The campaign that was, and the campaign that could have been

In a note last week for investors and clients, ScotiaBank described this federal election as a "vote about everything and nothing." That is not an unfair summation.

Though initially framed in stark terms by Justin Trudeau himself, the campaign was not seized with Socratic or fierce debates about the lessons of the last year and a half or the challenges of the untold future — even if all those things are implicitly on the ballot. 

It was an election that skimmed over many things and fastened onto a few (gun control, vaccine mandates), but without quite dwelling enough on some of the big questions — though that is probably a fair description of most electoral campaigns.

Meanwhile, the exact need for this election was debatable, and Conservative leader Erin O'Toole finished his campaign arguing that voters should see this as an election about whether there should have been an election.

So it is easy to lament for an election that should have been more about any number of things. 

But the result of any election has the potential to affect nearly everything – and this election is no different.

This could, for instance, have been an election about how we care for the elderly. That issue was not entirely absent, but its presence was not commensurate with the tragedy that recently unfolded.