The 2015 federal election was a disheartening one for the New Democratic Party (NDP). There was a real sense, even weeks into the marathon election, that leader Tom Mulcair could become Canada’s first NDP prime minister. Of course, we know what came next: On October 19, 2015, Mulcair conceded, trying to put on a brave smile to speak about a great campaign—even if the party just lost more than half of its caucus. Nevertheless, he could not help but look visibly uncomfortable, bearing the weight of the opportunity squandered.

In discordance with the popular narrative, I don’t ascribe to the notion that the Liberals actually outflanked the NDP to the left, but Mulcair’s failure to read the progressive potential in the electorate made such an argument plausible to voters and pundits alike. This, combined with shifting support that put the Liberals in the best position to defeat Stephen Harper in the second half of the election, meant that voters flocked to the Liberals, even in strong NDP ridings.

In the aftermath, most NDPers felt the campaign was a strategic failure but were divided on Mulcair’s fate. Some felt “backroom boys,” those making private political decisions, did Mulcair in, that he had learned his lesson, and that he was the best choice available. Others argued that Mulcair bore responsibility for the result and denounced what his leadership represented: a 2012 gambit to give the leadership to a recent Liberal pledging victory over values. Critics pointed to the NDP’s 2013 constitutional revisions, which removed from the preamble a commitment to social ownership, production for use over profit, and the abolition of poverty. Given the 2015 result, this side argued, the Mulcair experiment was a failure.

Going into the spring 2016 NDP convention, there was grumbling about Mulcair’s leadership. But even though Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff was open about his unwillingness to support Mulcair, there was little sense of an organized “dump Tom” campaign, and some felt that he would obtain the 70 percent confidence typically needed to remain leader. Surprisingly, Mulcair failed to even win half the room’s confidence. This set us along the path to the party’s current leadership race, which began on December 21, 2016, when British Columbia MP Peter Julian officially registered his campaign. In early 2017, Charlie Angus, Guy Caron, and Niki Ashton followed to form the original core of the contest. These four candidates—all federal MPs—were joined by veterans advocate Pat Stogran and Ontario NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh, the former of whom quickly dropped out. Given that Julian has recently exited the race citing poor fundraising outcomes, the field is set with four credible candidates.

At the time of publication, the race is still fairly open, but there are some trends. In terms of polling, Angus has consistently been in first and Ashton in second. But until we have either more conclusive data, or get a real sense for which of the candidates has been most successful in recruiting new members, predicting the outcome is far from a safe bet. All of the contenders are, at least in their messaging, putting the Mulcair years behind them. Angus harks back to Jack Layton frequently, but almost never to Mulcair. Caron is proposing bold policies around a Basic Income program. Singh is offering fairly substantive social programs. And Ashton is pushing intergenerational justice and the idea of increased public ownership in industry.

Even as these four candidates are partially divided on specific policy matters, there is a consensus that the Mulcair era is over—and a close look at democratic socialist campaigns abroad could signal what’s to come.

***

Canadians voted for progressive change in 2015—even if the party that benefitted was less than sincere about many of its promises, from electoral reform to ending educational inequities for Indigenous children. And while the Trudeau Liberals continue to poll well, some of the lustre is coming off, and there is room upon which to oppose the government from the left. Angus, for one, has scorched their failure to keep commitments to Indigenous communities, and Ashton has called out the hypocrisy of the Liberals energizing young people while doing little to address youth precarity.

But this move is also driven by the international context. In 2016, Bernie Sanders captured the imagination and emotions of millions of Americans, but also resonated with Canadians who felt he was sparking the grassroots energy and political interest needed in the wake of 2015. In fact, Ashton personally volunteered to help Bernie during the primaries, citing his message and ideals as akin to her own.

Bernie’s value for the Canadian left came less in particular policy than in his approach to the politics of class. He acknowledged class strife in American society, took sides in the struggle, and offered a platform cognizant of it. Shortly after the 2016 American election, for instance, Sanders tweeted that “there’s been class warfare for the last 30 years, but it’s been the ruling class taking on the middle class and poor.” It matters less if Sanders is a textbook socialist, and more that he took on the “millionaire and billionaire” class while standing with working Americans. He proposed new social spending that would help the latter and raised taxes that would disproportionately impact the former. And while most presidential candidates have painted themselves as a friend to rich and poor alike, Sanders did just the opposite, advising the wealthy and powerful not to vote for him. This approach was largely in line with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s in the 1930s, when he said that he “welcomed the hatred” of those elites opposed to his presidency. Ultimately, Sanders saw the issue of taxes, social spending, and austerity as one inseparable from class; he knew that you cannot have a system that pleases everyone. Instead, he chose the side of working- and middle-class people.

