This election could change how politics and government work. Or it could be about shuffling chairs

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This article was published 14/08/2021 (1132 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many Canadians are rethinking their job situation through the pandemic. Justin Trudeau has just plunged Canadian politics into that same exercise.

Over the next five weeks, leading up to election day on Sept. 20, Canada has a chance to reshape the political workplace — if not the entire job of government itself.

It could be a massive, existential debate for the nation. Or it could be an exercise in shuffling around a few office chairs. Much depends on whether a pandemic-weary country, hovering at the edge of a fourth COVID wave, is in any mood to redraw the political and government map.

Trudeau didn’t quit his job on Sunday — he will still be prime minister throughout the campaign and this election is ultimately a bid to keep, if not improve his standing at work. So he’s not exactly in the same league as all those Canadians we are hearing about; the ones using the pandemic as an occasion to abandon their jobs and do something else.

(The Liberal leader did not reply to multiple questions at his kickoff news conference at Rideau Hall about whether he would step down if this election failed to produce a majority government.)

But he and the other leaders are being challenged — as many Canadians are — to identify how their business has been permanently transformed by 17 months of pandemic existence. This should be the driving question of Election 2021, whether it applies to policy, governance or the practice of politics itself.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is looking for a job change, obviously. But to get a promotion from opposition to government, he is going to be challenged on whether his party has grown during the pandemic. Is it more attuned to climate change than it was in 2019, for instance? Can the Conservatives keep sticking to the idea that less government is better — as they have for decades now — when COVID put the government back into people’s lives in such a major way?

Oddly enough, O’Toole was the only leader spending election-call day in virtual politicking. While Trudeau and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh hit the road for Montreal, the Conservative leader hung back in the Ottawa studio specially created for the kind of online gatherings that became a standard of pandemic politics.

It’s odd because the Conservatives were the most fierce advocates of the need for Parliament to sit in person through the pandemic, with Liberals, the NDP and Greens much more reluctant about having MPs all gathered under one roof.

Yet here, on the day when the election was called, it was O’Toole on screen and Singh, Trudeau and Green party Leader Annamie Paul actually doing events with real people, in person.

But these are logistical matters ultimately, which will sort themselves out as the campaign progresses and everyone learns more how the fourth COVID wave is unfolding.

Again, it is not unlike the evolving discussions in Canadian workplaces of all kinds. Will the age-old art of campaigning snap back to business as usual once COVID recedes, or is the future of election road shows going to be a permanent, hybrid mix of work-from-home and showing up at the office (or rally)?

Beyond those discussions, though, there are bigger debates to be had about what the pandemic has exposed in terms of weaknesses in Canada — including those in politics and government.

Notoriously slow-moving bureaucracies had to step up their game, to get help to people quickly. Political leaders needed to be far more open and transparent — daily news conferences, of all things — to keep the public informed. Politicians had to work across party lines.

It would be great if the election featured an ongoing debate among the political class on whether some of these innovations should be made more permanent. What have we learned over the past 17 months about the public’s need for transparency, accountability and responsiveness in politics and government?

And what about pandemic patriotism and protectionism? Will this be an election in which we discuss how Canada found itself too dependent on the international supply chain for pandemic-fighting equipment and vaccines? Has COVID altered citizens’ views about where they need to think globally and act locally?

Trudeau came to the podium outside Rideau Hall on Sunday, describing Canada in the midst of a “moment.” It may well be. Yet it was hard to shake the sense throughout his remarks, and those of the other leaders, that they are planning to use this election as an occasion to rethink how politics and government work for a post-pandemic era.

Canadians will be reflecting for years on how COVID changed their personal lives. This is the first crack at seeing whether the pandemic changed governance and politics in this country for the long haul.

Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt