Canadians turned out to the polls last Monday in the highest numbers since 1993, and voted in a Liberal majority government. Newly elected Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau said in his acceptance speech that Canadians had sent the message, “It’s time for change, real change.”
SFU set the stage for multiple political events throughout the campaign as candidates battled it out for the newly formed riding of Burnaby North-Seymour. With 36.2 per cent of votes, SFU adjunct professor Terry Beech of the Liberal Party came out on top; The Green Party’s candidate, SFU professor Lynne Quarmby, placed fourth with 5.2 per cent.
The Peak sat down with SFU Political Science and Women’s Studies professor Marjorie Griffin Cohen soon afterwards to see if the political science department was as surprised as the rest of us at the results of the election.
“We had a little betting pool [in the department], and these are professionals,” Cohen said. “Nobody got it right.”
The election was followed by a social media storm of some Canadians celebrating the departure of a Conservative government, with others bemoaning the newly elected Prime Minister’s lack of experience and his party’s history of failing to keep promises.
Cohen acknowledged that in the past the Liberal Party has campaigned from the political left, but governed from the political right. However, things may be different this time around.
“I think he knows people are onto the Liberals about that,” Cohen said, “He’s got to prove himself.”
A Liberal campaign promise particularly relevant to SFU is the pledge to revamp the National Energy Board (NEB)’s approval process for pipelines. In late 2014, Burnaby Mountain became the focus of national media attention when protesters blocked the surveying work in preparation for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. The NEB had given Trans Mountain access to the surveying site, which is an environmentally protected area.
The Liberal party has taken a case-by-case stance on pipelines, so even with a reformed NEB, the Trans Mountain Pipeline may still be built. Cohen spoke to that possibility, saying “it would be very disappointing. I don’t think you’ll get a Liberal elected again in BC.” She added that due to the fact that the bitumen transported by the pipeline would not be refined in province, “there’s only disadvantages for BC.”
Uncertainty about campaign promises aside, there are signs that politics in Canada and the rest of the world have changed in the past decades.
Cohen said that the world is “teeming with people with more progressive ideas both in the UK and the US [that have] some kind of following now,” while in the past, they would have been in the margins.
However, Cohen warned that bringing those changes to bear isn’t for the faint of heart. “If somebody really does want to make a change, they have to be bold and they have to have courage.”
