It was a breathtaking display of passive-aggressive oneupmanship. Forty days of yelling at each other culminated on election night when the leaders of the two major parties took turns stepping on their opponent’s TV time.
Not accidentally intruding, mind you. The chances of that happening by chance — twice — are pretty slim. They deliberately pre-empted their opponents out of vindictiveness.
Higher-minded leaders use the victory/concession speeches as a time to close down the quadrennial family argument and move on. But Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn’t resist one last chance to cross-check a rival.
It took the traditional talking over each other during the debate to a new level. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh went first and went on and on. Scheer got impatient and, goaded by weeks of slurs from the NDP, barged up to a podium and started his speech right in the middle of Singh’s.
An opposition leader trumps a fourth-party leader, so the networks cut to him.
Then a moment later, Trudeau did the same thing to Scheer that Scheer did to Singh. And he got the same cutaway that Scheer got, since a PM trumps an opposition leader.
For a few moments all three leaders poured out their hopes and dreams at the same time, but only Trudeau’s speech made it to air it its entirety.
This took place while it was dawning on everyone that the main result of the election is that some extra degree of co-operation is going to be needed to make the House of Commons work.
Singh deserved to get curbed to some extent. A fourth-place finisher does not deserve 24 minutes of national TV time to rehash his entire campaign.
By my calculation, he should have five minutes, tops. Thanks to everyone, congratulations to all who tried, take the lessons to heart, hard work ahead, thanks again and out.
But it looked like a calculated insult from Scheer, to essentially photobomb Singh’s moment and start blathering.
And for Trudeau to do exactly the same thing barely a minute into Scheer’s appearance destroyed whatever was left of protocol and etiquette.
Maybe he was just following the slogan on Scheer’s podium: “It’s time for YOU to get ahead.”
Everyone in the country was sick of all of them by that point. All voters want to see and hear were a few graceful remarks and some quick exits.
Apart from the rude timing, the remarks themselves didn’t earn much in the way of style points for either major party leader.
Scheer told his Regina crowd that he’d just called Trudeau to congratulate him. Then he said — not that anyone heard it by that point — that the Liberals had lost more than 20 seats and lost support in every region of the country, while his Conservatives were leading in the popular vote count.
“More Canadians wanted us to win this election than any other party.”
He stopped short of saying: “Nyah, nyah.” There was a brisk rundown of how the whole country is going to hell — the rise of the Bloc Québécois, the western divide, debt, high taxes, economic headwinds, etc.
He included a laboured quote from John Diefenbaker about freedom, then suggested: “Let’s remember this feeling; coming close, but falling just short. Let’s use it to redouble our efforts.”
But Trudeau had horned in on him 10 minutes earlier. After negating Scheer’s TV time and dividing him right off the screen, the prime minister opened with: “Tonight Canadians rejected division and negativity.”
He recognized people who didn’t vote for him, but skipped even an obligatory reference to his opponents.
Most notably, he twice stressed that Canadians had given him “a clear mandate.” That’s extremely debatable, to the point of being factually wrong. A clear mandate is a majority. He doesn’t have a majority.
He delivered a sincere thank you for being returned to office. But there wasn’t much recognition of the fact that he’s back on a term of probation.
Some humility would be in order. But if he had humility, he would have waited his turn on camera.
