It is somewhat agreeable to turn from the latest tweets on the sorta-civil-war front south of the northern US border to our slightly less antagonistic federal politics in what the Constitution Act, 1982 calls Canada’s present “free and democratic society.”

It is still more agreeable to turn from Canadian federal politics to some brief but compelling weekend YouTube adventures with the brilliant swing jazz prodigy from Barcelona, Andrea Motis — and her equally remarkable mentor and jazz educator at the Municipal School of Music of Sant Andreu, Joan Chamorro.

To get the only somewhat agreeable scene out of the way first, the next big event in Canadian federal politics will be the swearing-in of Justin Trudeau’s new Liberal minority cabinet, on Wednesday, November 20.

Then the freshly elected Canadian House of Commons will convene on Thursday, December 5. And Governor General Julie Payette will read the new minority government’s throne speech in the Senate, outlining its priorities. As explained by CTV News : “Traditionally, the vote on the throne speech is considered the first test of confidence in the House of Commons … considering the minority dynamics, the Liberals will need allies on the opposition benches to vote in favour in order for it to pass.”

On all these matters we have quickly consulted, on the CBC and CTV sites : “Trudeau urged to give Freeland domestic portfolio, name her deputy PM” ; “May: Greens will vote against Liberal throne speech unless carbon targets toughened” ; “For the opposition, a dilemma: work with Trudeau, or cut him down early?” ; “Trudeau has a choice, work with NDP or work with Tories: Singh” ; “Would Blanchet go to Alberta to talk oil? ‘With pleasure’” ; “Blanchet spars with Kenney after meeting with Trudeau.”

Our initial quick and dirty sense is that the new Trudeau Liberal minority government is unlikely to fall right away on the throne speech. But how much longer it will last is no doubt anyone’s guess right now.

Both Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May seem to us to be pushing their initial demands harder than their actual numbers of seats in the Canadian House of Commons (and their current party treasuries) support. Yves-Francois Blanchet’s somewhat more weighty Bloc Québécois may be happy enough to help keep the new Liberal minority government led by a fellow Quebecer in office for some respectable length of time (18 months to two years on the historical experience?). And Mr. Trudeau probably can work sometimes with the NDP and other times with the Tories, despite Mr. Singh’s initial rhetoric. (Will even Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives vote against something crucial for the Trans Mountain Pipeline, eg?)

Stay tuned for a further cautious assessment just before the December holiday season starts in earnest.

Meanwhile, listening to the 24-year-old Catalan jazz musician Andrea Motis and her mentor Joan Chamorro on YouTube this weekend has been both more entertaining and somehow more reassuring than keeping up with the latest North American political wrinkles (and much worse), even in Canada.

In some ways all this should be more properly dealt with on our presently o-so-gradually reviving companion site, BIRDHOP! Rumour has it that an article on “Remembering ‘Petite Fleur’ : Sidney Bechet, Andrea Motis … etc” has been planned for that cultural (as opposed to political — and economic) blogazine. And these few further words here are probably just a kind of teaser for this future article in another place, whenever it may finally get done in these too hectic times.

It may be best to start with a quotation from the often quite informative and not inaccurate Wikipedia : “Andrea Motis (born May 9, 1995) is a Catalan jazz singer and trumpeter who sings in Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and English … From the age of seven, Motis developed musically at the Municipal School of Music of Sant Andreu, a neighborhood of Barcelona, becoming the school’s lead trumpeter and later saxophonist. In 2007, at twelve, she began to collaborate with the Sant Andreu Jazz Band, led by teacher and musician Joan Chamorro … In 2010, at the age of fifteen, she recorded an album of jazz standards, Joan Chamorro Presents Andrea Motis.”

Supporters of the Bloc Québécois in Canada could of course be happy about the Catalan separatist angle in Spain. (And Spain is having its own political crazy season on this and other fronts as well.) But what we find reassuring is how an assortment of often very young Spanish musicians of the early 21st century are bringing new life to the American swing jazz of the 1930s and 1940s. More will no doubt follow in the “Remembering ‘Petite Fleur’ : Sidney Bechet, Andrea Motis … etc” article on BIRDHOP, when it finally gets done.

Meanwhile again, here is a quick introduction to the subject on the remarkable musical resource that YouTube currently provides internet junkies like all of us :

(1) The best place to start is with the 16-year-old Andrea Motis’s quite enchanting rendition of Sidney Bechet’s 1952 classic “Petite Fleur,” as performed in Barcelona in 2011. Her mentor and teacher Joan Chamorro on this occasion is playing string bass. The youthful Ms Motis is playing a soprano saxophone — like Sidney Bechet himself. She also plays alto sax, trumpet, and sings beautifully (in four languages as above).

(2) Jumping ahead some four years — late 2014 or early 2015 — “Minor Swing” presents the altogether amazing young student musicians of Joan Chamorro’s Sant Andreu Jazz Band, aided by two senior musicians, the guitarist Jopsep Traver and the American swing tenor saxophone specialist Scott Hamilton. Andrea Motis plays trumpet here (and her younger sister Carla Motis also plays guitar). The piece features the young violinist Elia Bastida, underlining all its debts to the 1930s Quintette du Hot Club de France with legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli. (The work of violinist Elia Bastida, with a much smaller group including Joan Chamorro can also be sampled in a quite striking 2017 rendition of the Django Reinhardt classic, “Nuages.” Swing and other jazz in Spain today — even or especially in Catalonia — inevitably has European as well as American roots. And who would complain in the age of the global village?)

(3) Two numbers from 2015 offer intriguing sides of Andrea Motis’s work. In the first she plays alto sax in collaboration with the contemporary American altoist Jesse Davis, on the Duke Ellington classic “All Too Soon,” accompanied by the students of the Sant Andreu Jazz Band. In the second Andrea Motis sings the old American standard “Just Friends,” accompanied by the Andrea Motis Joan Chamorro Big Band — and of course in English.

