Bye-election: Torontonians sent the NDP/Liberals a message. Here's what needs to happen next.

Canada can't go on like this. We need a general election.

In a shocking upset, last night Conservative candidate Don Stewart won a byelection in a Toronto seat that the Liberals have held for decades.

The byelection, caused by the resignation of longtime Liberal Member of Parliament Carolyn Bennett, was in one of the so-called "safest" seats for the Liberals. The Liberals held the seat during the Conservative majority sweep of Canada in 2011 when the party was reduced to third-party status. Said differently, there is no way the Liberals should have lost this byelection.

But they just did, with historically high turnout, with nearly 44% of the riding showing up to vote. 

There's no other explanation: Torontonians wanted to send the Liberals and their NDP coalition partners a message.

Here's what happened and what needs to happen next.

1.) The Liberals and the New Democratic Party stopped listening to Canadians long ago.

Congratulations are owed to Mr. Stewart and his team, who ran a solid campaign focused on the Conservative Party's core platform of axing the carbon tax, building homes, fixing the federal budget, and stopping crime. These points are the core message the Conservative Party has been relentlessly pushed for years. Why? Federal Conservatives and their leader, Pierre Poilievre, have been pounding the pavement to listen to Canadians and know that these are their top concerns. 

By contrast, the Liberals and their coalition partners, the New Democratic Party, have turned deaf ears to voters' cries for more focus on policies that will bring down the cost of living. Instead, they've chosen to focus on objectively wacko policies that were developed by and only resonate with the narrowest sliver of elite far-left Canadian political intelligentsia. If the Liberal/NDP's latest federal deficit budget, which increased taxes and was designed to incite a Canadian class war, was supposed to prove otherwise, this byelection result should have been markedly different.

2.) At this point, it doesn't matter who leads the Liberals or the NDP. They have proven they can't deliver change and aren't about to start now. 

This byelection result will prompt much ink to be spilled over the future fate of Liberal Party leader and current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

But frankly, it doesn't matter. 

If the Liberals, or their coalition NDP partners had a bench capable of delivering change, they would have turfed Mr. Trudeau and his government long ago. Instead, scandal after scandal, both the Liberal backbench and the entirety of the NDP caucus have been active, gleeful partners in foisting upon Canadians some of the dumbest, most tone-deaf, generationally damaging policies the country has ever seen. They have proven they won't push back on anything. They have demonstrated to millions of Canadians by their actions that they care more about clinging to power than doing anything brave that could make life a little easier for the people they represent.

And even if Liberal and NDP Members of Parliament get spooked by this byelection result and try to talk about reversing course now, their efforts will be a day late and billions of dollars short. The $--t sandwich that they’ve cooked up for Canadians over the last nine years is well-done and on everyone’s plate to smell and taste. Millions of Canadians are living with the disastrous results of their failed policies and know better than to trust them. There’s no turning this around for the NDP and Liberals now.

That’s also because no Liberal or NDP Member of Parliament has taken any sort of accountability for these incredibly damaging, divisive policies that have seen the Canadian economy fall into the toilet, the cost of living skyrocket, and resulted in a nationwide surge of crime. The reverse is true - they've celebrated it. Even arch-elitist and likely Liberal leadership contender Mark Carney couldn’t bring himself to condemn Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland's recent dumpster fire of a federal budget - that he didn’t do so before this byelection result reeks of opportunism that Canadians can’t afford. They are all rigid adherents of far-left ideology, and their actions prove it. These are not serious people capable of fixing a problem; they are complicit in creating them. And even the most die hard leftist partisans have to admit that only the Conservatives have presented a clear, reasonable alternative to fix the country’s mess.

3.) Trudeau could resign or continue like everything is fine, and the NDP will continue to prop up the Liberals. That's one of the many reasons why it's time for a general election.

Canada is currently in a minority Parliament, which means the governing Liberals need a coalition partner to stay in power. For years, the NDP have played this role with vigour and glee.

But watching the NDP prop up the federal Liberal government at every opportunity - well beyond budgetary measures - has been one of the lowest spectacles I've had the misfortune to behold in my entire time as a Parliamentarian. The NDP have capitulated on key motions, played the stooge on critical committee votes, propped up the current Speaker despite multiple overt instances of partisanship, and helped craft what history will no doubt consider some of the most damaging policies in Canadian history. 

In the coming days, there will be much speculation about what the NDP will do in response to any number of options Mr. Trudeau has for the future. But that speculation isn't needed because the NDP has proven that there isn't anything that Mr. Trudeau can do that would make them break ranks. Look no further than NDP leader Jagmeet Singh's truly bizarre response to significant allegations of foreign interference last week for proof.

Such is Mr. Singh and his caucus's blind, self-interested loyalty to the federal Liberals that I suspect that even if Mr. Trudeau were to prorogue Parliament in response to this byelection result, the NDP would only comment after an announcement had been leaked and after their Liberal masters had firmly removed their ability to independently affect change. Utterly useless.

In that, the NDP and Liberals should be seen as interchangeable failures in the minds of Canadian voters, and frankly, they likely already are.

That's why we need to get on with it and have a general election right now. The country can't afford to go on like this anymore. The cake is baked and the table is set.

There are two clear paths ahead—continuing down the road of ruination that the NDP and Liberals are hellbent on pulling us all down or the common-sense Conservative platform of making life safer and more affordable that Don Stewart so aptly brought to the voters of Toronto-St. Paul's.

Election now.