Two years of minority parliament and several weeks of rather bland campaigning later the election seems to have taken the country right back to where it was in 2019 before the pandemic and all of its staggering consequences and impacts. The Liberals lost the popular vote as in 2019 but will just as then will hold on to a minority while all the parties landed seat-wise almost exactly where they began.

We are seeing an unanticipated socialist moment in North America due to the Sanders campaign in the U.S. Given the repudiation of the establishment the membership just delivered when it ousted Mulcair as leader, one would have every right to think that maybe, just maybe, now was finally the time where something might occur to shake up the deadening centrist rot that has been eating away at the NDP.

But like taste tests between Coke and Coke Zero, this proved a chimera. When the NDP sought to be another “liberal” government in waiting with the dour Mulcair at the helm the people chose an obviously inspiring Liberal leader in Trudeau instead.