A small, “not-again” shudder rippled through the federal political class over the past week when three Conservative leadership candidates said they were willing to tip the country into another election this fall.

Peter MacKay, seen as a front-runner, tossed it out in a fundraising letter: “Canadians have lost faith in this government. Protests, shutdowns, economic decline, and job losses with more to come. Canada is a great country, but we’re being held back by failing government. We need an election in October.”

Sarnia MP Marilyn Gladu had already served notice of a similar intention in a Facebook post a few weeks ago. Erin O’Toole, who received the gift of an endorsement from Alberta Premier Jason Kenney this week, said: “As soon as I become leader, I will table a motion of no confidence in the government.”

So that’s pretty clear. Serious contenders for the Conservative leadership believe that their first priority is to topple Justin Trudeau when Parliament resumes in the fall. The Conservative leadership vote itself takes place in late June. Presumably the winner of the contest will use the time on the summer barbecue circuit to make the case for Trudeau’s immediate defeat.

Something about this sounds very familiar.

It is, in fact, exactly the kind of mood that federal Liberals were in about 11 years ago, when they were in a remarkably similar position to the Conservatives of today.

In 2009, Liberals had just gone through a second consecutive election defeat after losing power a few years earlier. They’d tried one leader — Stéphane Dion — who hadn’t delivered them the swift return to office that so many expected.

Many Liberals were surprised to discover in the 2008 election that Canadians did not loathe Stephen Harper’s first term as much as they did — that voters were actually willing to re-elect Conservatives in spite of all the impassioned Liberal arguments about how Harper’s team was wrecking the country.

Conservatives would come to call this “Harper derangement syndrome” — the condition in which every act by Harper would tip Liberals into a righteous fury.

That condition has now turned upside down, and these days, it’s Liberals accusing Conservatives (or others) of suffering Trudeau-inspired derangement.

Whether applied to Harper then or Trudeau now, the implication is the same — that normal, non-deranged Canadians aren’t looking for the first available opportunity to find a new prime minister. Diehard partisans, yes, but ordinary voters who have just put the last nasty campaign behind them? Maybe not so much.

Again, this was the state of things in Liberal-versus-Conservative politics in 2009, when Liberals replaced Dion with new leader Michael Ignatieff. It was an uncontested race and by summer of that year, Ignatieff and his team felt ready to take on Harper and put the country in a quick do-over of the election of 2008.

Famously, and to his eventual regret, Ignatieff ended the Liberals’ summer retreat in 2009 with the threat: “Mr. Harper, your time is up.”

It actually was an empty threat — it required New Democrats or the Bloc Québécois to vote no-confidence in Harper’s minority government too. Liberals were surprised again to find that other opposition parties weren’t all that keen at the prospect of another election. Harper managed to hold off facing another election for almost two years after Ignatieff told him his time was up.

In his book about his brief, unpleasant time as Liberal leader, Ignatieff refers to this gambit as a “debacle” and warns: “Voters punish politicians who look like they’re playing games or changing their tune. I looked like both and paid the price.”

MacKay, Gladu and O’Toole may not have read Fire and Ashes, Ignatieff’s book, but they may want to revisit history when they consider the “let’s try it again with another leader” plan. They may also want to consult with three players — the New Democrats, the Bloc Québécois and most importantly, Canadians themselves.

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Conservatives, with 121 seats in the Commons, would need the 32 MPs of the Bloc and the 24 MPs of the NDP to get a vote of no confidence passed against Trudeau’s 157-seat Liberal caucus. They’d also have to assume that Canadians were as giddily interested in an election do-over this fall, and a different result. Those are a lot of “ifs.” Neither the NDP nor the Bloc appear keen at the moment to go into another campaign.

More to the point, I’m suspecting that Canadians wouldn’t enjoy the sequel any more than they enjoyed the 2019 campaign. The prospect of a fall election may not be entirely deranged, but it might not be all that realistic or wise either.

Susan Delacourt is a columnist covering national politics based in Ottawa. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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