Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[King of Kensington]

What's a "poison pill" that would get the Tories and the Bloc and the NDP to vote to bring down Trudeau?

[King of Kensington]

Yes, Manning was very much in the tradition of Western populism.  Day however was more known for his fundamentalist Christian beliefs than anything else though (and his signature economic issue was a not particularly populist flat tax).  It is kinda hilarious that "the left coast" voted for him.  But I suppose the anti-Liberal mood in the West, the massive unpopularity of Glen Clark's NDP government and the coalescing of the right-wing vote helped the Alliance.

Granted the city of Vancouver and the city of Victoria never elected a Reform or Alliance MP.  And of course the suburbs of Van are a lot more diverse now and have undergone a "GTA-ization" of sorts.  The southern half of Van Island also seems totally unwinnable for the Conservatives now too.

And forget feelings of "solidarity" with Alberta as fellow Westerners and all that.

[King of Kensington]

Don Valley West contains the densely-populated, majority-Muslim (mostly Pakistani) Thorncliffe Park. Otherwise it's an upscale riding - taking in wealthy York Mills, the Bridle Path and Lawrence Park, as well as upper middle class Leaside (where Stephen Harper grew up) and parts of North Toronto.

I believe it has the highest average income of any Canadian riding.

[King of Kensington]

Prior to 1993, Don Valley West (as well as the provincial riding of York Mills) was a Tory riding par excellence - back in the days when they were more explicitly the preferred "party of the affluent."

With the liberalization of university-educated professionals and the Conservative turn against "elites" DVW has become a solid Liberal riding - even in 2011 the Conservatives barely won it, and Kathleen Wynne hung onto it in 2018 when they were reduced to just 7 seats.  Thorncliffe of course pads the Liberal margins.

[King of Kensington]

BC Liberals are like the Australian Liberals. 

[King of Kensington]

Vancouver-Quadra federally is split in two provincial ridings.  Yes Vancouver-Quadra is a super safe Liberal and stayed Liberal even in 2011 disaster.  Provincially split between Vancouver-Point Grey which used to go BC Liberal but now solidly NDP and Vancouver-Quilchena which is still solidly BC Liberal.

Van Quadra is very much a "Brahmin Liberal" riding, like Don Valley West, St. Paul's, University-Rosedale and Westmount.

[King of Kensington]

Yes and also older.  Mostly boomers while Point Grey has more rentals, but also a lot more millennials and Gen Xers.  Boomers remember 90s quite well so tend to have a strong reluctance to vote NDP while millennials don't but at same time most likely negatively impacted by high cost of living that happened under BC Liberals.

The University of British Columbia is also in Point Grey.

[King of Kensington]

British Columbia has been called Canada's Australia by one scholar of Canadian political culture.  Like Britain and Australia, class-based voting has been strong and held out longer.  The stunning defeat of Premier in Van-Point Grey in 2013 symbolized that the "stigma" against the NDP among many of the "liberally minded" professional class had come to an end.  Education and metropolitan/non-metropolitan have become bigger fault lines in politics.   Today the NDP looks quite safe in Point Grey.

[King of Kensington]

Filmmaker, Leap Manifesto spokesperson and NDP dynasty Avi Lewis is running in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/filmmaker-activist-avi-lewis-to-run-for-federal-ndp-seat-in-b-c-riding-1.5431132

Quite the uphill battle, to say the least.  The NDP came in fourth there last time.

[King of Kensington]

Result for selected municipalities (2019 election):

West Vancouver

Conservatives 8,064 42.7%
Liberals 7,344 38.9%
Greens 2,074 11%
NDP 982 5.2%

Bowen Island

Liberals 899 39.3%
Greens 750 32.8%
NDP 299 13.1%
Conservatives 292 12.8%

Squamish

Liberals 4,016 33.5%
Greens 3,503 29.2%
Conservatives 2,134 17.8%
NDP 2,030 16.9%

Whistler

Liberals 2,608 40.7%
Greens 1,863 29.1%
Conservatives 1,051 16.4%
NDP 732 11.4%

Gibsons

Liberals 1,348 28.7%
Greens 1,318 28%
NDP 1,008 21.4%
Conservatives 890 18.9%

[King of Kensington]

Certainly an interesting riding!  West Van is pretty even between the Liberals and Conservatives, while the Greens are second and the Conservatives are very weak in the non-West Van part. 

West Van is traditional business-establishment and immigrant wealth, the rest has a sort of "left coast promiscuous progressive" dynamic.

[King of Kensington]

Mainstreet poll for Ontario:

PCs  33%
NDP  28%
Liberals  27%
Greens  6%

City of Toronto

Liberals  33%
NDP  32%
PCs  24%

905

PCs  35%
Liberals  29%
NDP  22%

https://qc125.com/proj/2021-05-19-ms-on.pdf

[King of Kensington]

Great account!  Of course he has no chance and he knows it (just giving Trevor a break!).  Cypress Hills was very anti-NDP historically and today rural Alberta and rural Saskatchewan are pretty much identical. 