“A welfare state must be accompanied by an endeavour to bring more democracy into Canadians’ daily lives, and more public control over the country’s economic destiny.”

Under Mulcair, in contrast, the NDP portrayed themselves as a genuine partner to all social classes. There are multiple examples, but the clearest regards taxation: Mulcair suggested that if income tax rates on the wealthy were increased, it would approach a level of unjust and “confiscatory” taxation. As PM, he would push to close certain tax loopholes and for a higher corporate tax rate but wasn’t willing to significantly reform the system in favour of working people, nor to explore in a sustained manner the politics of taxation as a clear analogue for the politics of class. Additionally, Mulcair’s timid tax plan was hard to square with his proposed social programs and zero deficit pledge.

In today’s leadership race, candidates are significantly dismissive of Mulcair’s tax policy, with Caron proposing fairly ambitious increases to fund his Basic Income program, and Singh doing much the same—including the creation of an estate tax—to cover his proposed spending. In more recent days, Ashton has come out with her own tax plan not dissimilar to Singh’s, though it goes further in making the taxation of capital gains equal to that of income. Finally, Angus has yet to fully formalize his plan, but has written an op-ed piece in The Huffington Post about how he would raise taxes on those making over $250,000 to increase tax relief for lower income Canadians. Clearly, the way in which Bernie made taxation a fulcrum for bringing forward a politics of class and social justice has made an impact.

***

The impact of Sanders might yet be overtaken by that of United Kingdom Labour Party (UKLP) leader Jeremy Corbyn. Like Sanders, Corbyn is a long-time voice of the left and highly popular with young people. But he also leads a social democratic party not dissimilar to the NDP, making for a better apples-to-apples comparison. Corbyn became UKLP leader in 2015, and from the start, his unapologetic socialism made him a target of the media, elites, and most of his own caucus. (The latter constantly tried to overthrow him based on the perception that he failed to adequately represent the Remain campaign during the Brexit referendum, and that his staunch socialism made him unelectable.) While Corbyn had strong support from UKLP members, he was under perpetual siege—and Conservative leader Theresa May called an early election this spring in an effort to capitalize on Labour’s divisions and low polling.

Despite this, in what many called a shocking result, Corbyn turned the polls around, gained 30 seats, and took away the Conservative majority. Since the election, his personal and party approval ratings have skyrocketed, and the Conservatives’ have tumbled. This has only been exacerbated by an apartment fire in London, England, that killed as many as 100 residents, to which May’s response was seen as deflectionary and evasive, all while Corbyn came across as a compassionate statesman.

Why did these seismic changes happen in a matter of weeks? A major part was the failure of the Conservative campaign, but Corbyn—under the tagline “for the many, not the few”—ran a sincere and relatable campaign that offered democratic socialist ideals and policies to make the lives of regular U.K. citizens better. As Canadian political economist Michal Rozworski has argued, Corbyn’s platform was predicated not just on better social spending but on economic democracy, from state ownership to worker cooperatives. In Rozworski’s words, Corbyn not only proposed that workers “have a bigger slice of the pie, but a bigger say over how it is made.”

Corbyn offers a clear example for how the NDP can energize young people and run a competitive election in the face of hostile opposition. But his value is chiefly that he has reintroduced democratic socialist language into the Anglosphere’s public lexicon and earned 40 percent of the vote in the process. His ideology ties in rather comfortably within that of revered former NDP leaders like Tommy Douglas, David Lewis, and Ed Broadbent, who from the late 1960s into the mid-1980s articulated a socialist approach to making Canada a more just and humane society. They called for public ownership, lauded economic planning, championed equality beyond that of opportunity, and demonstrated the necessity of democracy beyond the ballot box. What these historic leaders have in common with Corbyn—and what would push the modern NDP out of its comfort zone—is the conviction that socialism is not synonymous with the welfare state. Although a welfare state must be present in a socialist programme, it must be accompanied by an endeavour to bring more democracy into Canadians’ daily lives, and more public control over the country’s economic destiny.

Many—like former Mulcair principal secretary Karl Bélanger—will say that holding up Corbyn as a template for NDP success is rash because he failed to win the election. But this view fails to acknowledge how deeply Corbyn has already inspired change in Britain’s political climate. Despite all the conventional wisdom about how democratic socialism would lead Labour into oblivion, Corbyn has done just the opposite, growing their vote share in relation to the previous election by more than in any other since 1945. Further, no single NDP leader has achieved a federal government— or Corbyn’s 40 percent vote share—and party supporters would never deny the successes and influence that the federal NDP has had across history.

