I think at the end of the day my quibble boils down to Rae having been said to handle the economic situation better than history has shown he did upon being handed another economic situation, but then this echoes my earlier point about the McKenna Liberals being rewarded with their stewardship of the country for the last 15 out of 16 years ahead of the worst recession in a generation... with a majority. Go figure.
It's probably for the best, honestly, because with Iggy you'd have nowhere to run. We know he's a terrible campaigner so you couldn't claim otherwise
Prentice becomes the new Pearson and can't close the deal on getting a majority. Rae resigns after failing to win again and along comes Justin who is swept in with a majority, probably by 2022.Hubert Humphrey Fan 1968 said:Any predictions for the next election? I promise it won't involve Bob Rae winning 200 seats
Agreed on Prentice, but not sure about Trudeau. TTL's Liberals are overdue for a Franco leader, but I'm going to say Leblanc instead.
Ahead of tomorrow's update (which will cover up to the 2019 Election), I thought I'd let you all know the state of the Premiers as of Election Day 2019:
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After 10 long years on the opposition benches, the Conservatives had done it. Jim Prentice had returned the party to government and won a relatively decent victory over the Liberals, not quite a majority but a solid victory nevertheless. Few could blame Conservatives for celebrating, and yet, while obviously happy about his victory, more than anything else Prentice was feeling cautious. He’d been here before, after all: he’d seen the Conservatives feel on top of the world following Stephen Harper’s 2006 victory only for the party to lose power after just a year in office and forced to spend a long decade in the political wilderness. This time, Prentice was determined not to let history repeat itself, and it’s perhaps because of this that many of the remaining veterans of the Harper cabinet found themselves left on the backbenches or given junior posts at best in the new cabinet, Prentice allies Lawrence Cannon and Rob Nicholson being the notable exceptions. Beyond that, with Cannon as Deputy Prime Minister and both Pierre Karl Péladeau and André Bachand emerging as two of the Prime Minister’s top lieutenants, Prentice’s cabinet immediately made his strategy clear, and it all came down to Quebec. Long considered the white whale of Conservative politics, la belle province had found itself in a state of flux over the course of the last decade, and the increasing irrelevance of the Bloc Québécois combined with Prentice’s approval ratings in the province had left Conservatives hopeful of a breakthrough. Working to win over Conservative-curious nationalists, the party hoped they’d be able to win enough seats to at the very least turn its minority into a majority.
Beyond preparing for the next election the Conservatives also had to go about the business of governing, particularly trying to solve the burgeoning economic hardship that had hit the west particularly hard following the global drop in oil prices. Conscious of the hardship in the Conservative bastion, the Prentice government, spearheaded by Finance Minister Péladeau and Natural Resources Minister Candice Bergen, would double down on their support for the oil industry, approving a series of controversial pipelines previously nixed by the McKenna and Rae governments and introducing a separate infrastructure plan beyond that to help get people back to work. Though derided by the opposition and ultimately failing to do anything about the underlying issue of the low price of oil globally, the plan was met with modest approval from the public; indeed, with the government still in its honeymoon phase and Canadians appreciating a change after nearly two and a half decades of almost uninterrupted Liberal rule (Harper’s government not particularly registering enough to count), the public largely approved of the Prentice government, and by the end of 2018 polls routinely showed the Conservatives in majority territory.
With this support, it wasn’t particularly surprising when, in January 2019, Prentice announced that he had gone to Governor General Roméo Dallaire and asked him to dissolve Parliament and call an election for March. Though few on the opposition benches were caught off guard, the move having been rumoured for weeks, it was no question the Conservatives were the most prepared: not only had they started nominating candidates almost immediately after the 2017 election, but the party’s sizeable war chest gave the party a significant financial advantage over their opposition, and even his loss in 2017 hadn’t stopped the Conservatives from their attack ad campaign against Bob Rae. Rae, still at the helm of the Liberal ship, nevertheless found himself on steadier ground than he had leading up to 2017. Sure, they were no longer in government and Prentice had a solid lead in the polls, but Rae had already proven himself as an excellent albeit admittedly somewhat old-fashioned campaigner (helping prevent Prentice from winning his expected majority in 2017), and their time out of office had helped the party move past the baggage of the McKenna government and shift the focus onto Prentice and his government’s record.