(4) Just this past spring 2019 in Zurich, Switzerland the Andrea Motis Quintet (with “Josep Traver, guitarra ; Ignasi Terraza, piano ; Joan Chamorro, contrabajo ; and Esteve Pi, bateria) performed “Dança da solidão.” Ms Motis sings (in Portuguese here, we’re guessing?) And plays trumpet.

Someone should invite some suitable version of these talented people to play for the swearing-in of the new Trudeau cabinet this coming Wednesday, November 20. (But of course too many taxpayers — in both official languages — would complain about the waste of scarce tax dollars, that could be better spent on pipelines and public pharmacare programs for all, etc, etc, etc, etc.)

TORONTO, ON. NOVEMBER 8, 2019. FROM THE DESKTOP COMPUTER OF CITIZEN X. There was a little snow on the ground yesterday morning — unusually early in the season for Canada’s current largest metropolis.

(Between the former largest, still vital past in Montreal, and the future in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Gatineau, and beyond. The 10 Canadian Census Metropolitan Areas with the largest % population increase 2017–2018 included Peterborough and Kitchener-Cambridge- Waterloo in Ontario, Regina and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, and Halifax in Nova Scotia!)

Whatever else, the wild and crazy autumn of 2019 is also an unusual time for three of the many, diverse UN member-state narratives from which we the contemporary people of the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area view the new life of the 21st century :

(1) The American Republic next door. On what one Western Canadian correspondent has called “the train wreck south of the border” I think I feel about the same as I did a month or so ago, when I wildly and crazily came up with “Is Trump impeachment inquiry yet another boogie-woogie rumble of the dream deferred?” (October 4, 2019).

As of November 8, 2019, I would just add four further notes. The first two are embodied in the recent helpful Statista charts posted here : “US POLITICS : Do you think President Trump should be impeached?” (October 30) and “Impeachment: How Support For Trump Compares To Nixon” (November 6). What I take from these numbers is that what’s going on the USA today is more like at least a kind of civil war than anything else — and the analogy with what happened to Richard Nixon in 1974 is weak at best.

Two further notes point to first, a November 4 editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail : “Donald Trump is a terrible person, but that’s not enough to stop him from being re-elected” ; and second, a November 6 piece by Michael Tomasky on the New York Review of Books website, called “A Dem for All Seasons?”.

Both pieces worry that the Democrats may be at least close to dropping the ball in the kind of civil war right now, and they come up with somewhat similar conclusions — though Mr. Tomasky’s inevitably draw on better inside knowledge (and a real commitment to progressive politics).

The (in a Canadian context rather conservative) Globe and Mail urges : “What will matter is whether white, working-class voters in key states believe that a return to adult politics won’t also mean the return of their perceived disenfranchisement and economic isolation … It won’t be an easy sell, unfortunately.”

Mr. Tomasky somewhat more optimistically concludes : “it might turn out that all this hand-wringing about the Democrats is misplaced … They need to put the Obama coalition back together. And they mustn’t choose between Obama-to-Trump white working-class voters and younger, more multiracial and “woke” voters. They need both.”

(2) There’ll always be an England — but what about the United Kingdom? Meanwhile, the wild and crazy world of Brexit across the North Atlantic — and everything else in current UK politics — now turns around the Thursday, December 12, 2019 election that close observers were predicting for some time before it was confirmed.

The new piece in the puzzle from my own limited-knowledge end of observation from a considerable distance has been my discovery of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s brain trust, Dominic Cummings. And a key source for me here has been a helpful article by the “British novelist and journalist” James Meek in the October 24, 2019 issue of the London Review of Books, called “The Dreamings of Dominic Cummings.”

Cummings is, as explained by Wikpiedia, “a senior British political strategist and adviser. From 2007 to 2014, he was a Special Adviser to the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove. From 2015 to 2016 he was the Campaign Director of Vote Leave, an organisation opposed to continued British membership of the European Union that took an active part in the 2016 referendum campaign on that issue … In July 2019, new Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed him [to] the role of Special Adviser to the Prime Minister.”

Mr. Cummings has perhaps inevitably been compared to Steve Banon and Stephen Miller in the USA today. Yet my sense from a distance in both directions is that just as Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not finally as alarming and near-crazy a political leader as President Donald Trump, Dominic Cummings is a more impressive backroom big thinker than either Banon or Miller. Does this mean that the leader the London wits call BOJO is actually going to win the December 12 election and somehow resolve the current Brexit conundrum? My view would be : read James Meek’s article on Cummings (and/or even “Dominic Cummings’s Blog” — from at least one horse’s mouth) ; and then remember what William Davies said not too long ago in the London Review of Books — “Before very long, we will be witnessing an electoral showdown … only a fool would claim to know which way it will go.”

(3) November 8 : National Aboriginal Veterans Day in Canada. Canada is more sensible these days than either the UK or the USA — or so many among we Canadians think. (We recently more or less re-elected the Justin Trudeau Liberals, eg.) But …

For one good introduction to the not-at-all sensible “Wexit rumblings” (echoes?) in the old British North America, see soon-to-retire CTV luminary Don Martin’s interview with Sandy Garossino on Canada’s Pacific Coast : “Where has BC been amid talk of Western alienation? … ‘We’re being held hostage by a bunch of guys on Facebook … If there’s a west, it’s in BC and we’re not going anywhere and we have no time for any of this.’” To which many on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario will of course just say Amen.

Finally note that today — November 8 — is being celebrated (or perhaps commemorated is the better word) as National Aboriginal Veterans Day in many parts of the geographically second-largest UN member state in the contemporary global village.

To cite Wikipedia yet again : “National Aboriginal Veterans Day is a memorial day observed in Canada in recognition of aboriginal [aka First Nations, Indigenous] contributions to military service, particularly in the First and Second World Wars and the Korean War. It occurs annually on 8 November … The memorial was inaugurated in Winnipeg [ancient homeland of the late great Canadian Métis leader Louis Riel] in 1994, and has since spread nationwide.” Note as well that “Canada” itself is an Aboriginal/First Nations/Indigenous word (as are, to become unbearably provincial and local, “Ontario” and “Toronto”). And so it is even progressive to commemorate and even celebrate the ancient warrior traditions of the most northern North America, and what they have so nobly done In Defence of Canada today.