Matters in the NDP leadership race are still in flux, so the person most likely to bring about such a direction is not set in stone. Nevertheless, it does appear that Ashton is most comfortable with taking a Corbyn-style line, with her calls for nationalization, outreach to stridently left groups such as Trotskyist Fightback Canada, and an articulated desire to turn the NDP leftward. But even her plans aren’t in the vein of Corbyn’s because they lack the specificity found in his platforms. Further, her rivals could certainly move in a leftward orientation themselves, and gobble up more of that space. And as noted above, all four candidates have moved leftward in relation to the Mulcair and Layton eras.

The path toward the NDP’s electoral success and ideological relevance, in my view, is through a democratic socialist platform that encourages social spending and redistribution, along with novel solutions to capitalism’s flaws, be they traditional concerns with industrial autocracy, or modern issues such as environmental sustainability and automation. From a practical standpoint, a democratic socialism transcending the welfare state will not only bring fresh ideas nonetheless rooted in NDP history but will contain policies that the Liberals won’t be willing to co-opt. Trudeau may well accept minor tax increases, deficits, and child care benefits, for example; but the Liberals—at least not without an NDP-balanced minority parliament—won’t be willing to make steps to democratize workplaces and the wider economy. This has to be the central strategy going forward for the federal party: to be unabashed progressives on social and cultural matters, and to combine these values with a consistent drive to democratize all aspects of public and economic life.

***

The 2015 election was certainly a setback for the NDP, but there is a path forward in giving Canadians a choice for genuine social and economic reform. Just as importantly, the examples of Sanders and Corbyn should speak to elements of the Canadian left that dismiss the potential of the NDP. As Rick Salutin put it in the Toronto Star: “Forget about starting new left-wing parties. You can actually work within corrupt cadavers like Labour and the Democrats, aspire to take them over, and move on to power. I’d never have believed it but the evidence is there.”

There are about two years until the next election. While the NDP are down in the polls at the time of publication, the U.K. election has shown us that bold policy, resilient leadership, an arrogant opponent, and an energized base can turn things around in a flash.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault, 20 (Sherbrooke)

@PLDusseault — Canada’s youngest-ever MP, Dusseault, a self-professed “political junkie” who turned 20 on May 31, recently completed his first year in applied politics at l’Université de Sherbrooke. Dusseault campaigned actively and debated Liberal MP Denis Coderre and former-Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe over Twitter. Standing up in the House may be different, but Dusseault is confident. “Maybe some won’t take me seriously in the beginning,” he told Canadian Press, “but I’m ready to work hard and earn my spot.”

Mylène Freeman, 22 (Argenteuil/Papineau/Mirabel)

@MyleneFreeman — This soon-to-be McGill University grad started her political resume working on Thomas Mulclair’s 2008 campaign, and then running for councillor in Montreal’s 2009 municipal election. Fully bilingual, Freeman has worked to engage youth and women in politics. She is the former coordinator of McGill’s “Women in House” program, where young women shadow female MPs in Ottawa for two days.

Matthew Dubé, 22 (Chambly/Borduas)

@MattDube — Co-president of McGill’s NDP group alongside fellow MP-elect Charmaine Borg. The political science student has said he wants to increase federal funding for post-secondary education, especially given Quebec’s announced annual tuition increases of $325 through 2017. On the NDP’s electoral success, he told the McGill Daily: “A lot has been made of the different backgrounds [of the rookie MPs], that we’re somehow less competent. The whole point of democracy is to be representative. People don’t want to elect 308 lawyers.”

Laurin Liu, 20 (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles)

@LaurinLiu — Liu is a history and cultural studies undergrad at McGill. While she did not visit her Rivière-des-Mille-Îles riding during the campaign, she says strengthening connections to her constituents is now top priority. Liu has already criticized the media for ignoring how much energy youth bring to politics, and nailed them for hypocrisy. Why bemoan the dearth of youth in politics, she asked, and then ridicule them when they are elected to Parliament?

It was his first act of reinventing himself. He’s been doing it ever since, to the benefit of us all.

A college student in 1967, he participated in a mass resistance to the draft in the Vietnam War, and fled to Canada like so many other good Americans did. It wasn’t easy to be a teenager alone in a new country, but he never regretted what he’d done. A few years later, when he could have returned to the U.S., he didn’t. He moved to the Ottawa Valley and reinvented himself as a Canadian.

Faithful to his anti-war roots, he was president of Operation Dismantle, with the awesome task of dismantling the nuclear arms machine. Good Canadian that he became, he won the prize for sheer progressive persistence by running four times as an NDP candidate in the barren ground of rural eastern Ontario.

He plays the fiddle like he was Valley-born and, a non-stop learner, he is currently studying jazz piano. He started writing musical plays and that is how he was to find his two present-day vocations, as a summer theatre director and as a writer and publisher. He is a left entrepreneur par excellence.

Theilheimer is a self-taught journalist with an easy style. He became a stringer for the Ottawa Citizen. He was the editor of the Ontario New Democratic newspaper.

