Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[mileslunn]

Avi Lewis' decision is strange, but he does live in the riding. I worry that it may be some sort of grift campaign, and I hope the party doesn't throw any money at the riding. The only way the party wins it is if there is some sort of 25-25-25-25 split.

Avi's father (Stephen) is dying at the moment, so this may just be a campaign to honour his father, I guess?

No way he wins riding.  While Sunshine Coast and Squamish are somewhat NDP friendly, West Vancouver is the wealthiest municipality in Canada so it is Liberal and Conservative with NDP being pretty much irrelevant there.  Whistler is more Liberal/Greens as yes young and progressive, but many staff there are not even citizens (lots of Aussies) while many who own property there are your wealthy liberal types. 

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.

[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

[beesley]

In other news I noticed that Alex McPhee, a map maker and one of my favourite Elections Twitter personalities is running for the NDP nod in Cypress Hills-Grasslands, one of the safest Conservative ridings and I believe the second safest outside of Alberta. A few of you here know him.

https://twitter.com/ksituan/status/1394424931211898883?s=19

[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. 

[mileslunn]

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

I somehow suspect anti-Ford voters will coalesce behind either Liberals or NDP just a question of which one.  For PCs if they stay at 33% they are toast and even if win a plurality of seats, its majority or bust.  At same time with last month probably being worst month for Ford in past 18 months, party still has time to recover so while a PC majority looked likely in February while unlikely now, its not impossible if there is a strong recovery, but its not either most likely outcome.

Of provincial governments, I would say Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario are all in jeopardy of re-election but in Manitoba and Ontario close enough PCs could still rebound while in Alberta UCP in more dire straits.  Legault looks pretty safe.  Atlantic premiers all look good for now although with fiscal mess in Newfoundland, not sure I would want to be premier there now.  Horgan and Moe also look good but election is far enough away things can change although in case of Moe, I think NDP has major structural problems that will make winning tough whereas for BC Liberals a lot depends on how Horgan manages recovery and who they chose as leader.

[Hatman 🍁]

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. 

Alex is great! I bought his gigantic Alberta map; it makes a great addition to my wall. I'm contemplating whether or not I should donate to his campaign. A waste of money sure, but I still want him to do as well as possible.

[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.

[mileslunn]

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.

Alberta seems all over the place.  Kenney is super unpopular and fact he endorsed O'Toole may be having same spillover.  At same time Trudeau is not well liked there and for NDP maybe some confusion with provincial.  Rachel Notley is fairly popular, but Singh much less so as Notley is more pragmatic and she is still pro-energy unlike Singh. 

[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.

[mileslunn]

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.

Any reason why Canada shifting left and nowhere else is?  While makes some sense due to pandemic, seems unusual never mind most countries are 50/50 split on left/right while Canada is anything but so definitely a global anomaly.  I've posited that this century Canada will replace Nordic Countries as hub for social democracy and definitely signs heading that way.

[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.

 

[mileslunn]

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.

 

For sure, I have suggested elsewhere Canada may be the most left wing country in developed world.  Wasn't historically thus why our welfare state is not as large as many in Europe as that takes time so is a lag indicator never mind much easier to create new programs back in 50s and 60s when you had higher growth rates and younger population.  Nonetheless philosophically, it seems Canada tilts overwhelming to left and interested and bit puzzled why here and not elsewhere?

Yes we are pretty urban, but there are others like Australia which are more urbanized while UK and US not that far off us.  We are fairly diverse but not only one there.  On education, that we do tend to do somewhat better than most.  Other could be culture as Canadians seem to outside Prairies have higher deference to authority than most Western countries do so that works in favour of left.  Could just be phase too, but I think current shift left has a much greater chance of being a permanent re-alignment than Harper's win in 2011 was.

[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. 

[Don Vito Corleone]

1.  Notley wins in Alberta even against a united right.

Not only is this quite likely, but I think it probably will happen. Honestly, I think the whole vote-splitting element was severely overrated; that 2015 Election was much more a "kick the bums out" election than anything on a left-right spectrum. I don't have the polling on me, but I recall a poll from right before the election where the 2nd choice of Wildrose voters was, in order the NDP, not voting, and only then the PCs.