Indeed, the Liberals did well throughout the campaign, routinely matching if not exceeding their 2017 performance, and Rae had a moral victory at the very least by delivering a well-received performance during the debates and refusing to allow his campaign to get derailed by the NDP’s Howard Hampton as had been the case in 2017. Indeed, the Rae/Hampton re-match dominated much of the discussion leading up to the debates and during the debates themselves, allowing Prentice the convenient opportunity to make it through the proceedings relatively unscathed (his previous experiences at the debate stage evidently having taught him well), and a similar story was at play nationally. While the Liberals were doing well at the polls, few of their gains were coming from 2017 Conservative voters, instead coming primarily from the NDP, and as a result the Conservatives were able to maintain their lead. This lead would only increase following the somewhat rapid drop in support for the Bloc Québécois over the course of the campaign, and with Bloc voters seemingly shifting en masse to the Conservatives the party would find themselves in a neck-and-neck race with the Liberals province-wide.
On Election Day, while Conservative dreams of winning a Mulroney-sized landslide in Quebec would not come to pass, the party would nevertheless find themselves with 35 seats in the province and just two points behind the Liberals as Prentice became the first Conservative to win a majority government since Mulroney himself; nationwide, the party ended the night with 193 seats and 39 percent of the vote. Among the other stories of the night was Prentice’s minor breakthrough on the island of Montreal, with the Conservatives dealing a spiritual blow to the Liberals by capturing the riding of Mount Royal, held by the Liberals since 1940 and represented by Pierre Trudeau from 1965 to 1984. As expected the Bloc Québécois was the biggest casualty of Prentice’s win, seeing itself shutout of the House of Commons for the first time since its 1990 formation and winning only a quarter of the vote in Quebec. The Liberals, meanwhile, finished the night slightly lower than polls had predicted, though with 114 seats and 32 percent support they nevertheless made up one of the largest oppositions in recent memory. Rae himself would subsequently resign as party leader, and with Dominic LeBlanc, Navdeep Bains, and Justin Trudeau (among others) all rumoured to be preparing bids it’s anyone’s guess who will replace him. Hampton’s NDP, on the flip side, finished the night with 30 seats and a little over 17 percent of the vote, slight losses compared to 2017 but generally doing better than polling had predicted. The Green’s Frank de Jong, meanwhile, would see his own personal majority increase substantially in his home riding of Guelph, though would fail to bring any additional Green MPs into the House of Commons.
Having won a Conservative majority and uniting Quebec and the West for the first time in nearly thirty years, as Canadians move on from the 2019 election and put politics in the back of their minds, there’s nevertheless no doubt that Prentice has already been a transformative Prime Minister electorally, though it’s anyone’s guess as to how his remaining time in office may pan out.
Beyond preparing for the next election the Conservatives also had to go about the business of governing, particularly trying to solve the burgeoning economic hardship that had hit the west particularly hard following the global drop in oil prices. Conscious of the hardship in the Conservative bastion, the Prentice government, spearheaded by Finance Minister Péladeau and Natural Resources Minister Candice Bergen, would double down on their support for the oil industry, approving a series of controversial pipelines previously nixed by the McKenna and Rae governments and introducing a separate infrastructure plan beyond that to help get people back to work. Though derided by the opposition and ultimately failing to do anything about the underlying issue of the low price of oil globally, the plan was met with modest approval from the public; indeed, with the government still in its honeymoon phase and Canadians appreciating a change after nearly two and a half decades of almost uninterrupted Liberal rule (Harper’s government not particularly registering enough to count), the public largely approved of the Prentice government, and by the end of 2018 polls routinely showed the Conservatives in majority territory.
With this support, it wasn’t particularly surprising when, in January 2019, Prentice announced that he had gone to Governor General Roméo Dallaire and asked him to dissolve Parliament and call an election for March. Though few on the opposition benches were caught off guard, the move having been rumoured for weeks, it was no question the Conservatives were the most prepared: not only had they started nominating candidates almost immediately after the 2017 election, but the party’s sizeable war chest gave the party a significant financial advantage over their opposition, and even his loss in 2017 hadn’t stopped the Conservatives from their attack ad campaign against Bob Rae. Rae, still at the helm of the Liberal ship, nevertheless found himself on steadier ground than he had leading up to 2017. Sure, they were no longer in government and Prentice had a solid lead in the polls, but Rae had already proven himself as an excellent albeit admittedly somewhat old-fashioned campaigner (helping prevent Prentice from winning his expected majority in 2017), and their time out of office had helped the party move past the baggage of the McKenna government and shift the focus onto Prentice and his government’s record.
