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Canada:
Decision 2015
What happened and what’s next?
October 21, 2015

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Popular vote
Party
Popular
Vote 2011
Popular
Vote 2015
18.9% 39.5%
39.6% 31.9%
30.6% 19.7%
6.0% 4.7%
3.9% 3.4%

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Seat allocation for 42nd Parliament
There are at least 2 electoral recounts occurring.
184 Seats 99 Seats 44 Seats
10 Seats 1 Seats
Total
338 Seats

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What happened?
• Campaign lacked focus on key issues
• Unlike 2005-06 campaign, where Conservatives defeated Liberal minority
government, there was no clear agenda for what would be done if they were re-
elected
• Key election promises had already been mandated in federal budget 2015 so there
wasn’t much room for anything “new”
• “Vote for us or else...” became the dominant theme
• Harper’s Leadership was a campaign theme early in campaign – they underestimated
how much #elxn42 was already a referendum on Harper and not a selling point with
Canadians
• Negative campaigning, insider fighting within the campaign team

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What happened?
• In their haste to make themselves the “change you can trust” they
forgot that they are a progressive party
- Progressives didn’t believe their message and their “base” didn’t relish
their shift to the centre
• People viewed them as “Conservative light” and not quite the change
they were seeking
• Forgot that Kathleen Wynne had won in Ontario by outflanking the
NDP on the left

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What happened?
• Long campaign wasn’t the fatal flaw for Trudeau that Conservatives hoped it would be
• The Conservatives set low expectations for Trudeau for the campaign and for the
debates and he exceeded expectations
• Instead of ignoring Conservative attacks, Liberals faced them head on “Not Ready”
became “Ready”
• Biggest risk of the campaign – running deficits – was a key differentiator between
Liberals and NDP and they won over the progressive vote
• Campaign was well run, positive, and their core campaign team was tight knit – all very
important factors
• ABC “Anyone but Conservative” vote coalesced under Liberal banner so vote spitting
didn’t occur in same way as previous campaigns

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• Taxes
- Create new tax bracket of 33% on individual incomes in excess of $200,000
- Reduce personal income tax rate on incomes between $44,701 and &89,401 per year to 20.5% (from 22%)
- Reduce small business tax rate from 11% to 9%
- Create the Canada Chid Benefit by replacing the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB), Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB)
and National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS)
- Cancel income splitting for families (keep pension splitting for seniors)
- Reduce Employment Insurance premiums to $1.65 from $1.88 per $100 in insurable earnings
• Infrastructure investment
- Increase federal infrastructure spending to nearly $125 B (from $65 B) over 10 years – including an additional $5 B on
new projects in first year of government, split equally between public transit, green projects and social infrastructure
- Invest $500 M in spending over next three years for immediate First Nations education infrastructure
• Marijuana
- Legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana
• Democratic Reform/Open Government
- Immediately restore long-form census
- Create non-partisan, merit-based process to advise Prime Minister on Senate appointments
- End use of omnibus bills
- Amend Access-to-Information laws to make government more transparent
Key Liberal Platform Commitments

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• Health Care
- Negotiate a new Health Accord with provinces
• Environment
- Create national emissions reductions targets
- Launch public review of Canada’s environmental assessment processes
• Refugees
- Accept 25,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq into Canada by end of 2015
• First Nations
- Call inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
- Invest additional $2.6 B for core First Nations education over next four years
• Military
- End Canada’s involvement in air strikes against the Islamic State but maintain training and humanitarian aid
- Launch new competition to replace CF-18s and cancel F-35 program
Key Liberal Platform Commitments

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• Liberals have two challenges: scope and pace.
• Over his decade in power, Harper fundamentally changed the
function of the federal government
• Where others sought to consolidate power at the federal level,
Harper made a show of getting the money and centralizing
power out of Ottawa
• It will take some time, and some money, to start to refashion
the scope and purpose of the federal government to fit
Trudeau’s “Real Change” agenda and that’s exactly what
Stephen Harper’s legacy will be
• Key changes implemented during the Harper years in terms of
fiscal policy, economic strategy, labour market development,
foreign affairs, defence, energy, natural resources, justice and
immigration cannot be undone overnight
What’s Next?
Scope

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What’s Next?
• Other areas such as urban affairs, the
environment/climate, and healthcare have
been handled in vastly different ways for
the past 10 years
• We can expect meetings of First Ministers
to return along with the attendant drama
they involve
• Further, new issues have emerged that
previous Liberal governments haven’t had
to deal with including cyber security and
contemporary biotechnology – and all of
their related issues are changing by the
minute

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• Given the changes that Harper has put in
place during his decade in power, the
Liberals can’t implement their agenda
overnight
• Priorities will have to be set and choices will
have to be made
• Even with a majority mandate, some of the
Liberal election promises will take time to
implement
• This may not make the Liberal base happy
• As the Conservatives have learned, majority
mandates aren’t always a blessing
What’s Next: Pace

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Where will
Trudeau start?
• He started on E-day +1 by making sure
everyone understand there was a new PM
in town
• Greeted subway commuters in Montreal
before heading to a rally in Ottawa followed
by a 25 minutes Q&A with reporters
• It was a noticeable change in tone and
approach from the last 10 years
• There’s a busy fall ahead with a cabinet to
be named by November 4th, a G-20 summit
to attend, a climate change conference in
Paris, to name just a few

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What will the country
look like in 4 years?
• More infrastructure spending will lead to more
projects going ahead within the next 3 years
• The way the federal government interacts with
the provinces will change back to something
similar to the pre-Harper era
• There will be strides taken towards a more
activist government in Ottawa