unvaccinated and unhappily unvaccinated should have is very much a political issue. Colliding rights, different concepts of the good, and honest disagreement about how to achieve desired ends. UTTERLY political. https://t.co/zyTJMAmIrH

— David Reevely (@davidreevely) August 16, 2021

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1427054892338884611

Jagmeet Singh started his day in Montreal, as he had already committed to attending the Pride parade there – but there was the inherent contradiction in that parades and crowds are okay but elections are unsafe. It’s also worth noting that he didn’t criticise the Governor General for granting dissolution, which makes it apparent that his letter two weeks ago was a cynical ploy that undermined Mary Simon.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1426320404315004940

Of course, while the opposition leaders kept insisting that the election was unnecessary and in some cases, too costly (but seriously, if you think it’s a bad think that elections cost money, you shouldn’t be in the business of democracy), their own rhetoric belies the fact that they didn’t think that Parliament was working, or should have worked because they kept insisting that you can’t trust the prime minister. So…maybe be more consistent if you want people to believe you when you said that there was no reason for an election, because clearly, you think there is.

So far, party leaders in 43rd Parliament seem to be implying general agreement that it wasn’t going to be workable for much longer. #Elxn44

— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) August 15, 2021

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1426974226007867401

Otherwise, a campaign that is going to be digital and social-media focused has been off to a bad start, contrasting the Conservatives’ terrible shitpost video versus the Liberals’ hopeful and optimistic video that is a note-perfect recreation of a parody video of a feel-good corporate video employing stock footage. So…yeah. Everything is kind of awful, but at least we only have five weeks of this and not two years like the Americans do.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1426699232141004805

This seems totally real and not a sock puppet account at all!
(And that an MP RT-ed this into my TL and another MP is in the replies to this is just an extra layer of sad) https://t.co/3hgbx5pgsM

— Supriya Dwivedi (@supriyadwivedi) August 14, 2021

On the campaign trail:

• The Liberals and NDP say their candidates must be fully vaccinated; the other parties say they “recommend” it but don’t require it.
• The Conservatives have been emailing supporters in the hopes of filling the holes in their slate of candidates.
• A number of Conservative MPs and party luminaries denounced their own attack ad in advance of the election call, because seriously.
• Conservative MP David Yurdiga, who called mandatory vaccines “tyrannical,” now says he won’t run again, and the local UCP MLA has resigned to run in his place.
• Heather Scoffield wants a serious and solid discussion on economic recovery including how the parties plan to pay for their promises.
• Susan Delacourt looks over the first day’s activities, both virtual and in person, to ponder how much the pandemic changed the way politics is done.
• Paul Wells makes note of how much got accomplished over the past couple of weeks, and ironically suggests elections every 90 days if it means progress.

Good reads:

• Here is how Elections Canada plans to hold pandemic-safe voting.
• The federal leaders’ debates are set for September 8^th and 9^th.
• Canada evacuated its personnel from the embassy in Kabul shortly before the city fell to the Taliban, leaving questions about evacuating interpreters and contractors.
• Because there are overlapping elections, Nova Scotia goes to the polls for their provincial election on Tuesday.
• The Haitian community in Quebec is scrambling to put together assistance in the wake of another devastating earthquake in that country.
• Here’s a longread on the housing situation in Manitoba, and in particular whether the province is suitably using the federal funds that have been flowing to it.
• Philippe Lagassé offers a primer on dissolution, the caretaker convention and government formation, because you know TV journalists will get it wrong.

Odds and ends:

Hope springs eternal in #cdnpoli, but they never do. https://t.co/At0FPlLBC3

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) August 14, 2021

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