The Voters Have Spoken - but the Future Awaits

By Ray Rivers

February 26th,2019

BURLINGTON, ON

After the dust had settled on the three by-elections, the Liberals came out one seat ahead. It was the one they used to own – in Outremont, Quebec. The Tories cleaned up in York-Simcoe to nobody’s surprise. But the prize was in Burnaby South where NDP leader Jagmeet Singh easily won, confounding the pundits, though it was a seat previously held by his party.

Jagmeet Singh now has a seat in the House of Commons; now the hard part for him begins.

Political analysts will struggle trying to dissect Singh’s victory in that ethnically diverse riding of Burnaby South. The Liberals placed second, ahead of the Conservatives but well below where they might have been thanks to some unfavourable headlines. To begin with their initial candidate had to resign after making racist comments. She’d argued that her chances of winning were good since more voters were of Chinese origin, like her, than Indian (Sikh), like Singh.

The Liberals rushed to replace her but clearly had lost valuable campaign time and ended up with a parachute candidate. In fact, Singh was the only candidate from a major party who actually lived in the riding, having moved there from Ontario. He had campaigned hard for this win, as if his future depended on it. And it did.

Party leaders are rarely defeated, perhaps in the spirit of fair play among voters. But the odds were out on Singh. Some committed Conservative and Liberal voters may have decided to stay home just to give Singh a chance. Still with an overall turnout of 30%, this was a more representative poll than either of the other two by-elections that night. But perhaps it was the weather helping the turnout – always kinder to voters in La La land.

It is no secret that Liberals had been musing whether their chances in the next election would actually be better with Mr. Singh sitting in Parliament or the NDP scrambling for a new leader. But then scrambling for a new leader didn’t hurt the Ontario Tories last election. And it’s also no secret that some in his own party were having misgivings about their last choice for NDP leader. They were not so quietly saying that there would be no second chance if Singh lost.

But there may have been other factors. For example, the provincial NDP is locked in a legal and political fight with Alberta’s NDP and the Trudeau government over the Trans Mountain pipeline, and Singh’s own objections to the pipeline, and the oil sands in general, no doubt played a role in his victory. Burnaby is the terminus of the pipeline and potential bitumen spills and enhanced tanker traffic are real concerns.

The NDP and Greens were alone in this opposition to more oil, but the absence of a Green Party candidate meant that Singh got all of those anti-pipeline votes as well. And on the topic of vote splitting, Maxime Bernier’s new People’s Party made a decent first showing in this riding, getting a third of the right-wing vote, and holding the real Conservatives back from getting to second place. But then the wild west is where the more libertarian/reform minded parties tend to do well, so that should not have been too surprising.

Jody Wilson Raybould – probably not a woman you want to argue with.

The Liberals were also undoubtably hurt by the Wilson-Raybould/SNC Lavalin issue. The riding of the former Attorney General (AG) is just down the hall from Burnaby. Sometimes the mere mention of a scandal is enough to sideline any politician. And Trudeau and the Liberal brand have already been damaged, tarnished by allegations of political interference in favour of the Quebec based industrial giant, SNC Lavalin.

Nothing happened! Lavalin is going to court to face the music. But the mere fact that the PM or one of his staff or his senior bureaucrat may have spoken to the AG about this matter is being referred to as pressure. And this is where it gets crazy. Because the AG is just another Liberal politician and a fellow Cabinet minister, and would have been expected to discuss the SNC case with her colleagues in that capacity. But was she pressured?

Jody Wilson-Raybould is a very accomplished person with an extensive and impressive resume. She was a BC provincial crown attorney, land claims negotiator and Regional Chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations. Recruited into the Liberal family as late as 2013 by Mr. Trudeau she was appointed Minister of Justice and Attorney General following the 2015. election. There is an historical connection between Justin and Jody, since their fathers had tangled in discussions leading to Canada’s constitution.

Wilson-Raybould is to testify before the Commons Justice Committee this week, so that everyone may find out what her ‘truth’, as she calls it, really is. Mr. Trudeau, for his part, has not addressed why he chose to demote her just months away from the next election. She had completed a milestones report of the many accomplishments during her three years as AG, which included legislation on marijuana, medially assisted dying and impaired driving legislation.

Jody Wilson Raybould: Handles media well, doesn’t appear to do selfies.

There are some who would detract as to how well she had served her time as AG. But she also has a lot of followers, particularly since she resigned from the Trudeau Cabinet. Wilson-Raybould has stated that she is a Liberal and plans to run in the next election. So one has to ask why she is doing this. Why is she creating a crisis that might well sink any hope of the Liberals retaining government and Mr. Trudeau continuing as Prime Minister?

But perhaps that is the plan. Jody’s father once told Pierre Trudeau that he wanted one of his daughters to become PM. Perhaps once Justin has been defeated she’ll take over.

Ray Rivers writes regularly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

Election Results –    Trans Mountain –     Jody Wilson- Raybould –