Though progressives will likely still be in charge after the next vote, they are trending the wrong way. The left in Canada is divided. The hard right is making steady progress at the provincial level. Without electoral reform, it's just a matter of time before the Cons are at the country’s throat once more.

Never mind all that scuttlebutt about snap elections.

It could happen I suppose, but it would be easier for Justin Trudeau to simply jump off the Peace Tower.

More relevant speculation?

What will Parliament look like when the next electoral hurly-burly is done? And what might that tell us?

Trudeau became prime minister in a political world that has largely disappeared. There will be no Stephen Harper to dislodge in the coming election. And that is a very important fact. It was largely the spectre of what Harper would have done to Canada with another term that swept the Liberals from third to first place in 2015.

Nor will Trudeau be campaigning in an Ontario run by a political cousin.

Voters in the country’s largest province didn’t just blow away Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal party in 2018. They gave a strong majority to an untried and untrue populist throwback. Doug Ford earned his political spurs in the wacko world of his late brother, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. He played the straight man in the coke-and-chaos administration that made Toronto fodder for U.S. late night comics.

But Doug Ford won and that matters a lot. The Ford machine, perhaps with Harper at the controls, will make it much tougher for Trudeau to capture Toronto and the 905 the way he did in 2015. It is worth noting that the late Doug Finley, widely credited with the first dubious Conservative federal win under Harper, learned his political tricks at the International Democratic Union. Harper is now chairman of this right-wing group.

There were actually two losers in the anomaly election of 2015. The first was obviously the Conservative Party of Canada. After nearly 10 years in power, it was trounced by a politician Harper considered to be a feckless neophyte.

Harper, who as talent scout-in-chief, chose to elevate sketchy fellows like Dean del Mastro, Arthur Porter and Bruce Carson, failed to see Trudeau as the political superstar he turned out to be last time around. Like Donald Trump, Harper always confused obsequious submissiveness with merit.

But the second loser in 2015 was the New Democratic Party. So great was the fear and loathing at the prospect of Harper’s return that voters who would normally have supported the NDP cast strategic ballots for the Liberals — thoughtful people like David Suzuki. That cost the NDP official opposition status and an excellent leader, who nevertheless lost his way on the campaign trail.

All that has changed.

The CPC is no longer led by a man Canadians didn’t trust and didn’t like. Instead, Andrew Scheer is a lightweight, B-list politician who inspires neither fear nor loathing.

Scheer is like a boring relative who won’t leave. You don’t go out of your way to diss him, but you try not to sit beside him at family gatherings. Scheer is no one’s default choice, except for the Kool-Aid drinkers who went down with Harper.

Bottom line? No one will vote for Trudeau to block Andrew Scheer, because the Tory leader shows no prospects of winning. Nor does he represent the negative animus that Harper did. He is a glass of warm milk stamped with a silly smile.

As for the NDP, that party’s supporters will be returning at the next election to their natural fold for a couple of reasons.

First, there is real buyer’s remorse at having supported the Liberals. Of all the promises broken by Trudeau and company, the ones on the environment and electoral reform have been deadly. Dippers who gave their votes in trust to the Liberals on those issues feel betrayed.

There is also the leadership change.

Jagmeet Singh is now the man of the socialist hour. You can bet he won’t be promising to balance the budget the way that Thomas Mulcair did in 2015. You can also bet the farm that the heart of the NDP’s platform in 2018 will feature a big shift to the left.

The hope is that if the party can get back its ‘Jack Factor,’ it will stop strategic voting this time around. That could in turn lead to a better showing, particularly with Trudeau dropping the ball on some key progressive promises.

Except for one thing: Rachel Notley.

She is killing the NDP brand. The premier of Alberta is NDP in name only. It is bad enough that she has abandoned her progressive roots to flog the development of dirty oil, but Notley has also stamped her foot like a petulant child and attacked others publicly who don’t agree with her on the proliferation of pipelines.

That includes the new leader of the federal NDP.

It was one thing to skip Singh’s first national convention as leader, but by personally attacking Singh, Notley has created real anxiety about what the NDP actually stands for.

Is it Singh’s opposition to pipelines like Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain, which Ottawa now wears like an albatross around its neck?

Or is it Notley’s cynical and self-interested cheerleading for an energy source that is rapidly choking the planet?

Nor is Singh the only victim of the brief Notley carries for Big Oil. Trudeau could very easily pay dearly, both politically and financially, for his dealings with the Alberta premier.

To placate Notley, and to get Alberta onside with his national carbon tax, Trudeau went hook, line, and sinker for the Trans Mountain project.

True, Ottawa promised to sell this leaky loser, but there are more buyers for used hula hoops than for this wretched project that blew a hole in the federal treasury, while handing a king’s ransom to a decamping Texas oil company.

Not only did the deal with Notley cost Trudeau a lot of political credibility with environmentalists and taxpayers a lot of money, it may all have been for nothing.

That’s because the polls suggest that Ford’s soul brother, Jason Kenney, will provide Notley with a career path change in Alberta’s looming provincial election.

If Kenney does win, it would take Superman more time to change into his cape than it would for Mr. Curry-in-a-Hurry to cancel Notley’s carbon deal with Ottawa. As for the Liberals gaining seats in Alberta? There’s more chance of Trump providing Robert Mueller with a signed confession to obstructing everything.

With both the Liberals and the NDP in somewhat vulnerable positions, 2019 augurs well for the Green Party. The Greens have elected members provincially in British Columbia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island. So it is not pie-in-the-sky to say that Elizabeth May could have some company in Parliament after the next election.

That prospect becomes even more likely given NDP Premier John Horgan’s machinations in British Columbia on the environment.

Though Horgan has staunchly opposed the Trans Mountain pipeline, he enraged a lot of environmentalists when he allowed the mega-destructive Site C dam project to proceed. And now he is resurrecting former premier Christie Clark’s dream of massive LNG projects for the province – and endangering the coast all over again.

With the Liberals almost certainly set to lose seats in British Columbia, the Greens are at least as strong a contender to make gains in the province as the NDP.

When I look into the tea leaves of 2019, this is what I see:

Scheer losing another election for the Conservatives, but closing the gap with the ruling Liberals, and setting the table for his replacement. Defeating Trudeau has always been a two-step operation for the Tories, and Scheer is merely the placeholder. Peter MacKay is the real contender in due time.

With no Harper to tilt against, no NDP strategic votes to pick up and the increasingly heavy baggage of a term of governing, it is unlikely that Trudeau will gain seats — as some of his more enthusiastic supporters believe.

The more likely outcome is a Liberal minority government, perhaps even a razor-thin one. That is exactly what happened to Trudeau senior and the massive majority government he won in 1968. After one term in office, the Liberals lost a whopping 46 seats and were reduced to a two-seat minority in the 1972 election.

Despite its new leader, the NDP is facing federal and provincial divisions that confuse the base on key issues like the environment.

Despite his impressive personal credentials, it is far from clear that Singh can improve on Mulcair’s performance in 2015. In fact, the dreadful by-election results for the party since he was chosen leader would suggest the opposite.

After years of being a voice in the wilderness, May and the Green Party are well-positioned to make big gains relative to the party’s current parliamentary status. Remember, one extra seat represents a 100 per cent improvement.

The election of 2019 will bring less of the same thing.

Though progressives will likely still be in charge after the next vote, they are trending the wrong way. The left in Canada remains divided. The hard right is making steady progress at the provincial level. And Trump may throw a spanner into Canadian politics at any moment, causing the kind of economic chaos that breeds radical change.

Without electoral reform, it is just a matter of time before the Cons waiting game pays off, and they are at the country’s throat once more.

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