Yesterday the media watching PM Justin Trudeau in the wake of the October 21 federal election reported that “Trudeau turns to two political veterans for advice on forming his minority government,” and “Trudeau taps French ambassador, Anne McLellan to aide in transition.”

(Canada’s ambassador to France, in case you are wondering, is Isabelle Hudon, not Anne McLellan, “a one-time Liberal deputy prime minister.” Ms Hudon is from Quebec, and Ms McLellan is from Alberta — two provinces that have in some degree protested against Mr Trudeau’s federal government in last week’s election.)

The prime minister has now visited Governor General Julie Payette (whom he himself appointed back in the summer of 2017, to take office on October 2 of the same year). As reported by the Canadian Press : “Trudeau and Payette were expected to talk at their meeting about a time for Parliament to reconvene, among other issues … The Prime Minister’s Office hasn’t released any details about what was said.”

We still don’t know just when Parliament will reconvene. But when it does there will be a “Speech from the Throne” in our old British North American lexicon. And the “first test of the Liberals’ ability to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons will be the vote on the Throne Speech, which will spell out the government’s priorities … ”

Meanwhile, when Justin Trudeau won his first (and that time a majority) Liberal government in 2015, “it took more than a month for MPs to be called back to Ottawa, though a new cabinet was sworn in far earlier than that … This time, Trudeau is taking longer to put together his cabinet.” It will be unveiled on Wednesday, November 20, 2019.

At the moment, when so much still remains unknown and subject to vast speculation, I find myself wondering about the implications for the political future in the recent change the prime minister has apparently effected in the method of tying his tie.

For evidence I submit two photographs. The first was taken when PM Trudeau visited the White House to bless the USMCA trade deal (aka NAFTA II) on June 20, 2019. The second is from his news conference in Ottawa, after the recent election, on Oct. 23, 2019.

In the first photo Mr Trudeau’s tie has been tied with what in my youth was jocularly known as a conventional reef knot (aka “Four in Hand”). In the second photo his tie displays some version of the more symmetrical Windsor Knot.

I don’t know exactly when the prime minister began using a Windsor knot, after this past June. It also appeared, as best as I can tell, during the election debates on TV. One way or another, the prime ministerial Windsor knot seems a fairly recent innovation, “tied” to the election campaign and then to the new post-election minority government.

What does it mean? Two over-imaginative possibilities have struck me.

First, the Windsor knot is more symmetrical and even more disciplined than the easier and more conventional reef or Four in Hand knot. Does this imply that the new Trudeau Liberal minority government of 2019–???? will somehow be more symmetrical and disciplined than the old Trudeau majority government? I certainly do not know myself, of course, but …

Second, though the Windsor knot is said to have been invented (or at least inspired) by a British monarch (the old Duke of Windsor who was briefly Edward VIII or possibly George V, who is said to have founded the House of Windsor), my sense is that it is today more popular in North America than in the UK.

And does that mean the Trudeau Liberal minority government which lies ahead will be somehow more North American than, say, European or other Old World?

(And what does that even mean, even if it is true???? I certainly do not know myself. But I’ll continue to wonder, as I observe what will be going on in Ottawa over the next while — remembering all the time that things in Canada actually look more sensible than in many other parts of a troubled global village, in the somewhat wild and crazy autumn of 2019.)

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. OCT 22, 1:30 AM ET. [UPDATED 8:45 AM ET]. Very quickly, before we close the office board room with the big TV, and go home for some sleep :

This time the pollsters came pretty close. As reported at the moment on the CBC News site the Trudeau Liberals are leading or elected in 157 seats with 33% of the cross-Canada popular vote.

Mr. Scheer’s Conservatives have 121 seats with slightly more of the total vote (34%, dramatically concentrated in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where they won all the seats with one exception).

Yves-François Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois won 32 seats — all in Quebec but with 8% of the total cross-Canada vote.

Mr. Singh’s New Democrats have 24 seats with 16% of the cross-Canada vote, and Ms. May’s Green Party has 3 seats with 7%. (And to show that this 2019 Canadian federal election really has covered all possible bases, one Independent has been elected — Jody Wilson-Raybould, with 31% of the vote in Vancouver Granville.)

The Liberals and NDP together have 181 seats — in a Canadian House of Commons where a bare majority is 170. Bob Rae and others, however, have suggested that what Prime Minister Trudeau now has at his disposal, given the exact numbers involved, is a so-called “Pearsonian” minority government, similar to the governments Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester Pearson ran after the 1963 and 1965 federal elections.

After the 2019 election, that is to say, the Liberals won’t seek any particular co-operative arrangement with the New Democrats or any other party. They will run their government on a case by case basis, seeking co-operation on particular legislation from whatever opposition parties are most appropriate for the case in question.

On this theory (which may or may not prove correct), none of the BQ, NDP, or Greens can be interested in precipitating a new election all that soon. And in dealing with the need for compromise over conflicts between energy and environmental policies the Liberal minority government may even once in a while appeal to Conservative MP s — especially those from Alberta and Saskatchewan, which have just elected almost nothing but Conservative members (except for one New Democrat in Alberta).

It may or may not be worth noting that the two Lester Pearson Liberal minority governments 1963–1968 are widely regarded by many students of such things as among the most successful governments in Canadian history : inventors (with help from various opposition parties but especially the NDP no doubt) of much of modern Canada today, from the independent Canadian flag to the welfare or service state, official bilingualism, and the diverse democratic society based on a multicultural immigration policy.

There is no doubt that the new second installment of Justin Trudeau Liberal government will face many challenges and will demand some co-operative, inspired, shrewd, and even visionary leadership from the federal prime minister and his government.