A decade ago, at the turn of the millennium, he founded Straight Goods, the alternative online news source. (Full disclosure: I’ve been involved myself from the outset, on the board of directors and as a columnist.) A good name: the key to good writing, the great Gabriel García Márquez says somewhere, is to tell it straight—the way country folk do.

Straight Goods is a meat-and-potatoes, trade-union–sponsored venture. A for-profit business that has yet to make a real profit but has had and is having a real impact on left activism.

In a parallel universe, there’s Stone Fence Theatre, dedicated to the heritage of the Valley, where he writes lyrics, composes, and runs the business. The long and the short of it is that Ish Theilheimer is a person of the people. In everything he writes and creates, he tells us about the lives of those extraordinary ordinary Canadians who did, and do, the heavy lifting in this country he chose.

Canada's House of Commons. Creative Commons photo by Flickr user scazon.

With the House of Commons set to start back up again on June 2, Canadians will get their fist glimpses of the 41st Parliament. Given that the tumultuous campaign period, dramatic results, and overload of post-poll dissection nearly a month behind us, it may seem as though all the excitement in Ottawa has died down. But fear not, diligent politicos, there is no shortage of gripping storylines to follow as MPs new and old take their seats. With that in mind, here are five new trends to watch for as Parliament returns.

1. New faces

The re-opening of Parliament will also mark the debut of 108 rookie MPs. While some of them have already received a glut of press, others will be looking to make a good first impression with their constituents. With some of the youngest candidates ever to have been elected, this edition of Parliament could have a very different atmosphere. While the class of first-timers may bring a fresh new face to governance, they will also carry the mistrust that stigmatizes youth and inexperience. Prepare for a generational gap in the house.

2. New power

For five years, Stephen Harper has had to walk a tightrope over legislation, always wary that his tenuous minority government might be brought down by a non-confidence vote. While this approach helped keep Harper in office, it frustrated many of the Conservatives’ old boys. But now that he’s got his long-desired majority, the PM will be safe to push the party agenda as never could in the past. How far will the Tories go in exploiting their majority? Hard to tell, though it’s a safe bet that Harper will be a lot more willing to let his Neo-Con roots show and play to his base now that he doesn’t have to placate opposition MPs or left-of-centre voters.

3. New Jack

On one hand, the NDP’s new status as Official Opposition gives leader Jack Layton some moral clout and a more prominent soapbox from which to speak. On the other hand, with a Conservative majority in place, Layton has less power on Parliament Hill than ever. Whereas under the Harper minority, he often served as lynchpin for the government, Layton no longer has any leverage over the Tories. Will success and Stornoway change Jack Layton? Perhaps. But the 30.6 per cent of voters who backed the NDP will be looking for the same old Jack to bring more of that old stubborn idealism to a new Parliament.

4. “New Look” Liberals

After enduring their worst-ever showing at the polls, the Liberals will return to the House in a much different state than the one in which they left. The Grits will be in major rebuilding mode but, with a decidedly short-term leader, and without old pillars like Gerard Kennedy and Ken Dryden, it remains to be seen how easily or quickly a rejuvenated Liberal party can be established. In the interim, their main challenge will be to stay organized and maintain a noticeable presence in Parliament as they adapt  to their new role as Canada’s third party. Watch for new chief Bob Rae to make a big splash as he takes advantage of his long-awaited leadership role, and tries to claw back some clout for his maligned Liberals. He will be eager to get the party back into the headlines for reasons other than their historic loss.

5. New allegiances

At times in the past few years there was a cooperative all-against-one atmosphere amongst Canada’s opposition parties. There was even talk, though not as much as the Conservatives would have voters believe, that the NDP, Bloc Quebecois, and Liberals might unite under a coalition banner to take down the Conservative minority. The Conservative majority means that a coalition would do little good now but, with the Liberals having been decimated, and the Bloc virtually out of politics, a party merger isn’t out of the question. It’s happened before, as Harper can attest to. Even without a merger, we may, at the very least, see some Liberal and Bloc MPs jumping ship to join the bigger parties. Though often scorned, crossing the floor has become a post-election tradition in Canada’s Parliament.

Results by Riding. Map by Skyscraper Forum user "Vid." Click to see more

It was only a few years ago that elections in Canada were mostly predictable. For a few solid years, we could bet on Liberals, and some NDP candidates, sweeping the country’s biggest cities. We knew the Conservatives would sweep Alberta, take most of Saskatchewan and dominate much of British Columbia. In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois seemed destined to win the lion’s share of ridings, including a healthy mix of urban and rural areas.

