Election 2019: Blunder after blunder for Trudeau and Scheer

What started off as a bit of snooze has quickly spiralled into an election campaign of scandal (Trudeau) and deceit (Scheer). In the last 23 days of the Federal election campaign, Justin Trudeau has been revealed as a blackface-loving freak while Mr. Scheer can’t seem to keep up his façade as a fake insurance broker. May and Singh on the other hand have yet to make any headway in either of their campaigns.

As of Monday, Sept. 30, according to CBC’s poll tracker, the Conservatives hold a minute lead over the Liberals with the parties polling at 33.9 per cent and 33.5 per cent respectively. CBC’s Éric Grenier projects that, with these numbers, the most likely result would be a Liberal or Conservative-led minority government.

At the start of the campaign, the Liberals held a stronger lead over their Conservative counterparts. Some may attribute this levelling out in the polls to when the news broke on Sept. 18 of a photo of Trudeau at a 2001 Arabian Nights (a problem within itself) themed gala that was hosted by a Vancouver private school where Trudeau was teaching at the time. In the photo, Trudeau is dressed in costume as Aladdin with his body painted in dark makeup.

Naturally, the image stoked many criticisms of the Prime Minister with his opponents calling for Trudeau’s resignation. On the evening of the photo’s release (the word “release” here is used lightly as the photo was published in the school’s yearbook, meaning that it has been in print for nearly 20 years).

Trudeau delivered a brief statement from the Liberal aircraft and answered questions from the press. “I am deeply sorry” and “I should’ve known better” were the two main sentiments shared by the Prime Minister, leaving many Canadians profoundly disappointed and disgusted.

This story only developed further as it was discovered that there was not just one more, but in fact at least two other instances where the PM wore blackface.

On Sept. 19, Trudeau took time from campaigning to answer questions. Unlike his statement the night prior, he expressed a deeper understanding of his wrong-doings and spoke to feelings of ignorance, embarrassment and disappointment in himself.

Now, two weeks later, many Canadians have moved on or all but forgotten the scandal, which caused only a slight dip in the polls, though many others will not soon forgive or forget the display of racism from their nation’s leader.

The Liberals are also facing criticism for their newly released climate action plan. In a tweet on Sept. 27, Trudeau said, “We’ll plant 2 billion trees over the next ten years. That’s it That’s the tweet.” (It actually wasn’t it. He proceeded to tweet three other messages about that initiative later in the day). The general message from the left is that we need to be focusing efforts to reduce emissions at quite a rapid rate.

The same day, Trudeau was seen at the Montréal Climate Strike, which many viewed as controversial. Greta Thunberg, who has inspired the global climate strikes and was in attendance at the Montréal event is calling for zero emissions by the year 2030, a target that the Liberals are nowhere close to meeting.

Turning now to the Conservatives, CP leader Andrew Scheer is coming under fire for lying (for years) about being an insurance broker. The Globe and Mail reported on the weekend of Sept. 28 that they were not able to find record of Scheer’s official accreditation to practice as an insurance broker in Saskatchewan. By Monday, #ScheerNotAsAdvertised was trending in Canada.

In the past, Scheer has been reproached for his shifty stance on marriage equality and general lack of support for 2SLGBTQIA+ people.

One U of R student, Tom Abramovic, who is in his second year of religious studies, shared his opinions on the upcoming election and the various parties’ platforms.

“A really important thing is that we have to be compassionate to humans, and I think that the Liberal party, though they do that, I think it’s more of a ‘look at me being good!’ whereas the NDP are a little more humble about it.

“When I hear Jagmeet Singh talking about adding eye-care under Medicare, that is really appealing to me because I’d like to get glasses but the idea of spending $700 is like . . . I could spend that on a class.

“With the Conservative Party, I’ve got some mixed feelings because the way that I look at the political spectrum is [that] you need a balance of left and right. The left is very focused on the human side of things: compassion toward fellow man whereas the Conservatives also bring things down to real point, but the way that they go about it oftentimes isn’t really the best, especially with the environment. I look at the Conservative Party’s stance on environmental issues and I go ‘oh no . . .’

“The NDP has an actual possibility of overthrowing this two-party system. We vote in the Liberals, we get mad at the Liberals and then we vote in the Conservatives and then we get mad at the Conservatives . . .”