Politics Briefing: World leaders watch U.S. vote counting continue

Hello,

Well into Wednesday, it’s still not clear who won the U.S. election. The Democrats have held on to the House of Representatives, and the Republicans seem poised to retain control of the Senate, promising gridlock in Congress no matter who is in the White House.

And on the presidential election, the result is still up in the air as counting continues in Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden have yet secured enough electoral college votes to win.

Of course, both candidates have claimed they are on the road to victory. World leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are expressing caution so far in not rushing judgment of the verdict.

“As everyone knows, there is an electoral process under way in the United States," Mr. Trudeau told reporters this morning. "We are of course following it carefully and will continue to as the day, and the days, unfold.”

Some of the outstanding states, including Michigan, are expected to announce results later today. You can follow along on our map. However, those results might not be final and could depend on court challenges that will play out over the coming days and weeks.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

The Liberal government has introduced legislation to bring major digital streamers, such as Netflix and Disney+, under the jurisdiction of the broadcasting regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The government says regulating online services will ultimately direct $830-million a year to Canadian content producers, which those in the industry say will level the playing field between domestic companies and the foreign giants. However, the legislation provides for a lot of flexibility in how the CRTC will regulate the companies, with many details still to be worked out.

Mr. Trudeau said he will ask Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to ask the RCMP why it is delaying the release of a watchdog’s report into the police investigation of Colten Boushie’s death.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the federal government is still not forthcoming about costs associated with pandemic relief.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the cost of renovations to Rideau Hall has surpassed half a million dollars.

And Quebec sovereigntists say they are delighted that French President Emmanuel Macron called Quebec Premier François Legault to thank him for comments he made about freedom of expression and religious caricatures. “You can’t imagine the satisfaction I got when a position we [Quebec] adopted on freedom of expression is recognized in France and that our French allies of many centuries say this is what unites us, ideals that we share,” Parti Québécois parliamentary leader Pascal Bérubé told reporters.

Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s criticism of elites: “It is a strange form of solidarity that starts by encouraging one part of the population to hate and resent another, the ‘elites’ who have supposedly ‘betrayed’ them. It sounds particularly contrived issued from the mouth of the former in-house counsel for Procter & Gamble. Yet plainly this populist-nationalist shtick is intended to signal an important shift, the latest makeover for the former principled conservative.”

Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on the U.S. election and why Trump is here to stay: “Tens of millions of Americans who had lived through an administration marked by chaos and calamity voted in favour of another four years of it. They saw a guy who was elected on a promise to drain the swamp yet ran the White House as if it were permanently Take Our Kids to Work Day – and still decided to lend Mr. Trump their support for one more term. They witnessed a president who threatened to dispatch the army against his own people, who oversaw and defended the caging of migrant children and who has abdicated responsibility for controlling a pandemic that has killed 230,000 Americans – and still voted for him in numbers that rendered the presidential race remarkably competitive, despite pollsters' predictions.”

Sean Speer (National Post) on how Trump won: “Trump has now shown over two election cycles that transactional politics cannot compete with the politics of enthusiasm. He won in 2016 and may win re-election this year even though he spent far less than his opponents on traditional advertising and conventional means of political campaigning. Instead, the Trump formula basically involved large-scale rallies and social media spending that gave people a sense of political identity and community.”

Debra Thompson (The Globe and Mail) on why the election won’t settle any long-running issues: “Even if Joe Biden ends up in the White House, even if Kamala Harris were to make history as the first Black woman to be the Vice-President of the United States, the country will not magically transform into the democracy that we took to the streets to demand. Telling people to ‘just vote' every two to four years, and shaming those who don’t, doesn’t change the incredible obstacles to voting, nor does it absolve Democrats of the party’s failure to protect minority voting rights against Republicans’ open hostility to an inclusive democracy.”

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