Elections were, for those few years, decided based on pockets of ridings across the country that swung back and forth between, for the most part, Liberals and Conservatives. So when the Liberals had a stranglehold on Ontario during the ‘90s, and benefited from that now defunct divided right, that meant they won government.

But then, slowly, the Conservatives screwed it all up for their rivals. They made those mystical “inroads” into various suburban communities, mid-sized cities and even parts of Quebec. All of a sudden, most of Ontario was voting Conservative, and the Liberals found themselves scrambling to maintain their big city leads. Stephen Harper’s team stopped growing in Quebec, but they managed to win more of the Atlantic, save for Newfoundland and Labrador, and even picked up a few more seats in B.C.

Then the writ dropped in late April of this year. That’s when all the traditional dichotomies fell apart. Suddenly, cities weren’t voting Liberal at all, with a very few exceptions. And Quebec wasn’t voting for the Bloc. High-profile MPs from across party lines—foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon, prominent Liberals Martha Hall-Findlay and Glen Pearson, and virtually every Bloc MP—fell by the wayside. Oh, as did Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe, both of whom were supposed to at least save their own bacon.

Indeed, the 41st parliament’s electoral map looks a little strange. The NDP’s roots were in rural Saskatchewan, and decades of elections helped carve out an urban base, but all of a sudden the party has an enormous, if unstable, Quebec wing. The Conservatives don’t remember what it’s like to have an MP in Toronto, but now they have several in the biggest city going. And the Liberals, who might have at least counted on popular MPs winning based on reputation, are now much lonelier in parliament.

What does all this mean? The next time the country heads to the federal polls, it means parties will have to fight campaigns in some hugely unfamiliar territory. Save for the Conservatives out west, parties can’t rely on many traditional strongholds. The urban vote is split, as is the rural vote. Barring an unprecedented resurrection, Quebec voters will have only federalists to elect.

And further, many popular incumbents aren’t safe. On May 2, 47 percent of MPs won a majority of votes in their riding. Traditionally, those might be considered safe seats. But as Alice Funke of punditsguide.ca points out, a large margin of victory in one election doesn’t guarantee any victory at all in the next election. Her stats suggest that 35 seats that weren’t very close in 2008—that is, where the winner had at least 20 percent on the second-place candidate—changed hands this time around.

As exciting and, eventually, unpredictable as this year’s election turned out to be, it really just laid the groundwork for the next trip to the polls. Whenever that happens, we’ll find out whether or not this redrawn electoral map is for real—or a historical footnote. The only thing that’s certain is that it would be silly to guess what will happen next.

At various times in the run-up to Canada’s 41st trip to the polls, the Conservative Party was the target of accusations—most of them confirmed—which should, in theory, have been sufficient to bring down any government. There was the scandal when Bev Oda directed the doctoring of ministry documents to deny funding to humanitarian group Kairos* and then misled parliament about the origins of that change. Then, there was the revelation that the Conservatives had, under the guise of preparing for the G8 conference in 2010, provided slush money to valued Conservative ridings like industry minister Tony Clement’s, some of which were not even affiliated with the conference. That scandal was followed shortly by an announcement from Auditor General Sheila Fraser saying that a Conservative report on the G8 and G20 summits had used a quote of hers out of context. Way out of context.

(Fraser had, in 2010, said that the Liberal party’s security expenditures in the wake of the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks had been “spent as they were intended to be spent.” The Conservatives’ report, however, claimed that Fraser had made that statement in reference to their own party’s summit spending, supposedly absolving them of the slush fund allegations.)

On top of those scandals, of course, there was also the spectre of the Conservatives’ recent contempt of Parliament charge, which had been predicted to be a pall that would loom over the entire campaign.

And yet, just when it was beginning to look as though the Tories’ controversies would have a significant impact, they didn’t. Harper was re-elected, Clement was re-elected, Oda was re-elected, the Conservatives were handed a majority, and any scandals surrounding the party seemed to quickly dissipate, having had little to no effect on the election’s outcome.

So let’s take the long view: political scandals aren’t always as toxic as they may seem. But, with that being the case, it is absolutely worth questioning why Brosseau has undergone so much public scrutiny in the last few days.

Relative to allegations of partisan slush funds, lying about Auditor General reports, and directly disobeying parliamentary law, questions about the vacation plans and postsecondary achievements of opposition backbenchers seem less earth-shattering. And yet while Canada’s media outlets are abuzz with Brosseau updates, the scandals surrounding the Tories have not only gone away but, in retrospect, were scarcely this well-discussed even in the thick of the election run-up.

It is unfair to politicians and voters alike to suggest, as some commentators have, that Brosseau is facing this criticism simply because she is a woman, or young, or attractive. Yes, Brosseau is an outsider on Parliament Hill, but in the wake of a race which saw massive turnover in ridings all over the country, it is difficult to make the case that Canadians are opposed to seeing new faces in government.

