Canadian Election 44 Update: August 19, 2021
By: Michael Kydd
Tags: Michael Kydd, Canadian Politics, Mental Health, Psychedelics, Canadian Elections

Current 338.com poll results show a tightening race between the Liberals (34.5%) and Conservatives (30.6%). In polling circles, this puts both parties in a statistical dead heat (+/- 4.4%) after week one of the campaign.

No bold predictions, no crystal ball. But when a political party — who was down 30 percentage points only six months ago — focuses on one core message, anything can happen. And it just happened in Nova Scotia.

The Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives led by leader, Tim Houston, swept to a majority victory two nights ago after every pollster and pundit in the land had written his party off at the start of the NS election campaign.

Why does this matter?

Houston ran a solid campaign on an issue near and dear to the hearts of Nova Scotians: healthcare. He unveiled a left-leaning platform that promised hundreds of millions of dollars in the first year of the party’s mandate to increase the number of family doctors, bolster the mental health system and create more nursing home beds. Houston’s party has also become the first to unseat a government in Canada since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other elections that have taken place during the course of the health crisis — in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Yukon and Saskatchewan — all saw incumbent leaders remain in power. The silent majority: There is something to be said about “undecided” voters and their ability to wait out a campaign and vote in the eleventh-hour. Undecided Canadian voters have the balance of power right now, especially in #Election44 where the Liberals and Conservatives are within five percentage points of each other. Tight elections with a high margin of undecided voters have a way of opening the eyes and ears of politicians, hence the need for getting each political party to identify their position on the legalization of psychedelic therapy. In the last six years, the Liberal Party of Canada has dominated Atlantic Canada — other than MPs like Rob Moore, John Williamson, and Chris d’Entremont who broke through the Liberal fortress in the 2019 federal election. This was pre-COVID.

(Shout out to Rachel Crosbie who I think would make a great PC Leader in Newfoundland & Labrador one day).

Both of Justin Trudeau’s victories (2015, 2019) were buoyed by what seemed to be an impenetrable Atlantic guarantee that what starts in the East would carry him through the West; however, Houston’s victory, combined with the positive, high-integrity campaign run by Newfoundland & Labrador PC Leader, Ches Crosbie, in January, puts an interesting spin on how Atlantic Canadians may vote in #Election44.

Why should the psychedelic industry pay attention to the Nova Scotia election results?

Mental Health: Canadians are exhausted and need help. With provincial governments emphasizing the need for mental health reform, more pressure will be placed on Ottawa to help pay the way. Houston has promised more than $400 million to improve healthcare, so there should be opportunities for psychedelics companies and programs to provide clinical therapy and other innovations in NS. Governments will be looking for innovative and cost-effective solutions to combat the mental health epidemic facing Canadians, and psychedelic therapies are the frontier-building solutions making the most sense right now. When people are desperate, governments are desperate. They will need ideas and educational resources to demonstrate the efficacy and science of psychedelic therapies. And more importantly, this is the time for private and public entities to start investing resources into studying and communicating the socio-economic benefits of psychedelic therapies and how they can help reduce healthcare budgets across Canada. Putting partisanship aside: From day one, the coalition formed under the Canadian Psychedelic Association (CPA) and industry partners like Field Trip Health Ltd. focused on educating every Canadian politician — regardless of political stripe — across the country. Why? Because we don’t pick winners or losers in elections. When you cater to one political party, it takes away your ability to negotiate with another. That is why the CPA and our coalition are in a good position to lobby effectively on the Memorandum of Regulatory Approval (MORA).

There is no guarantee that the results of the NS election will translate into a stronger Conservative surge in the coming weeks, but it will make things interesting for Mr. Trudeau. If there is food for thought for Justin Trudeau in the Nova Scotia election, it may be the fact that, with the country potentially in the latter stages of a pandemic, steering voters through the COVID crisis no longer guarantees an incumbent victory.

In Nova Scotia, the Liberals learned that in painful fashion as former Premier Iain Rankin ran a low-key campaign, while his opponents each hammered on key non-COVID-19 issues.

This election could be a double-edged sword for Trudeau.

On the one hand, voters tend to be loath to change leaders during a crisis. In Nova Scotia, with case counts low and vaccination rates high, it appears voters switched from crisis mode to thinking about particular issues, to Houston’s benefit and Rankin’s detriment.

For Trudeau, much will come down to whether voters perceive the pandemic to be in its waning stages — in which case, they may broaden their outlook to other issues — or whether, with Delta variant case numbers rising in places, they believe the pandemic to be ongoing — in which case they are likely to dance with the one what brung them.

But if the latter is the case, and voters are nervous about rising case numbers, the inevitable attack from opposing parties will be on the advisability of running a campaign during a COVID crisis.

More to come…

Michael Kydd is the Principal of Kydder Group Inc., a public affairs firm that specializes in psychedelic communication, government relations, and regulatory affairs. He is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.