JOHN TWIGG – Manly’s win was likely used by voters to safely send a message to the established parties that people want better government than they’ve been getting

With the benefit of having seen and heard quite a few reports on the Nanaimo-Ladysmith by-election on Monday (May 6, 2019) I can now write my own analysis of what it means for Canadian and B.C. politics.

First, note that the turnout was a bit low at around only 40 per cent in an area where turnout often is high, around 75 per cent. So, it does not strongly indicate the outcome in the “real” election in October.

Similarly, the election of Green Party candidate Paul Manly will make almost zero difference to votes in the few remaining sitting days of Parliament; at most it may enable Green Party leader Elizabeth May to more easily find a seconder for one of her showboat motions.

Newly elected Green Party MP Paul Manly

While there IS a bit of an uptick in Green support across Canada, from some civic government seats in B.C. to a new official opposition in PEI’s puny legislature, there is no “Green wave” happening – not in Canada - nor here in B.C., though there IS some voting behaviour responding to the maniacal climate false alarmism being spread by the mainstream media and numerous new pressure groups, which was evident in the CBC’s eager coverage of the Greens’ supposed momentum.

We also should note the backstory of Paul Manly: he’s the son of former two-term NDP MP Jim Manly and Paul – a professional communicator - wanted to run for the NDP in a recent election but was rejected by the party apparently because he had expressed pro-Palestinian and ergo anti-Semitic views. 

Whatever. He just got elected with 39% of the votes so that’s old news now.

Evidently more than a few New Democrats voted for Manly anyway, or more likely just stayed home, but some NDP activists in the area also were not pleased that party officials apparently chose the candidate for them:  Bob Chamberlin, a vice-president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and an activist in various First Nations business projects. He was a good-looking candidate, but he lacked local roots.

It probably didn’t help when federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh visited the riding and promised, that if elected, they would build 1,400 units of affordable housing in Nanaimo – which suggests they both were unwitting that assisted housing is a hugely contentious problem there now, with street camps of homeless people proliferating and crime soaring around them.

Manly indicated he will seek re-election in October but he is by no means a shoe-in; his win was more like he was being used by voters to safely send a message to all of the established parties that the people want better government than they have been getting.

In post-election remarks, Manly indicated he will be emphasizing climate issues in general and trying to get rid of internal combustion engines in particular, which may play well to his narrow base but certainly will not resonate with the majority of mainstream voters who like their vehicles and hate carbon taxes, and many of whom realize the global warming scare has been greatly exaggerated.

 

Conservative candidate finished second

The second-place finisher was Conservative candidate John Hirst, a local business person in financial services, with a respectable 24%; he emphasized crime prevention policies. That was a marked gain from previous elections for the local Tories in an area renowned for being pro-socialist and liberal, and suggests a bit of the Blue Wave that has been running across Canada’s politics in recent years did reach Nanaimo too, and it bodes well for Hirst’s showing in the October election wherein he again intends to run.

That left the NDP in an embarrassing third place, with only about 22% - a big drop from usual levels of support in one of the NDP’s strongest strongholds and perhaps the real biggest story of the byelection ahead of the Green’s supposed breakthrough.

Why did the NDP do so poorly?

Parachuting in a candidate didn’t help (as mentioned above) but it also was a vote of non-confidence in “The Jagmeet” (that’s a reference to his Twitter address but it also reflects that he’s not much of a democrat even though he leads a party using that name).

So, this is one of the big takeaways from the Nanaimo by-election: the federal NDP is in deep deep trouble, its support is tanking across the country and its leader is not resonating well with many mainstream Canadian voters. It is no surprise that so many veteran NDP MPs are not seeking re-election.

That also may have been a big part of why the former NDP MP for the riding, Sheila Malcolmson, resigned her seat so she could run in a provincial byelection; the writing was on the wall for a loss if she ran again but next time under Singh and his unpopular policy dictates.

Liberals suffered a bad setback to only 11%

But the biggest loser, maybe by far, was the federal Liberal Party, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Their candidate, Michelle Corfield, came with great creds as a former chair of the Nanaimo Port Authority and a deep involvement in regional First Nations issues – and a willingness to wear outfits in the Liberal Party’s famous red hue. But she polled only 11%.

Though it was only one by-election in a far-off distant land, that was a terrible come-down for the Trudeau Liberals because they weren’t even close to being competitive, and despite having a good-looking candidate they still tanked. Why? It must have been a vote of non-confidence in Trudeau, possibly related to the SNC-Lavalin scandal, possibly about his personal style and maybe his platform.