Instead, it seems more likely that Brosseau is merely a hot story in the post-election news vacuum, a victim of circumstance rather than prejudice. She’s a convenient foil in a slow part of the news cycle.

During this comparatively inactive post-election period for domestic political news, the media and the public have the time to pick apart cases such as Brosseau’s. Harper and the Tories, meanwhile, had the benefit of having their scandals revealed during the campaign. Already flooded with elections coverage and mudslinging from all sides, Canadians found it harder to keep up with the scandal stories as they developed.

As bigger stories begin to float in again, Brosseau and her introductory mini-scandal will eventually be pushed out of the spotlight. What is required in the interim is a little perspective. Brosseau’s is not a major scandal—certainly not when compared to the recent scandals surrounding other politicians. If the Canadian public wants to examine political issues with such depth, and it should, the big issues, the ones that were largely glossed over during the campaign, ought to be first in line. In time, they will be.

*Disclosure: Kairos is an occasional advertiser in the print edition of This. – ed.

One curious gap in this mosaic became clear as the final list emerged: not one of our alumni had chosen a politician or elected official—and that says something troubling about the state of Canadian civil society. Political cynicism, never in short supply at the best of times, appears to have reached a crisis point. When even highly engaged, enfranchised, politically aware and active people turn their backs on the formal legislative process—believing it to be futile, vulgar, idiotic, glacial, all common gripes—there is danger. We need bright and hard-working people tending the grassroots, marching the streets, and storming the gates (many appear in this special issue); but we need them inside the House of Commons, too— writing the laws, holding the government to account, and yes, even engaging in a little partisan sniping from time to time.

Megan Leslie, member of parliament for Halifax. Photo by Robin Hart Hiltz.

So I would like to start this list with a brief nod to a young MP who looks poised for an important career as a real, honest-to-goodness elected legislator.

Megan Leslie was first elected as the member of parliament for Halifax in 2008, aged 35, and has quickly emerged as a respected, diligent, and charismatic force for good in the House. As the NDP health critic, she’s used her prior years of experience as an anti-poverty activist to articulately critique Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, and connects the dots between disenfranchisement, poverty, and health in a way that the government has never adequately grasped. She is the chief architect of the NDP’s national pharmacare proposal, which would bring some badly needed coherence to a health care sector that will be increasingly important in the coming years.

Leslie’s peers have taken notice: she was named the top “Up and Comer” by a large margin in a Hill Times survey of all MPs. Even on that honour, however, she had an incisive comment for the Times, remarking: “we have always seen women in up-and-coming categories because women who are up-and-comers are not threatening, right? So I think we still need to have a gendered lens when we’re looking at these kinds of polls. It doesn’t mean we’ve broken through.”

No it doesn’t. But having an elected MP in office who not only has a nuanced view of gender privilege, but also rejects the trite girl-power bromides that politicians and media alike love giving lip service to, is exactly the kind of politician we need now. We need more like Megan Leslie. And we need to find a way to make capital-P Politics—the difficult and crucial exercise of democratic franchise—hospitable to smart, industrious, and compassionate people who otherwise turn away.

We believe this list of 45 people and organizations represents an exciting portrait of the Canada of tomorrow. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about these rebels, visionaries, troublemakers, and world-changers, and share your thoughts with us. Enjoy.

Last night’s election was extraordinary in more ways than we would have thought possible a few weeks ago. Canadian politics has been shaken up in a serious, permanent way, and this election will be studied for years to come. As we start to digest the result and its consequences, there are some clearly identifiable changes and trends at work:

1. A Majority Conservative Government

This is crashingly obvious, but the 166-seat showing for the Conservative Party last night was more decisive than anyone expected five weeks, or even 24 hours, in advance of the polls. A Harper majority represents a true departure from any Canadian politics of the past; we are in uncharted territory. The loss of the moderating influence of a majority opposition gives the Harper conservatives truly free rein for the first time, and given this government’s conduct as a minority, we should expect a swift and substantial turn to the right. Need an example? Last night, with results still trickling in, Heritage Minister James Moore told the CBC that the government would move right away to abolish public funding for political campaigns. The Conservatives now have both hands firmly on the levers of power, and they are going to move. Fast.

2. The NDP Ascendance

The pollsters predicted a good showing for the NDP, but again, the idea that the New Democrats could take more than 100 seats would have been laughable as recently as a week ago. Yet here we are, Jack Layton bound for Stornoway with 101 NDP MPs at his back. Layton will make a skilled and energetic opposition leader, and will undoubtedly use his bully pulpit to solidify the NDP’s newfound national base. The “Orange Wave” phenomenon is, for many progressives, a silver lining of this election, but the grim irony, as every pundit observed last night, is that Layton has less leverage now as leader of the opposition than he had as leader of the third party in a minority government. This election has to be counted the NDP’s greatest success to date — but still a qualified one.

