Politics

1. This week, both Trump and Johnson performed the difficult feat of making Doug Ford look good by comparison. It doesn't mean that even his federal cousins aren't treating him like a leper, but at least he isn't visibly and egregiously violating democratic norms. (Of course, with a majority in the legislature, he doesn't need to.)
2. In 2001, it had been 23 years since Said published Orientalism. It is now 41 years. Despite that fact, I see only reaction to Justin Trudeau's use of dark makeup and none to the equally problematic "Arabian Nights" themed party which framed it. (As for what was considered acceptable at the time, all one has to do is consider the fact that this was considered a fun and harmless thing to put into a school yearbook.) The incident(s) do not, of course, indicate that Trudeau is personally particularly racist (although they say a great deal about systemic racism); they do indicate what we already knew from his leadership: that he is a person of easy enthusiasms and not much deep thought. One could wish him more like his father and less like his mother.
3. That being said, in an election which is heavily focussed on personality and less on policy, it is telling that people still trust him more than Andrew Scheer, according to recent polls. The Conservatives have a perennial problem: to win a majority they have to appeal to the centre, but to engage their base they have to be partisan, which these days essentially means extremist. Scheer's personal beliefs and characteristics play badly into this; he's less believable when he tries to pretend that the party is trying to play away from the right than another leader with more force and a different history might be, and he's not good at drawing attention away from the fact that the party is trying to ride two horses going in opposite directions at the same time.
4. From a policy perspective, even the National Post, which is pretty pro-Tory, has little to say in favour of the party policies; from its perspective the Liberals and the Conservatives are running on nearly indistinguishable platforms. This may say more about the Liberals' hedging on issues like climate change and the energy industry than it does about the moderation of the CPC (non-ML).
5. On election coverage: the media is doing its part in reducing the importance of policy by a complete failure to cover it A case in point: the CBC has an online tool designed to show the universe of party positions (and how an interacting users views match up). But their universe is pretty constricted: it makes the Greens and the NDP look as though they are clustered up at the extreme left corner, whereas in fact neither one has particularly radical values. Neither one, for example, really pushes a policy of a sustained national strategy to reduce automobile usage through a coherent set of taxes, regulation, and active support of alternatives. Neither one suggests that given the increasing criticality of online access, especially in education, Internet access should be provided free to everyone via a public utility and paid for out of taxes, and that there should be direct financial support to ensure that all high school and university students have home computers. Neither one wants to nationalize an industry. Their approaches to reining in excessive corporate profits are pretty mild. This allows positioning of the Liberals as mildly progressive (rather than entirely centrist), the CPCs as mildly conservative (rather than reactionary) and the NDP and Greens as dangerously radical.
6. I have no idea how the actual vote is going to go. I note that the CPC essentially needs a majority to govern, as they are unlikely to be able to form a coalition with anyone. I also note that the Greens and Barnier's party are wildcards, perhaps turning the results in some ridings when they don't win.