On the positive side Justin Trudeau has had a kind of baptism by fire over the past four years, from which he may have learned a few wise lessons. He has done better than his father did in his second election as Liberal leader in 1972. And he has now received both an endorsement from former US President Barack Obama during this 2019 election campaign, and on just winning at least a minority government warm congratulations from current US President Donald Trump! Having received support from President Barack Obama and congratulations from President Donald Trump, PM Justin Trudeau just may be up to the challenges he faces now

Who knows in any event just what great conundrums may or may not lie ahead over the challenging next few years? Our congratulations in any case to all the candidates who ran, coast to coast to coast over a vast geography, and everyone who worked on all the campaigns, and breathed real life into the great treasure of what the Constitution Act, 1982 calls our “free and democratic society,” in the true north, strong and free.

[UPDATED OCT 20, 10:30 AM, 1:45 PM, 5:00 PM, 11:30 PM ET]. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SUN, OCT 20, 2019. 2:30 AM ET. According to Barry Tango on Twitter — “According to Ekos: ‘There are many ridings where the Conservatives have a slim plurality but will now win because of Liberal–NDP contests.’ Unless you want to wake up Tuesday to Andrew Scheer as PM, you best seriously consider voting strategically.”

At the same time the latest NANOS “Nightly Tracking, three day rolling average” as we write early Sunday morning (“ending October 18th, 2019, Released October 19th, 2019″) shows the Liberals slightly ahead even in popular vote for the Monday, October 21 federal election : Libs 32.6%, Cons 30.3, NDP 18.4, Greens 9.3, BQ 7.1, PPC 1.9. [UPDATE 10:30 AM, 1:45 PM : As a sign of just how volatile things do remain, the NANOS “three day rolling average ending October 19th, 2019 Released October 20th, 2019″ shows Cons 31.5%, Libs 31.0, NDP 18.8, Greens 9.5, BQ 7.0, PPC 1.8!! Updates on other projections noted below are being inserted as they become available on this quizzical Sunday before the election tomorrow.]

Similarly, the last three [and now six] of Éric Grenier’s CBC Poll Tracker seat readings as we write do suggest a Liberal minority government at least — October 18 : Libs 133 seats, Cons 123, NDP 41, BQ 38, Greens 2, PPC 1 ; October 19 (morning) : Libs 139, Cons 121, BQ 40, NDP 35, Greens 2, PPC 1 ; October 19 (evening) : Libs 141, Cons 121, BQ 39, NDP 34, Greens 2, PPC 1 ; October 20 (1:12 PM ET) : Libs 138, Cons 123, BQ 40, NDP 34, Greens 2, PPC 1 ; October 20 (4:01 PM ET) : Libs 136, Cons 124, BQ 40, NDP 36, Greens 1, PPC 1 ; October 20 ( 10:46 PM ET) : Libs 138, Cons 124, BQ 38, NDP 34, Greens 2, PPC 1, Other 1.

(And the latest October 19 [evening] CBC Poll Tracker, like the October 19 NANOS Nightly Tracking, also puts the Liberals slightly ahead in cross-Canada popular vote : Libs 31.8%, Cons 31.4, NDP 18.1, Greens 8.0, BQ 6.9, PPC 2.7, Other 1.1. As updated Oct 20, 1:12 PM ET : Libs 31.9%, Cons 31.8, NDP 18.0, Greens 8.0, BQ 7.1, PPC, 2.4, Other 0.8. And, finally as updated Oct 20, 10:46 PM ET : Libs 32.1%, Cons 31.6, NDP 18.2, Greens 7.6, BQ 6.9, PPC 2.6, Other 1.0%.)

The two [and now three] most recent projections from P.J. Fournier’s 338Canada.com suggest a somewhat different but again broadly similar seat count — October 18 : Libs 137, Cons 123, BQ 39, NDP 36, Greens 2, PPC 1 ; October 19 : Libs 137, Cons 123, NDP 37, BQ 37, Greens 2, PPC 1 ; October 20 : Libs 142, Cons 125, NDP 35, BQ 33, Greens 2, PPC 1.

Finally, the most recent projections from the innovative prediction project of Hill+Knowlton Strategies and AI pioneers Advanced Symbolics Inc. offers yet another somewhat different but again broadly similar seat count — October 18 : Libs 146, Cons 123, NDP 33, BQ 32, Greens 3 ; October 19 : Libs 145, Cons 123, NDP 35, BQ 32, Greens 3.

Of course, all the polls involved in these calculations could be wrong. (Such things have happened in living memory and so forth.) In our view (and see as well eg M. Grenier’s probability calculations in the latest CBC Poll Tracker) there remains some serious enough prospect of a Conservative minority government, potentially kept in office long enough by Yves-François Blanchet’s resurgent Bloc Québécois. [And the October 20 updates as of 1:45 and 5:00 PM ET do vaguely suggest some slight strengthening of Conservatives over Liberals, though the seat count numbers continue to suggest a Liberal minority government, that could be kept in office for a time by support from the NDP alone.]

There is also an outlier-ish Lean Tossup.ca poll aggregator that uses “numbers available on the Mainstreet Research Daily Tracker, a paywalled subscription service.” Its latest projection as we write gives the Trudeau Liberals as many as 161 seats — just nine short of the 170 seat bare majority in the present Canadian House of Commons. (Those so inclined can use their imaginations from here. Grenier’s latest calculations give the Conservatives only a 1% chance of forming a majority government — and the Liberals a not all that much better 15% chance! And Grenier’s complete odds numbers here as of around 4 PM ET Sunday October 20 afternoon go PC majority 2%, Liberal majority 12%, PC minority 37%, Liberal minority 48%.)

It is equally worth noting that on all the projections noted above the combined Justin Trudeau Liberal and Jagmeet Singh New Democrat numbers do add up to slightly better than a bare majority of seats in the House — without help from anyone else, Green or BQ.