3. Twilight of the Liberals

There were plenty of factors that led to yesterday’s electoral result, but if you were looking for one doorstep to lay it at, the Liberal Party’s would be the one. Their unprecedentedly poor showing in the polls echoes, in sentiment if not in absolute numbers, the trouncing the Progressive Conservatives received in 1993; the added humiliation of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff losing his own riding, and then failing to resign before resigning anyway, has shaken the party to its roots. Speculation about merging with the NDP is probably premature but no longer an outright joke. Rumours of the Liberal Party’s death are exaggerated; still, even contemplating such a thing would have been unthinkable a year ago. The Liberals pulled the trigger on this election — though, having found the government in contempt of parliament, it’s not clear they could have reasonably chosen otherwise — and their strategists must have felt there was a reason to do so. The fact that they were so terribly wrong is going to prompt plenty of Grit soul-searching.

4. The Smashing of the Bloc

The apocalyptic showing of the Bloc Québécois spells the end of the separatist movement at the federal level; it’s hard to see how it can be otherwise. Reduced from 47 to just four MPs, with their leader defeated in his own riding, and swamped by the NDP in Quebec, the Bloc is over as a parliamentary force. That’s important because the party since 1993 had been a spoiler, changing the electoral calculus necessary to take the House of Commons. That fourth party, wielding many more seats than its popular vote would indicate, had been a keystone of the minority government structure that has prevailed since 2004. Their decimation will change the math for every election to come. What this means for the sovereigntist movement in general is unclear, too — will it dampen the appetite for another referendum, or embolden the Parti Québécois provincially? Again, who knows? We’re off the map here.

5. The Greens Take the Field

As special-interest party the Bloc exits stage left, the election of Elizabeth May as the first Green Party MP ushers in a new parliamentary voice. This was an important symbolic win for May and for the Greens, and perhaps an important substantive win, too. Being the only Green in the house of commons will hardly make May a power broker, but it’s a foothold, and May is known for being an articulate rhetoritician; she’ll make hay from even the sliver of Question Period time this seat grants her. Whether that translates to growth for the Greens remains to be seen, but if that federal election campaign per-vote subsidy is taken away — now a near-certainty — the Greens stand to lose a big chunk of the funding that helped put May in her seat. Have they built a big enough party machine in the last few years (and can they continue to build it for the next four or five) to do it on their own?

6. The Pollsters Are Jokes

The 2008 election was bad enough for the pollsters, who saw their accuracy deteriorate markedly. This time around was even worse. While they all saw the Orange Wave coming, no major pollster predicted the Conservative majority; none grasped the extent of the Liberals’ crashing fortunes, and the utter collapse of the Bloc was barely on their radar. And the media, hungry for numbers, babbled every poll projection regardless. Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star predicted that way back at the beginning of the campaign when she provided a lesson learned from previous campaigns: “All media will declare that they’re going to not report on polls in the same old way and will break that promise by Day 2.” Bingo.

7. Voters Still Aren’t Voting

Turnout increased a bit this election, bobbing back above 60 percent. But electoral participation remains at distressing lows. Some blame our antiquated first-past-the-post system; others disillusionment with partisan incivility; or perhaps it’s that Kids Today don’t vote in elections. Whatever the reason, it’s a discouraging trend, and more discouraging is that there is no indication that most of these factors will improve. Electoral reform is off the table; a Conservative government has no interest in proportional representation. The U.S.-style attack politics that has metastisized in Ottawa will continue; the Conservatives slathered it on thick and were rewarded with a majority, and that lesson will stick. Perhaps younger people can be enticed to the ballot box by a resurgent NDP, which has traditionally enjoyed their support. Yesterday’s slight uptick in turnout could be the start of an upward trend — or it could be a bump on the long slide downhill.

In any case, it looks like we have four to five years of a Conservative government during which we can contemplate all these questions — and many more besides.

Voter recall—known in political science as a citizens’ initiative—is best known for taking place in the basketcase democracy that is California.

In 2003 the “Dump Davis” campaign was launched a year into Gray Davis’ second term in office. Davis, who described the initiative as a “right-wing power grab,” was voted out after an electricity crisis, an ongoing financial crisis, and a public image crisis.

The $66 million recall — the second state-level initiative in US history (most are mayoral) — resulted in a snap election with many candidates including Arianna Huffington, Gary Coleman, and ultimate determinator Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Last year, Illinoisans did some legal fidgeting allowing them to do likewise after facing gubernatorial scumbag Rod Blagojevich. Angry Wisconsinites might follow suit.

