Bears, earthquakes and St. Paul's

Time to go, Trudeau.

I woke up. It was around 3 AM.

The cause: a security camera alert at my cabin, outside Bancroft. Something big.

I got up and quietly moved to the couch in another room, so as to avoid waking up E.

I looked at the camera. It wasn't an earthquake – that was going to come about an hour or so later – it was a bear. She (I think it was a she) was sniffing around at the edge of the woods, looking utterly unafraid. I sat on the couch and watched her for a while until she disappeared.

It was shortly after that that I got the online alert from one of the reporters who had pulled the night shift.  There had indeed been an earthquake, in Midtown Toronto.

Not of the seismic kind. Another kind of earthquake: a political one. The Liberal Party of Canada, formerly the most successful political machine in Western democracy, had just gone down to defeat in an election in the riding of St. Paul's.  The Tories had won. Narrowly, but they won.

By-elections often get dismissed by journalists and politicos as irrelevant - so often, perhaps, that voters start to believe them. So they don't turn out. But in St. Paul's, nearly 50 per cent of them did. For a by-election, in a riding that has been safely Liberal for three decades, that's a big turnout. It's a big deal.

And, while just a by-election, one that won't change who gets to be Canada's government, it was big, big, big. So big, it's hard to put into words.

My friend and neighbor, author David Frum, tried. Here's how he described the significance of the result: "This is roughly equivalent to a Republican winning a special election for a House of Representatives seat in west side Los Angeles." My cruder take on X, having been rendered fully awake by a bear, and having predicted it could never happen: "The Trudeau Liberals are so, so f**ked."

St. Paul's is what political operatives like to call a "flyover" riding. As in, the leader and his or her marquee candidates don't need to ever come there to campaign. It's already in the bag. Nothing to worry about.

But for weeks, the Trudeau Liberals were indeed worried. They shipped staff from Ottawa to work there for the hapless Grit candidate, Leslie Church. Half of cabinet showed up to stump for her. Trudeau made clear that she was likely to be a minister when – not if – she won.

But she didn't win. She lost.

As in any win or loss, the factors are myriad and multiple. Trudeau leads a tired old government, one that has made too many missteps on the economic front, and had too many scandals on the morality front.

But in St. Paul's, where there is a not-insubstantial Jewish population, Trudeau's regime alienated Jewish families who have felt isolated and ignored by their own government, while waves of antisemitism crashed all round them. If Leslie Church received a single Jewish vote, I would be astounded.  It more than accounted for the final margin.

And so, she lost. If Church is to be remembered for anything, it will be for losing one of the safest seats there is.

And  Justin Trudeau? What about him?

He has to go. He has to leave. Everyone knows it, although perhaps not him. Not yet.

St. Paul's wasn't just a by-election, you see. It was actually a referendum in disguise – a referendum on the most unpopular Prime Minister in more than a generation. More than anything else, it was about him.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, now resemble that big bear I saw on an early-morning security camera: unwavering, unafraid, mostly unbeatable.

Time to head off into the woods, Justin Trudeau. A big Tory bear is coming your way.