This further suggests that (again on these polling derived numbers from before the actual election at least) a Liberal minority government could be kept in office for some time by Jagmeet Singh’s NDP — much as Justin Trudeau’s father’s minority government after his second election was kept in office by David Lewis’s NDP, 1972–1974.

(There was some progressive shift to the left over this period in the first half of the 1970s. And maybe there will be again over the next few years, in the early 2020s. Or, again, maybe there will be a Conservative minority government, or some other more complicated kind of Trudeau Liberal minority government, dependent on more than just the Singh New Democrats. Or something else much wilder and unanticipated yet again.)

Meanwhile, just before 8 AM on the morning of this past Friday, October 18, 2019 Paqtasit Apsalqigwat on Twitter noted that “Today would be Pierre Trudeau’s 100th birthday and all I can say to this is thank you @JustinTrudeau for leading this country with grace and continuing the legacy of human rights your father started.”

Our parting thoughts here came when related research on Google finally led to a “life size bronze statue” of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, erected in 2004 in a suburban location just north of the City of Toronto (in the so-called “GTA 905,” in a community still known as Thornhill now officially in the City of Vaughan).

Looking at photos of the statue posted on the WWW by Barnabas Bozoki it struck us that it is not a good likeness of Pierre Trudeau, especially up close. We do not know just who created this admirable enough work of public art. But to us what’s depicted is more like how Pierre Trudeau would have looked if he really were an Old Ontario family farmer with some serious acreage, instead of the urbane and sophisticated, world-travelled Montreal man of means that he was.

But it may be the Thornhill, Ontario statue guy is closer to the Trudeau Liberal “brand” that this particular larger region of Canada — the current populous and increasingly diverse suburbs and exurbs of the “Greater Toronto Area 905”, once long ago a homeland of the North American family farm and now much different — may recurrently fall in and out of love with in some strange corner of its volatile twisted heart.

And at this exact moment in history this love may finally be one big enough thing that saves Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from leaving office altogether, in the election of 2019. (Or not, of course, of course … we must wait just a little while longer to see what all the people of Canada, in their infinite wisdom, finally do decide. And as of our October 20, 1:45 PM ET update our advice to congenital gamblers would be don’t bet the farm on any particular outcome just yet!)

UPDATE 5:00 PM, OCT 20: Very finally (maybe?), as of around 5 PM Sunday afternoon, we’d just note a last-minute thought from David Coletto at Abacus Data : “If there’s going to be a surprise tomorrow it will come from these folks: 9% of Canadians haven’t voted yet, haven’t made up their mind, and say they are likely to vote tomorrow.”

And, if the ultimate outcome is a Liberal minority government, supported for who knows how long by New Democrats and possibly Greens too, the new required reading in our view should start with Alice Klein’s October 16 editorial in Toronto’s NOW magazine : “We need to start judging the Liberals, NDP and Greens by how willing they are to work together instead of how cleverly they pick each other apart … Each of the three progressive party leaders is disappointing and imperfect in their own way. But they also are generally well-intentioned … and have important perspectives to add. Their platforms actually speak more to what they have in common than what makes them opponents … Take a look around the world, my friends. From that perspective, Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May are an unusually impressive crew. What we need is for these party leaders to be frenemies, not enemies.”

(And many apologies for the Toronto reference from people fated to live and work here. Similar thoughts to Ms Klein’s are no doubt extant all across our vast and magnificent chunk of the global geography, including beautiful BC on Canada’s Pacific coast, where all major party leaders spent this last day of the 2019 campaign — because that is where this election might finally be decided, late tomorrow night?)

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. WED, OCT 16, 2019. With the actual Canadian federal election now only four or five days away, it is hard to say anything altogether sensible about the ultimate result. Except that it does seem very close (in various respects) and impossible to predict.

We’re finding ourselves thrown back on the amusement of no doubt trivial resemblances between the current 2019 late-campaign polling and certain historical precedents, with special reference to the election of 1972 — also the second election that Justin Trudeau’s father faced as Liberal leader and Canadian prime minister.

Today, eg, the latest (October 15) editions of Éric Grenier’s CBC Poll Tracker and P.J. Fournier’s 338Canada.com are projecting numbers of seats in the Canadian House of Commons that are remarkably similar to each other — and to the results of the election on October 30, 1972 (when two of the current six party leaders were still not yet born, one was only 10 months old, and the eldest was only 18 : see Appendix below).

In both major polling surveys dated October 15, 2019 the Liberal and Conservative popular vote is very close, with the Conservatives slightly ahead. But the Liberals still win slightly more seats, largely as a result of the bunching up of the Conservative vote in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Grenier gives the Liberals 135 and the Conservatives 132 seats. Fournier reports Liberals 134, Conservatives 132.

Compare this — just for fun as it were — with the actual results in Pierre Trudeau’s second election as leader in 1972 (and in a 264 as opposed to 338 member House of the day) : Liberals 109 seats, Conservatives 107. (Note too that, as legend has it, the finish in 1972 was so close that it was not clear just who had won the most seats until the morning after.)

So … what did happen after the 1972 federal election in Canada? Note here that the David Lewis New Democrats had won 31 seats on election day. And note too that in the October 15, 2019 polling surveys both Grenier and Fournier give the Jagmeet Singh NDP 34 seats.

In the fall of 1972 Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre formed a Liberal minority government that remained in office until the early summer of 1974, with the informal but quite open co-operation and support of the Lewis New Democrats.

Note, however, that in the October 15, 2019 Grenier and Fournier calculations, the support of Mr. Singh’s NDP alone would still make a strictly Liberal-NDP co-operative venture one or two seats shy of a bare majority. Such a thing would have to include the four seats both Grenier and Fournier assign to Elizabeth May’s Green Party as well.

As already alluded to in this log, if something of this sort is what actually happens on October 21 we’ll be happy enough in this space.

We agree that New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh has become the surprise big star of this 2019 federal election campaign. Mr. Singh, it seems, has finally inherited the woke-charisma that Justin Trudeau wielded in 2015. And that is no doubt very good for Canada, in many different ways.