2.  Liberals in 2025 under Freeland make a big breakthrough in Alberta (she is originally from there)

The Liberals making a breakthrough in Alberta is certainly possible, but if it happens it will probably be in the expected election this year, with the Tories down massively in Alberta from 2019 and the Liberals up massively. I don't see why they would break through in 2025 if they don't this year. I know that Freeland has roots out there, but I seriously doubt many people will care, especially given she doesn't even represent a seat in the West nevermind Alberta. It reminds me of the whole argument I heard from Bernier backers in 2017 that he'd break through in Quebec, but even that one made more sense as unlike Alberta Quebec does have a noted favourite-son effect.

3.  NDP beats Tories in votes in next election.
4.  Tories get under 25% of the popular vote.

Absolutely not, these are simply not happening. Even the best polls for the NDP/Worst polls for the Tories don't have this occuring.

5.  Liberals remain in government continuously past 2030

I mean, it's possible I guess? But it's not very likely either. When people make these sorts of claims I don't think they quite realize how many more times the Liberals would have to win. Let's start in 2021. There probably will be an election this year and the Liberals probably will win a majority. That gets you to 2025. At that point, the Liberals have been in for 10 years, and that's around the time a "time for change" message starts to resonate. It is totally possible the Liberals win 2025 still, but I doubt it's with a majority. Even if you grant them a majority, that still only gets you to 2029, so they'd have to win a 5th straight election 14 years into their tenure, which I just don't see. In short, it's possible, but every possible thing would have to go right for them, so don't count on it.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

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. 

Rural areas tend to be more conservative, but once you get remote, the pendulum tends to swing back. If you take a look at remote communities in Canada, it's clear why "small government" rhetoric doesn't have much appeal. In many of these remote communities the local Canada Post office is their lifeblood, for example. The private sector largely neglects these places, so the public service runs loss-making offices to provide essential services. It's exactly the opposite in, say, rural Southwestern Ontario, where local farmers are probably annoyed that they pay taxes to fund transit projects in Toronto that they will never interact with. Their livelihoods are mostly sustained by the private sector, and they interact with private contractors, supply chain managers, and agri-food companies way more than they ever would with the government.

When you break it down into rural and remote, it becomes clear that Canada is less rural than countries like the US and the UK, and more remote.

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.

Finally, there's Quebec. It's very rare to have a subnational jurisdiction as large as Quebec where the right-wing party(ies) rarely cross 20% of the vote. Sure they have a CAQ government right now and the PLQ leans right as well, but both parties' rhetoric on economics, social programs, and social issues (minus identity/immigration) are pretty centrist. Since the Quiet Revolution, "conservative" has been an almost universally negatively-perceived label in Quebec (and even before that they didn't vote Conservative for cultural reasons).

Quebec alone provides a huge boost to the left-leaning parties in Canada. For example, Harper's CPC in 2011 got over 45% of the popular vote if you ignore Quebec. However this election probably wouldn't even have happened, because a Quebec-less Canada would have given Harper a majority in 2008 (133 Tories, 63 Grits, 36 Dippers, and 1 Bill Casey). Similarly the 2019 election would have returned 122 Grits, 111 Tories, 23 Dippers, 3 Greens, and 1 Jody Wilson-Raybould - a much closer call than IRL.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I think what's most likely to happen federally in Alberta is just a sharp drop in turnout, which could hand 1-5 seats to the LPC, but I think a drop in turnout will be a much bigger factor than vote-switching. Kenney has alienated centrists by being a wingnut, the hard right by not being enough of a wingnut, and O'Toole's carbon tax stuff isn't going down well. But the Liberals are still Liberals and Trudeau is still Trudeau, and even urban Alberta doesn't like the Liberals. It took immense Trudeaumania and Harper fatigue for the LPC to win four seats in urban Alberta, all of which had sub-10% margins and three of them were sub-5%. The federal NDP is not the provincial NDP. And the Maverick Party/PPC will probably pick up votes on the right, but they're still fringe parties. There are plenty of anti-carbon tax voters who don't believe in Wexit or that COVID is a hoax. I think these voters will just refuse to turn out.