Last week, in the run-up to Ontario’s election this October, one Progressive Conservative MPP floated the idea of implementing recall legislation. Although the proposal’s likely just a distraction in a campaign that’s had little substance, the idea has been gaining some traction. One candidate in Toronto’s recent mayoral campaign proposed a similar initiative.

While some commentators have shown interest, others have decried the proposal as an extra apparatus for the Tea Party’s populist toolkit. NDP MPP Peter Kormos dismissed the initiative as being among “interesting things that come from the right.”

Ballot recalls aren’t too popular in Canada. The Albertan government passed the Recall Act in April 1936 but rescinded it 19 months later after public support dropped. A bill to reintroduce the act had its first reading last year.

British Columbia is the only province where voter recall is an option. It was implemented in 1995 by the provincial NDP after a 1991 referendum, but it’s much more stringent than American legislation.

In California, a successful recall petition requires an number of signatories equal to a percentage of those who voted in the last election for the office in question: 12 percent for statewide offices and 20 percent for local senators. Because only half of registered voters actually voted in the 2003 election, only six percent of registered Californians were needed to oust Davis.

Luckily, a voter recall is much harder to stage in BC, where the required levee is 40 percent of all of registered voters — regardless of whether they even voted. Not that an actual recall is necessary. The threat alone can shake things up.

Last summer, anti-HST activists mounted a recall campaign in an attempt to oust Liberal MLAs in ridings with shaky support. What resulted was a premier’s resignation and a related NDP coup, described by one voter as an “internal recall.”

If it is implemented in Ontario, Alberta, or elsewhere, let’s hope voter recall produces better results for democracy than its antithesis.

This week the Green Party launched an anti-attack ad criticizing other parties for their sensational advertisements. The meta attack ad aims to benefit from Canadians’ supposed distaste for ad hominem vilification and mudslinging.

It’s commonly believed that the first attack ad was the iconic 1964 “Daisy Girl” commericial, which threatens American voters with the prospect of nuclear war (another long-held American political tradition). Attack ads returned in 1988 with the George HW Bush “revolving door” spot suggesting a candidate’s prison reforms led to an increase in violent crime.

That same year featured Canada’s NAFTA election, in which the Liberal party ran ads suggesting Canadian sovereignty was at stake. You can read about it in a CBC interactive feature documenting 10 prominent attack ads from the English-speaking world.

A 1993 Kim Campbell ad mocked Jean Chretien’s facial Bell’s palsy. Political figures decried the ad as “political desperation” and “totally inappropriate and in poor taste.” It’s a shame the same terms apply to today’s political discourse.

Conservative Senator Doug Finley, a “genius of political attack ads,” was interviewed by the Globe and Mail last month. Responding to those who believe negative ads turn off voters, his response: “Politics is an adversarial business. Kellogg’s doesn’t make their money by telling everybody General Foods are a great product.”

There’s little consensus on the effectiveness of attack ads. A 2007 psychological study suggests that although negative political ads make us want to turn away, we remember their negative messages. Some studies suggest negative and positive ads both have the same effectiveness.

Attack ads have made a lot of inroads south of the border. A study of the 2008 US presidential campaigns found that almost all McCain ads were “negative,” with many focusing on Obama’s personality over his politics. It’s gotten to the point where the hilarious “demon sheep” ad was actually used to sway voters, before it went viral and generated a spinoff.

In the past five years, attack ads have gained worldwide prominence.

An ad from the 2006 Mexican election compares one candidate with Hugo Chavez. Australia, a country with some really broken political discourse, saw the rise of attack ads in last year’s national election — including one monumentally stupid commercial.

Although such ads remain uncommon in UK elections, there’s been a recent increase in Europhobic ads — the word works for both definitions — attacking EU policy by airing stereotypes of continental neighbours.

TV ads in the 2006 São Paolo mayoral race speculated on a candidate’s supposed homosexuality. The tactic is eerily similar to a homophobic Tamil-language radio ad that aired in Toronto’s recent mayoral election.

The rollin’-in-dough Conservative party financed comparatively civil attack ads with funds allegedly arranged through the now infamous “in and out scandal” (that ironically focused on accountability and transparency). While it’s tempting to pin attack ads on one party or political persuasion, the Liberals, Bloc and NDP take part too.

These ads have repercussions on our democracy as a whole. In the 2008 election, the Conservatives made the daft choice of posting their pooping puffin ad online. The ad itself was intellectually (and otherwise) insulting. But more troubling: the Toronto Star ran a frontpage story about it.

Rick Mercer’s 2009 rant on the issue makes some pretty poignant points (and his parody ads are pretty funny, too). Attacks ads are bad for democracy. Instead of helping us debate serious issues as a society, it creates poisons our discourse with character assassination, the politics of fear, and a culture of sound bites over substance.