Yet like many others like us (and as also alluded to before in this log), we continue to wonder and worry about the increasingly serious prospects of a Conservative minority government that also continue to linger in the polling evidence.

The 33 (Grenier) or 34 (Fournier) seats for Yves-François Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois in the October 15, 2019 surveys may or may not finally help Andrew Scheer. But they wield more weight and heft than the 15 seats won by Réal Caouette’s Social Credit party in Quebec in 1972. At first blush at any rate the also surprising late-campaign surge for the BQ in 2019 could very well point instead to Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government of 2006.

We conclude here with two further possibly compensating thoughts for those who really do not want to see any kind of Conservative Government of Canada on October 22, 2019 — from the two newest individual polls surveyed in the October 15 edition of the CBC Poll Tracker.

• From Darrell Bricker at Ipsos, “Down to the Wire: Outcome Remains Uncertain as Campaign Enters Home Stretch,” October 15 : “while Liberal popular vote sags, their underlying fundamentals remain relatively stronger, which suggests that some of the NDP or Green vote in particular, both of which shows softness, could come back to the Liberals in the final days of the campaign.”
• From Marco Vigliotti at Mainstreet, “Liberals, Conservatives leading among early voters,” October 15 : “Advance polling was available from Oct. 10-14 … Compared to Mainstreet’s national daily tracking poll … early voters were more likely to vote for the Liberals and Conservatives, and were less likely to back the NDP, Bloc or Greens … Breaking down the numbers by region, a plurality of early voters cast a ballot for the Liberals in Ontario (42.4%), Quebec (41), Atlantic Canada (33.5) and British Columbia (31.7). The Conservatives were the most popular choice of early voters in Alberta (74.3%) and the Prairies (49.1).”

APPENDIX : Birthdays of Six Canadian Federal Party Leaders 2019 :

Andrew Scheer, Conservatives, May 20, 1979, third from l in photo ;

Jagmeet Singh, New Democrats, January 2, 1979, far r in photo ;

Justin Trudeau, Liberals, December 25, 1971, second from l ;

Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc Québécois, April 16, 1965, second from r ;

Maxime Bernier, Peoples’ Party of Canada, January 18, 1963, third from r ;

Elizabeth May, Green Party, June 9, 1954, far l in photo of party leaders at English-language debate in Gatineau, Quebec, October 7, 2019!

[UPDATED OCTOBER 13]. In its UPDATED ON OCT 12, 2019 AT 9:21 AM ET edition Éric Grenier’s CBC Poll Tracker is now predicting 140 seats in the elected Canadian parliament for Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives, with 32.6% of the cross-Canada popular vote, and only 135 seats (and 32.0% of the popular vote) for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals! [See October 13 update below!]

Neither party is close to the 170 seats needed for even a bare majority. But if these (or something very similar) are the numbers that prevail on Monday, October 21 then — on our view at any rate — the next public enterprise that will try to govern Canada will be a Scheer Conservative minority government.

Some will say that on these same numbers a Liberal minority government led by Justin Trudeau is still possible. M. Grenier’s October 12 Poll Tracker also gives 33 seats to the Bloc Québécois, 25 to the New Democrats, 4 to the Greens, and 1 to the People’s Party of Canada.

On these exact October 12 CBC Poll Tracker numbers even a progressive Liberal minority government supported by both Jagmeet Singh’s NDP and Elizabeth May’s Greens would still be half a dozen seats shy of even a bare parliamentary majority. (Just do the math : 135 Libs + 25 NDP + 4 Greens = 164 “progressives” where 170 is the minimum.) A minority government of this sort that was also careful to please the Bloc Québécois from time to time, however, could arguably survive for more than a few months.

Yet especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan where the Canada-wide Conservative vote (and the modern Canadian oil and gas industry) is so concentrated, a co-operative progressive government of this sort would be terminally tainted by the hard fact that its largest party was not the party with the largest number of seats and the largest share of the Canada-wide popular vote.

In this context, and in the interests of both the future of Canada and his own political career, if the federal election on October 21 does bring something essentially the same as the October 12 CBC Poll Tracker numbers, Justin Trudeau ought to (and almost certainly will?) resign — and advise Governor General Julie Payette to ask Andrew Scheer to try to form a government.

If Andrew Scheer were Stephen Harper, and if 2019 were more like 2006, a cleverly managed Conservative minority government might arguably also survive for more than a few months. (On the October 12 CBC numbers, eg, a Conservative minority government that could rely on 33 Bloc Québécois MPs, led by the Yves-François Blanchet who sounds somewhat like the current conservative premier of Quebec, could boast a parliamentary majority of 140+33=173 seats.)

In the real world of 2019 the best guess would seem to be that a Conservative minority government led by Mr. Scheer will likely enough not last very long. We will have to have another Canadian federal election soon, say at some point in 2020.

From the standpoint of the progressive values we see ourselves as standing up for here on this site, a short-lived Conservative minority government, while certainly disappointing, would at least be a better October 21 result than a Conservative majority government.

It would also raise a number of deep and possibly even troubling questions about the realistic progressive future in current Canadian politics. These questions were first raised by the almost 10-year history of Stephen Harper Conservative governments in Canada (only the 2011-2015 edition of which was a majority government, and even then with less than 40% of the cross-Canada popular vote). The ultimately somewhat surprising Liberal majority government won by Justin Trudeau in 2015 (also with less than 40% of the cross-Canada popular vote) set these questions aside.

All things considered in the global village today, we think a second Trudeau Liberal majority government would still be the best or at least the easiest and most stable progressive way ahead in 2019. But this seems increasingly unlikely at the moment. And we think a Liberal minority government (supported by the NDP as in Justin Trudeau’s father’s case in 1972) is the second best alternative. Yet it may be that progressive voters are finally going to reject either of these prospects in 2019 — and insist on looking the troubling questions about the realistic progressive future in current Canadian politics straight in the eye.

