Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes hands with members of the Canadian Armed Forces serving on the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Gao, Mali, Saturday December 22, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld.

One counterweights item from the year now ending that has seen fresh visits in the most recent past is Randall White’s “Can Justin Trudeau be defeated in the next Canadian federal election?,” first posted back on May 8, 2018.

In the new age of fixed-date elections (sort of) the campaign for the 43rd Canadian federal contest on October 21, 2019 has already begun. (And note the December 16, 2018 Canadian Press report “Trudeau rules out early election, 2019 federal vote to go ahead on Oct. 21.”)

As it happens, we recently had a chance to ask the estimable Dr White how he sees Justin Trudeau and the election this coming October now, at the very end of 2018.

Just last week he finally dropped off the latest installment of his work in progress, now tentatively known as  Children of the Global Village : Democracy in Canada Since 1497.

Lester Pearson who, among many other things, gave Canada its own flag at last in 1965! Photo : Winnipeg Free Press.

More exactly, the chapter 1 of the final Part IV he handed in for initial digital publishing this past December 23, 2018 is called “Canadian flag to Parti Québécois government, 1963—1976.”

It deals with the Lester Pearson and early Pierre Trudeau governments in Ottawa – which arguably began the present great age of “Democracy in Canada Since 1497,” and so forth.

Spending so much time over the past months mentally re-living the early 1960s to the middle of the 1970s, Randall White concedes, has affected his thinking on the fate of Justin Trudeau in 2019. Will it, eg, be like the fate of his father in 1972 or 1974?

Dr White went on : “In 1972 Pierre Elliott Trudeau almost lost his second election – and finally only hung on with a Liberal minority government, dependent on David Lewis’s New Democrats in parliament. In 1974 the elder Trudeau (with the help of Justin Trudeau’s mother, legend has it) easily enough won another majority government.”

Mr. White also noted two different polling exercises, both reporting as of December 21, 2018. The first is Éric Grenier’s Federal Poll Tracker on the CBC News site. The second is “Canada’s political mood as 2018 comes to an end,” by Bruce Anderson and David Coletto at Abacus Data.

Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau carries son Justin from the destroyer Restigouche in Powell River during a 1976 visit to BC. STEVE BOSCH.

Both these year-end polling exercises suggest that we Canadian politics junkies can still look forward to a competitive election, with the Liberals and Conservatives as the primary players. But in the end Justin Trudeau’s Liberals still seem to have the edge. For now at least.

As Anderson and Coletto explain : “our latest data shows tight races in BC and Ontario, strong  Conservative leads in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and significant Liberal leads in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.”

At the same time : “While party voting intentions show a one-point gap, preferred Prime Minister reveals a 16-point advantage for Mr. Trudeau over Mr. Scheer.” More generally : “Thanks to large leads in Quebec and Atlantic Canada and a competitive position in BC and Ontario, the Liberals still have the advantage over the Conservatives.”

Éric Grenier’s latest Federal Poll Tracker averages (as of December 21, 2018) similarly show the party voting intentions close. (In this case Lib 36%, Con 34%, NDP 17%, Green 6% in round numbers.) But when the much more efficient (ie more geographically dispersed) Liberal vote is factored into the seat projections, the Trudeau Liberals still have five more seats than they need for a bare majority!

Latest additions to California technical staff, 2018.

For further intelligence on the current scene Dr. White also recommends Mitchell Anderson’s December 20, 2018 item on the excellent Tyee site from BC : “Alberta vs. Canada? … Feeling unsupported, some Albertans want to go it alone. Let’s explore that.”

We ourselves can equally recommend Randall White’s own “Canadian flag to Parti Québécois government, 1963—1976.” For more detail on the larger project of which it is a part go to “The Long Journey to a Canadian Republic” on the bar at the top of this page, or just CLICK HERE.

Meanwhile, we counterweights editors join with our colleague Randall White and everyone else connected with this site (in Canada editorially and California technically too) in wishing all who come this way a very Happy New Year 2019!