Trudeau and Horgan talk about Trans-Mountain

Thus it was intriguing to catch note of a mention that Trudeau talked on Tuesday morning (May 7^th) with B.C. Premier John Horgan apparently about the Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion project, which is now owned by the federal government - but stalled by court actions - and a need to re-open negotiations with affected First Nations, and deal with other impediments such as marine response capacity to oil tanker spills.

It was further intriguing to hear that Horgan asked Trudeau to see if Trans-Mountain could shift deliveries in its existing pipeline away from dilbit to more refined gasoline from Edmonton refineries, which Trudeau apparently agreed to do – at least to inquire. But it now sounds like both Trudeau and Horgan are taking a message from the Nanaimo by-election; they need to placate B.C. drivers and take steps to reduce gasoline prices, plus get the pipeline expansion construction begun.

Horgan also announced he has asked the B.C. Utilities Commission to do a review of gasoline pricing in B.C., apparently to see if there has been gouging by oil industry companies, though really the main problem is that the existing pipeline is plugged up with slow-moving dilbit, which dilbit could and would shift to the new line as soon as it’s built.

So, if nothing else the Nanaimo by-election result did succeed in sending a wake-up call to Trudeau, Horgan and others that some major policy changes are needed, or else in the next election there will be even more big changes, most likely a big blue wave right across the country.

There were three other candidates in the Nanaimo by-election and one was notable: Jennifer Clarke running for the People’s Party of Canada. Clarke, a young mother, was an earnest but novice candidate who favoured social-conservative issues. She ended up with only 3% of the votes, whereas the PPC candidate in the recent Burnaby-South by-election polled 11%.

That should be seen as a huge setback for the PPC in general and for PPC leader Maxime Bernier in particular.

He showed up in the campaign only once or maybe twice and when he did, he didn’t help much because he mis-pronounced the name Nanaimo in a party-posted video-clip.

Such amateurism bodes poorly for the PPC’s hopes in the October federal election, and that’s great good news for Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.  He and his party will need every vote they can muster to defeat the Trudeau Liberals who – even though they’re tanking in opinion polls – still have a massive campaign machine, lots of money and of course the advantage of being incumbents and thus to make new policy on the fly and not only tell voters what they want to hear (remember cannabis?) but also to do it too.

Will Scheer promise or threaten to re-criminalize pot? Will he attack Quebec’s greed? Will he campaign with Doug Ford and laud Donald Trump? Obviously, he has his own minefields to traverse too.

Coincidentally, McKenna Tweeted a comment about an excellent speech Scheer gave on Canada's foreign affairs to the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday (the morning after the by-election) and she even included a link to CBC's surprisingly-accurate report on what Scheer said; apparently, she thinks it was terrible but actually it deserved very high marks. You can read it directly here:

So the outcome of the next federal election is still very much yet to be determined, and if for example the Scheer Conservatives were to make some bad blunders then it is still possible the Liberals could win re-election, perhaps as the largest bloc in a yet-to-be-formed coalition – maybe with handfuls of Greens and New Democrats.

Jagmeet Singh as Deputy Prime Minister. Elizabeth May as Environment Minister?? 

Probably not, but such things ARE raised as possibilities by the Nanaimo by-election.

But one of the biggest uncertainties is what will be done by Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, the two former Liberal cabinet ministers now sitting as Independents and reportedly considering a jump to the Greens, or less likely: the New Democrats.

Wilson-Raybould’s Vancouver-Granville constituency is a high-income area with a large First Nations population so it may not be fertile ground for Green lawn signs. but on the other hand, she and Green leader May are personally friendly and Wilson-Raybould attended May’s recent wedding so that is possible, and Manly’s big unexpected win in Nanaimo makes that more viable.

(Opinion polls and Green voices were claiming a breakthrough was imminent but most observers were still surprised at the Greens’ strong showing, albeit under a low turnout.)

As a final word, I’d say the ball is now in Andrew Scheer’s court.

He has a golden opportunity to win a majority Conservative government in the October election but that’s five months away. Lots can go wrong and Scheer has yet to demonstrate he can play the sort of populist politics that resonates with voters en masse.

The Trudeau Liberals are working overtime to make the election into a referendum on the so-called climate crisis, but there are many other issues substantively more important than that but Scheer is running out of time to find out what they are and then pander to them.

Were there clues in the Nanaimo result? Probably not. 

It was a bit of a local anomaly though it did and does have national ramifications – especially now with the mainstream media dining out on a Green surge that really isn’t there, but a Green rise could pull some votes away from the Liberals and help the Scheer Tories.

The main issue, as always, is still the economy and jobs, also known as affordability, and that was not a major determinant in the Nanaimo outcome.