[King of Kensington]

Ipsos poll:

Liberals  38%
Conservatives  29%
NDP  21%
BQ  6%
Greens  5%

https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/liberals-in-drivers-seat-over-conservatives-as-vaccination-rollout-hits-its-stride?fbclid=IwAR3FwLl-iIYq5n1bOuoA48OhLqii6r9vart7MqAiB6uhvzUv9rTKUKt9Tl8

Most interesting is Alberta where the Tories are at 36%, the NDP at 30% and Liberals at 24% - which is very difficult to believe.

[King of Kensington]

Canadians have really shifted left in their political outlook.  Not only have the Liberals tacked leftward, but there's been no leakage to the Conservatives by so-called Blue Liberals.  Nor has this leftward shift really impacted the NDP voting base.  And while the Conservative base is increasingly "non-metropolitan" you haven't really seen a working class embrace of rightwing populism at at all, certainly much less than in the US and Europe.

[King of Kensington]

What would Canadian politics look like with a "British" party system (i.e. NDP as Labour, Liberals as Lib-Dems)?  We got a sense of that in 2011 - but Canada is much less conservative now (and Harper was just too much of an ideologue to hold the "free enterprise coalition" together).

Incidentally, Erin O'Toole says he's following the Boris Johnson model.

 

[King of Kensington]

Plus the rural vote is less monolithically right-wing than in the US or Australia.   Atlantic Canada and rural Quebec don't vote like the Prairies or rural Ontario. 

[King of Kensington]

Atlantic Canada is another factor, it's Canada's "celtic fringe" like Scotland/Wales/Cornwall in the UK. Atlantic Canada isn't strictly "left wing", however. The Liberals out east are quite a bit more right-wing than the LPC, and the their PCs are quite a bit more left-wing than the CPC. On balance, Atlantic Canadians are centrists who prefer the Liberals federally who are more likely to pour money into their struggling communities.

O'Toole seems like a good fit for Atlantic Canada (populist economics, defense of Anglo-Canadian "traditions", military background etc.) but doesn't seem to be catching on. 

[King of Kensington]

Plus railing against Trudeau's handling of Covid doesn't really resonate there. 

[King of Kensington]

Yes, they're satisfied with the Liberals.  Besides the 2011 debacle, the last time they turned on the Liberals was in 1997 due to cuts to unemployment insurance (where the PCs made inroads and the NDP had a breakthrough in Nova Scotia).  But Trudeau has not governed like Chretien.

[King of Kensington]

I think Burnaby North-Seymour might be a better choice.  Still an uphill battle, but at least might have a fighting chance never mind Conservatives were unusually low there as candidate disqualified last time so since that is not likely to happen again, I expect Conservatives to get higher than 19% and probably more likely to come at expense of Liberals than NDP.

The NDP already has a candidate there - North Vancouver councillor Jim Hanson.  He seems like a good pick for them since they need to improve their showing in the Seymour part of the riding.

[King of Kensington]

As for West Van-Sunshine Coast, it's divided between Liberal/Tory West Van and the rest which is very anti-Conservative and has a green bent.  There's obviously a "promiscuous progressive" constituency in the riding: in the last election the Conservatives stayed flat at 27% while the Liberals lost a lot of votes to the Greens and to a lesser extent the NDP.

The main impact of Avi Lewis is he will almost certainly set the Greens back there.  The Leap Manifesto is a sort of "radical chic" cause that appeals to a lot of upscale environmentalists.

[King of Kensington]

Roughly 35% in West Van, 25% in the Sunshine Coast and 40% in the rest.

[King of Kensington]

Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MP Bob Bratina is retiring and has broken with the federal government on LRT construction.

https://www.thespec.com/opinion/editorials/2021/05/19/liberal-mp-bob-bratina-sticks-to-his-guns-on-lrt.html

There are three open seats in Hamilton with Bratina, Scott Duvall (NDP, Hamilton-Mountain) and David Sweet (Conservative, Flamborough-Glanbrook) retiring.

[King of Kensington]

Conservative plan to rally up the base:

The Conservative party is planning “groundbreaking” strategies to hyper-target its campaign messaging directly to Canadian voters, the Star has learned.

A fundraising document obtained by the Star shows the Conservatives want to build an ambitious “voter-facing” communications campaign to fight “fire with fire” against progressive third-party groups.

The document laid out “keys to victory” in the upcoming election that include “one of the most ambitious voter-facing communications plans ever executed by a Canadian political party.”

“The Liberals will do and say anything to stop Erin O’Toole from winning. And they’re supported by far-left allies who are already running negative ads against Erin O’Toole,” reads the document, which was recently sent to party supporters.

“We need to fight fire with fire — in the news media, over the airwaves, online and in mailboxes.”

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/05/26/conservatives-plan-groundbreaking-direct-to-voter-messaging-in-next-federal-election-campaign.html