Indeed, the Liberals did well throughout the campaign, routinely matching if not exceeding their 2017 performance, and Rae had a moral victory at the very least by delivering a well-received performance during the debates and refusing to allow his campaign to get derailed by the NDP’s Howard Hampton as had been the case in 2017. Indeed, the Rae/Hampton re-match dominated much of the discussion leading up to the debates and during the debates themselves, allowing Prentice the convenient opportunity to make it through the proceedings relatively unscathed (his previous experiences at the debate stage evidently having taught him well), and a similar story was at play nationally. While the Liberals were doing well at the polls, few of their gains were coming from 2017 Conservative voters, instead coming primarily from the NDP, and as a result the Conservatives were able to maintain their lead. This lead would only increase following the somewhat rapid drop in support for the Bloc Québécois over the course of the campaign, and with Bloc voters seemingly shifting en masse to the Conservatives the party would find themselves in a neck-and-neck race with the Liberals province-wide.
On Election Day, while Conservative dreams of winning a Mulroney-sized landslide in Quebec would not come to pass, the party would nevertheless find themselves with 35 seats in the province and just two points behind the Liberals as Prentice became the first Conservative to win a majority government since Mulroney himself; nationwide, the party ended the night with 193 seats and 39 percent of the vote. Among the other stories of the night was Prentice’s minor breakthrough on the island of Montreal, with the Conservatives dealing a spiritual blow to the Liberals by capturing the riding of Mount Royal, held by the Liberals since 1940 and represented by Pierre Trudeau from 1965 to 1984. As expected the Bloc Québécois was the biggest casualty of Prentice’s win, seeing itself shutout of the House of Commons for the first time since its 1990 formation and winning only a quarter of the vote in Quebec. The Liberals, meanwhile, finished the night slightly lower than polls had predicted, though with 114 seats and 32 percent support they nevertheless made up one of the largest oppositions in recent memory. Rae himself would subsequently resign as party leader, and with Dominic LeBlanc, Navdeep Bains, and Justin Trudeau (among others) all rumoured to be preparing bids it’s anyone’s guess who will replace him. Hampton’s NDP, on the flip side, finished the night with 30 seats and a little over 17 percent of the vote, slight losses compared to 2017 but generally doing better than polling had predicted. The Green’s Frank de Jong, meanwhile, would see his own personal majority increase substantially in his home riding of Guelph, though would fail to bring any additional Green MPs into the House of Commons.
Having won a Conservative majority and uniting Quebec and the West for the first time in nearly thirty years, as Canadians move on from the 2019 election and put politics in the back of their minds, there’s nevertheless no doubt that Prentice has already been a transformative Prime Minister electorally, though it’s anyone’s guess as to how his remaining time in office may pan out.
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That brings us to the end of this timeline, and with a week to spare! I hope you enjoyed reading it, because I certainly enjoyed co-writing it (I can only hope @True Grit - who was really cool to work with - feels the same way ). This is the first timeline I've actually finished (granted, a collaboration, but still), and it's not a bad TL to start with, I think.
). This is the first timeline I've actually finished (granted, a collaboration, but still), and it's not a bad TL to start with, I think.Yup, that’s it! Might be a little anticlimactic (except for @CanadianTory I assume), but hopefully you enjoyed it all. My thanks to @Hubert Humphrey Fan 1968 of course, who was a great partner in this.
That brings us to the end of this timeline, and with a week to spare! I hope you enjoyed reading it, because I certainly enjoyed co-writing it (I can only hope @True Grit - who was really cool to work with - feels the same way
Well done, both of you! Always an immensely satisfying feeling, completing a TL. And I'm surprised you ended with a Conservative majority, but they do happen every now and again so I suppose it's as good a place as any to stop
As I've mentioned many times, the graphics were excellent and added so much to the TL - maps and infoboxes alike. Thanks for sharing this project with all of us!
By the way, I would like to confirm for @Brainbin that Michael Ignatieff does not end up the next Liberal leader.
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