I read these, and election stuff is probably easier for me to engage with than the scandals and policy shifts of local politics in Canada, I guess because it's a more familiar system.
I also agree regarding minority governments - majority governments in any sensible electoral system should be an extreme rarity really. Unless there are any specific liberal policies that both the NDP and Conservatives hate. This would be the case if e.g. there was a Lib Dem government in the UK, but the Canadian liberals seem a bit more typically centrist and the NDP less socially conservative than Labour such that it's probably easier for a Can-Liberal minority to get most things done by being able to reach either left or right?
I think that this government (and the previous Harper minority governments) gets legislation passed by making deals with whatever opposition party seems most supportive of a particular measure. That might be the Bloc for an act with some money for Quebec or the NDP for healthcare spending.
Its hard to talk about policy because this government does not have a set of big new agendas like the 2015 Liberal government. Its hard to see why providing clean water to all First Nations is taking so long. Health care is a provincial responsibility, so Ottawa has splashed around some money and handled US relations but nothing like the situation in the UK. And I'm not really in a position to talk about the details of everyday policymaking and the management of the federal bureaucracy.
Edit: Harper had a clear goal in everyday policy: to degrade the capacity of the Canadian state to help Canadians and to make evidence-based decisions. His concept of the role of the federal state was out of the early 19th century. I have trouble saying
anything about the day-to-day activity of the 2019 Trudeau government, other than things like the SNC Lavalin affair where he wrote legislation side by side with a specific company which wanted to apply it. There are many things worse than 'vaguely competent, lefty in rhetoric but small-c conservative in practice' but its hard to talk about.
The election was probably called when it is because every adult in Canada who wants a vaccination will be vaccinated, but the winter wave of COVID will not be bad yet, and the next federal budget with accounting for pandemic spending and losses is not yet due. So if your goal is to get a majority, its probably a good time, but if your goal is to enact specific policies I am not sure what the Liberals have in mind.
The Tories have apparently
released their platform already but I have not browsed it. In my riding the candidates are not yet announced (people can be nominated until 31 August, the vote is on 20 September). My MP has a lot of lawn signs out already. I will wait to see what the Liberals say they want to do with a majority.
MP Derek Sloan, who was ejected from the Conservative caucus in January,
has decided to run again not in his Ontario riding but in a riding in Alberta where the incumbent Conservative MP got 71% (!) of the vote in 2019.