Meanwhile, as a concluding reminder that absolutely nothing is at all certain about October 21 at this point — just over a week away — P.J. Fournier’s alternative 338canada.com projections as of October 12 also have the Liberals and Conservatives effectively tied in cross-Canada popular vote. But they still give the Liberals 143 seats, and only 134 for the Conservatives. So of course, of course, stray tuned. It seems it really is going to be an exciting election a week this Monday (if that is quite the right word ??) …

UPDATE OCTOBER 13 : Today’s update of the CBC Poll Tracker still has the Conservatives slightly ahead of the Liberals in popular vote. But the Liberals are back ahead in the seat count : 141 to 134. (And a Liberal minority government supported by both New Democrats and Greens would have exactly 170 seats, for a bare parliamentary majority.) The week ahead should prove fascinating to Canadian political junkies everywhere. Meanwhile, Happy Canadian Thanksgiving tomorrow (or the day after), up here in the far north where the leaves fall from the deciduous trees earlier.

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. OCT 9, 6 PM ET/3 PM PT. A new Forum Research poll shows Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives suddenly pulling well ahead in the wake of the October 7 TV debate.

This at least raises the prospect that Green party leader Elizabeth May may have been wrong towards the end of this past Monday’s debate, when she rudely advised Mr. Scheer that he will not be the next prime minister.

To the uninformed naked eye this latest Forum poll, which puts Conservatives seven points ahead of Liberals Canada-wide, does seem to notably under-represent Ontario and over-represent Western Canada. And the companion or same-date Nanos Nightly Tracking shows no sign of a similar trend. (It puts the Trudeau Liberals one point ahead!)

Another post-debate online Leger poll has Liberals and Conservatives tied, with Jagmeet Singh’s NDP up four points. Still others may wonder about the latest Forum poll’s finding that the admittedly surging Bloc Québécois has now surpassed the Liberals in Quebec.

For no doubt further good reasons Éric Grenier’s CBC Poll Tracker assigns the Forum poll a very low weight in its current polling average calculations, despite the very recent vintage.

At the same time, however much of a suspicious outlier it may appear, some later-campaign Conservative surge is the only possible conclusion from the latest Forum poll. And this does draw attention to vaguely parallel current prospects in the more moderate CBC Poll Tracker exercise (as just one case in point).

In his latest Poll Tracker update as of October 9, 10:33 AM ET Éric Grenier does assign the Liberals six less and the Conservatives five more seats than just two days ago.

On these calculations the Liberals still have 17 more seats all told than the Conservatives. But they are now as many as 13 seats shy of even a bare majority in the House. And this draws further attention to the Tracker’s probability percentages for majority and minority governments.

In his October 9 update Grenier is still giving the Scheer Conservatives a very low 10% chance of reaching a majority government. And according to no less than John Ibbitson if the Conservatives don’t get a majority government they ultimately loose — because no other party with enough votes will support a Conservative minority government. (Well … unless it might be a last-minute-surging Bloc Québécois, as in the early times of PM Stephen Harper??)

Yet Grenier’s Poll Tracker October 9 probability percentages for Liberal or Conservative minority governments are not in fact all that different : 30% Liberals and 27% Conservatives.

The Liberals still do have a much greater chance at a majority government (32% on the latest CBC Poll Tracker). But if trends of some Liberal faltering lock in, it would seem that a Scheer Conservative minority government is almost as likely as a Trudeau Liberal one — on these current CBC numbers in any case.

Philippe J. Fournier at 338canada.com may be challenging this assessment in his October 8 article, “The Conservatives have fallen behind the surging Bloc, cutting the odds of seat gains needed to win the election.” But maybe not, exactly. In any case a Conservative minority government does appear to be something that very few of those most directly involved are paying much serious attention to … yet ???? And it does not seem unreasonable at this juncture to say that Elizabeth May could prove to be wrong. Who knows? Stray tuned, etc, etc, etc … .

OCTOBER 7. 3 PM ET : Waiting for the great debate to start at 7 PM. (And more immediately for the daily office trek to the Tim Horton’s overlooking our local Kew Gardens.)

Already today’s public polling installment has moved away from possible early signs of a Liberal surge in the final two weeks, and back to a still very close race (or even a tie), with the Liberals only slightly ahead of the Conservatives, Canada-wide.

Factoring in the regional permutations of the polling evidence, today’s CBC Poll Tracker is nonetheless giving Liberals 163 seats in the Canadian House of Commons (where 170 is a bare majority) and Conservatives 135 — a 28-seat margin. The most recent (October 6) 338Canada update narrows the margin somewhat to 161 Liberals and 137 Conservatives, or 24 seats.

A new Abacus poll also shows the Liberal lead in Ontario shrinking somewhat. Wild Alberta patriots might attribute this to their Premier Jason Kenney’s recent Ontario campaigning on behalf of Andrew Scheer. But Abacus more dramatically underlines a tale that explains the Liberal lead in seats as well : “The regional races tell a clearer story of where the race stands. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Conservative Party has a 37-point lead, an advantage which has widened from 30 points in August. In the rest of the country, the Liberals have consistently led the Conservatives this year, and since August, a 5-point advantage has widened to 9 points.”

10:45 PM ET : After some collective deliberation we seem to agree with Stephanie Smyth at cp24 in Toronto (ably assisted by Jenni Byrne, Mike Schreiner, Robin Sears, and Andrew Steele). The very bottom line is probably that Liberal leader Justin Trudeau survived the debate quite intact and (perhaps inevitably) looking the most prime ministerial.

We’d almost agree that good things could be said about almost everyone else as well. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer showed he could participate in such exercises and not fall flat on his face. (Though, to our tastes at any rate, his attacks on Justin Trudeau often suffered from excessive and even artificial hyperbole, even in the age of Donald Trump next door.)

Jagmeet Singh, as many observers also seemed to acknowledge (and here as elsewhere in his first campaign as federal NDP leader), did very well too. Of course what he says doesn’t quite add up when you notice that his party has only 14.5% of the cross-Canada vote in the latest CBC Poll Tracker (October 7). But he is saying it very well, and almost certainly doing his party and possibly even the country some longer term good.

Not quite so good but for us good enough things could also be said about Elizabeth May (Greens), Yves-François Blanchet (Bloc Québécois), and even Maxime Bernier ( People’s Party of Canada). At the same time, we’d agree with the view that the format made for a complicated and often less than gripping two hours — which finally may not have much impact on anything.

Yet again stay tuned. Meanwhile, we are left with two questions about the October 7 debate in English. First, was Elizabeth May on the money when she explained to Andrew Scheer that, with all due respect, he was not going to win the election. The only important question is whether it will be a Liberal majority government, or (Ms. May’s obvious own overwhelming preference) a Liberal minority government, a bit like the one Justin Trudeau’s father wound up with in 1972?

(Mr. Scheer, to give him his due, did respond well enough to this, saying he believed he was going to prove her wrong on October 21.)

Our second question concerns the at least two times Justin Trudeau called Jagmeet Singh Andrew Scheer at the start of the debate. (And then joked the second time that the two of them looked so much alike. Mr. Singh got his own nice one-liner off on this or some related occasion. He quipped that he had already worn a special hat to help tell the two leaders apart. Mr. Scheer himself bragged that the key difference was just that he is taller).

Our question : did an increasingly coolly Machiavellian PM Justin Trudeau make the mistake of calling Mr. Singh Mr. Scheer on purpose? To subtly drive home the message that a vote for Jagmeet Singh is just another vote for Andrew Scheer. Better to vote for the moderate progressive with a doable plan etc … (And whatever the ultimate answer here may be, we’ll likely enough be back with another 2019 Canadian election meditation all too soon …)

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. OCT 7, 2019, 12:30 AM ET. According to CBC Poll Tracker analyst Éric Grenier, as updated on October 6, 2019 at 11:34 AM ET : “Though the gap remains insignificant, the Liberals have moved ahead of the Conservatives in the national polling average for the first time since February.”

(And on the same day Liberals had been a little ahead of Conservatives for three straight days on the Nanos “Nightly Tracking, three day rolling average” : 36–34, 36–33, 37–33. Oh and btw : “Trudeau opens eight point advantage on Scheer as preferred Prime Minister.”)

Tonight will be the English-language debate with the leaders of all “six main political parties,”onstage at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec (across the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill), and broadcast live across the country on TV, 8-10 PM AT/ 7–9 PM ET/5–7 PM MT/4-6 PM PT.

The big question in our minds right now : Is this just the beginning of a surge in the last two weeks of the October 21 Canadian federal election campaign, that will end with at least a bare majority of seats in the House for the Trudeau Liberals after all?

Will a Liberal majority be the ultimate big surprise that has been quietly cooking in the minds of undecided voters in various (and even surprising?) parts of the true north, strong and free?

Will the October 7 debate shed any further light here? Maybe, maybe not. Stay tuned.

CODA 1. Meanwhile, back across the North Atlantic Squadron : are the Bojo Brexotics destined to win in the end?

Reading William Davies and Ferdinand Mount on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (“Bojo”) in a recent edition of the London Review of Books gave us a largely negative view of the man :

• “Johnson has no ideology and no philosophy. It isn’t even clear he has ambition, beyond making a point of having got where he’s got. His residence in 10 Downing Street represents a personal triumph, which he will want to prolong as long as possible, by whatever means possible.” (Davies).
• “Who first implanted the obsessive belief that breaking out of the prison house of Brussels was our only possible salvation? If Enoch Powell had never existed, I very much doubt that Boris Johnson would be where he is today.” (Mount — also the source of that elegant term “Brexotics”, as in : “This ominous preening [of Enoch Powell in days now long gone by] is a feature of the rhetoric of many a contemporary Brexotic”!)

On the other hand, the most recent installment of the weekly “Dateline London” on BBC TV offered a more positive assessment of UK PM Johnson. In particular (as best we can remember) Thomas Kielinger — the “German journalist, political commentator and author, who for a long time used to be London correspondent for Die Welt” — suggested Bojo is actually quite popular in the UK today (as he was as Mayor of London some years ago?). And that is partly because he does in fact have “a magnetic personality.”

Mr. Kielinger (and at least one other Dateline Londoner?) also seemed to imply that PM Johnson might well do well in the coming UK election almost everyone now seems to think inevitable as the major next step in “Wither Brexit.” (With the Bojo Conservatives on one side and some kind of “Remain Coalition” of Labour, Liberal Democrats, Scottish Nationals etc on the other?)

Recent apparently informed talk on the subject we hear in Toronto bars has also been saying that some quite serious form of Brexit is now inevitable. But of course stay tuned here as well. As William Davies tells us : “Before very long, we will be witnessing an electoral showdown … These are strange and unpredictable forms of authority: only a fool would claim to know which way it will go.”

CODA 2. Trump Impeachorama .. or just how crazy can current US politics get ????

In their efforts to blunt the Democrats’ Impeachment Inquiry in the US House of Representatives what would still seem to be the Republican Party mainstream now seems to be saying that Donald Trump did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary in his crypto-gangster phone call, urging the president of the Ukraine to investigate Trump’s US domestic political rival Joe Biden and his son.

As best we can make out right now, this means the new Trump Impeachorama is probably going to be a very bloody (figuratively at least) and long-lasting ordeal, that may or may not do much to help defeat the Trump Republicans in the 2020 elections. While President Trump continues to do so much to weaken what remains of the benign and constructive influence of democracy in America around the world. And of course again stay tuned here as well. We do live in troubled times, on many fronts. (Without even mentioning the struggles in Hong Kong and how they have compromised the 70th anniversary of the Peoples’ Republic of China, and all its genuine and even breathtaking strides ahead — or, for that matter, Donald Trump’s wild and crazy new trade war with China today! Or the troubles that the Canada having an federal election this October 21 has recently been having with the government of China too …)