I happened to be speaking to a lawyer in Belgium earlier this week. His bird’s-eye picture of Canada’s federal election campaign—garnered from reading European news sources—seemed remarkably accurate to me..It went roughly like this: Before calling the election, Justin Trudeau had a high public approval rating for his handling of the pandemic. However, he had only a minority government. Opportunistically, he called the election to try to transform that high approval rating into a majority government. However, the opinion polls are showing it will be all for naught: they’re all predicting if he’s elected, it will again be with a minority government. A lot of money and energy will have been wasted for nothing..That sounds right to me. I’ve participated in at least three telephone polls over the past week asking which party I’ll be voting for. CBC News today published data from five polling companies indicating Liberal support ranging from 30% to 34%, with Conservatives hovering between 30% and 32%. The CBC assigns a 59% probability to the Liberals winning with a minority, and only 12% to a Liberal majority government. Conservatives are given a 27% probability of winning a minority. Never mind any possibility of a Conservative majority for the time being..Canadians will be glued to their news sources Monday night. My advice is that we all exercise extra vigilance in accepting the results we are presented with—especially if those results depart significantly from what this week’s opinion polls are showing..Many Canadians may be unaware audits are still ongoing in several American states–Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada—to determine what really happened in the Nov. 3, 2020 presidential election..Maricopa County, AZ is where the most egregious voter fraud has been alleged, taking many different forms: double counting of Biden-favouring ballots, switching of votes from the Trump column to the Biden column, counting pro-Biden ballots from dead people, destruction of pro-Trump ballots, and so on. At this time, these are still unproven allegations..A forensic audit has been ongoing for months now, with the results supposedly forthcoming this week. Once again, however, disclosure of the results were postponed as a result of partisan bickering. The report is now scheduled to be released on September 24, which is 325 days after the election occurred. Truth—one way or another—takes a long time to establish, it seems..A major concern raised by US Republicans who alleged voter fraud was the use of equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, a company founded in Canada, although not being used in this federal election..Dominion is currently suing two US news sources for defamation in what the CBC calls “baseless claims” that its ballot counting machines helped rig the election. The outcome of those cases should be watched closely by Canadians..I’m expecting my Belgian friend’s prediction about the outcome of Monday’s election will prove correct—Canadians will have another Liberal minority government—with only a few minor modifications (which might unfortunately include the loss of MP Derek Sloan as a member of the House)..If a landslide Liberal majority is called on Monday, we will need to keep our eyes open for signs of irregularities. .Karen Selick is a columnist for the Western Standard and a retired lawyer who now works as a freelance writer, editor, and video maker.