[Don Vito Corleone]

5. History suggests this is unlikely. The last time one party was consecutively in power for that long were the 1963-1979 Pearson-Trudeau governments, and this was back when the Liberals could count on winning the vast majority of Quebec seats every year. Of course there's a possibility that we have Conservatives winning minorities and the NDP propping up the Grits. But let's not forget, Saint-Jack-de-la-Vague-Orange once brought down a Liberal government and gave way to Harper. The NDP won't play second fiddle forever.

Yes, proponents of the "Long Liberal" theory make two big mistakes:

1) Expecting the current Liberal-friendly situation to last forever, or at least a very long time. The Liberals have another ten years to go to make it past 2030. The economy will almost certainly downturn, and scandals will come up as they always do for governments. New issues will emerge which might be less friendly to the Liberals or which they might misplay. Think of how different the national conversation was in May 2011 vs May 2021. Heck think of how different it was in February 2020!

2) Treating the NDP as a set of emergency backup seats for the Liberals instead of as its own party with its own set of interests and goals. There isn't some unified progressive movement that will move in lockstep to stop the evil right, as much as some Very Online folks might wish it to be so.

In addition to what you said, I think also they forget two other things:

1) Just how elastic the Canadian electorate is. If the Canadian electorate was like the British electorate and we were still getting the same polls we are, I could understand this line of thinking a bit more, but of course the Canadian electorate is like the Canadian electorate. The Tories could get utterly decimated in the upcoming election, win a seat count somewhere in the 50s, and then win 2025 with a majority. In an environment like that, I would very strongly caution against making long term predictions. After all, you don't want to end up like those people who predicted Tory dominance and the death of the Liberals after 2011.

2) In relation to that last point, just how much campaigns matter in Canada. There are countless, countless examples of elections getting turned on their head during the campaign period. In 2011, in a very best case scenario, the NDP thought they could win 5 seats in Quebec. They ended up winning 59. In a similar vein, before the 1984 campaign, I read an article in the Maclean's archive where a senior Tory strategist was worried about the rise in Liberal fortunes in Quebec since Turner's election as leader because they had "hoped to win as many as 15 seats" in the province. They ended up winning 58. Since Miles mentioned the Notely NDP, how many people do you think would have predicted an NDP majority before the election? Stephen Harper looking to be losing the 2006 election until about halfway through. And for god's sake, Justin Trudeau himself went from third place to a majority government over the course of a campaign! Again, in an environment like that, I would strongly caution against long-term predictions of electoral dominance by one party.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The Canadian electorate is more elastic than a rubber band.

[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. 

[mileslunn]

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. 

I think problem is Prairie base is quite toxic there and as long as they play a big role in the party, it will be tough to breakthrough there.  I think if Kenney as I have predicted loses in 2023 and Notley beats combined right, that might be catalyst to force party to ditch more right wing elements realizing it doesn't sell anywhere in Canada.

[King of Kensington]

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

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/MumilaaqQaqqaq/status/1395474408433618944?s=19

Surprised, I'm not sure I quite understand why she's not reoffering. Obviously not the best news for the NDP. It must be so difficult to represent a riding like Nunavut, not just due to its size but because of the sheer challenge of it.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

https://twitter.com/MumilaaqQaqqaq/status/1395474408433618944?s=19
Surprised, I'm not sure I quite understand why she's not reoffering. Obviously not the best news for the NDP. It must be so difficult to represent a riding like Nunavut, not just due to its size but because of the sheer challenge of it.

Qaqqaq has taken multiple leaves of absence and has voiced her displeasure with parliament. She also caused a mini-controversy when she questioned Liberal Labrador MP Yvonne Jones' Inuit heritage. I don't know anything about the NunatuKavut Inuit/Métis debate or how actual Inuit feel about this, but making incendiary comments about "racial purity" is a bad look.