Trudeau's tightrope.

I appreciate today's editorial from The Globe and Mail about our rather lacklustre election results. 

The federal election result on Monday has many stories to tell, but there are two that will shape the Trudeau minority government’s early days in power.

The first is that the majority of Canadians showed a democratic preference for parties that are committed to fighting climate change and which support the federal carbon-pricing régime.

Only the Conservatives campaigned against the carbon tax, and they got 34.4 per cent of the popular vote. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party will rightly continue making the reduction of greenhousegas emissions a priority, and he said as much in his first postelection news conference on Wednesday.

The second narrative is that of Western alienation. On Monday, the Liberals lost their handful of seats in Saskatchewan and Alberta, which means the governing party has no representatives from the two provinces with the most at stake in the fight against climate change.

The West’s feeling of being shut out is made worse by the fact the Liberals will have to rely on the NDP and Green Party for support in Parliament – two parties that want to see the oil sands closed down in short order – and on the Bloc Québécois, which is opposed to new pipeline construction. 

It's going to be quite the tightrope, yes, and Trudeau admitted as much today (although I can't quite find a link of the conference I heard about). 

I think Trudeau's tendency to try to "play both sides" has made him somebody nobody is happy with. But I also believe he was initially elected for promises he never intended to keep, since he did not expect to win the election five years ago. I don't find him incompetent for his promises made when he expected to lose. But the whole talking-out-both-sides-of-your-mouth habit discourages me.

I tend to like minority governments. The necessity to compromise and team-up tends to work well for policy. However, I haven't seen much in Trudeau that makes me think he's a capable compromiser, nor have we seen anything like that from the main national balance-of-power party, the NDP.

I have no predictions.