Vancouver Kingsway remains NDP stronghold as Davies wins fourth term
Credit to Author: Dan Fumano| Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019 08:36:46 +0000
The NDP held down an East Vancouver stronghold Monday night, with Don Davies cruising to a fourth term representing Vancouver Kingsway.
Davies, who served as NDP health critic last term, was leading comfortably late Monday night, with over 48 per cent of the vote, compared to 23 per cent for second-place Liberal candidate Tamara Taggart, a community activist and former television news anchor, and 20 per cent for the Conservatives’ Helen Quan, a businesswoman.
With the Liberals set to form a minority government after Canada’s 43rd federal election, the NDP will play a “very important role in this parliament,” Davies said.
“And, I guess, now as one of the more senior members of the NDP caucus, I look forward to doing whatever I can to implement the policies that we not only campaigned on, but that Canadians need,” Davies told Postmedia. While Davies said it will be up to the party leadership whether Davies remains as health critic, he wants to continue pushing for key priorities such as universal pharmacare and dental care.
Davies has held the Vancouver Kingsway seat since 2008. Before running for federal office, he worked as a lawyer and labour representative.
Kingsway is a diverse riding, with immigrants making up slightly more than half of its almost 105,000 residents, with many hailing from China, the Philippines and Vietnam, according to the 2016 census. The riding is bordered roughly by Main Street, Boundary Road, Grandview Highway and East 41st Avenue.
In a Liberal minority government, Davies will play a key role in the house, predicted Ian Waddell, the NDP MP for Vancouver Kingsway from 1979 to 1988.
“The big item for the NDP is going to be real pharmacare,” Waddell said Monday at Davies’ election night party. “And as health critic, Don will have a leading role in making that a demand for the NDP to support the minority government.”
Davies won by about 3,500 votes in 2008, and then tripled that margin of victory in the 2011 election. In 2015, he won again by a comfortable margin, finishing with 45 per cent of the vote. The NDP has won Vancouver Kingsway in most elections since the riding was formed in 1953.
Reached by phone after the results were in, the Liberal candidate Taggart said: “Although I didn’t win, I feel really good… It was a great experience and I learned a lot about myself.”
This year marked Taggart’s first run for political office, and she said Monday it was too early to know if she might try again in the future.
Of the overall election results, Taggart said: “I’m happy that Justin Trudeau is our prime Minister… I did not want Andrew Scheer to be my prime Minister, so I’m happy he’s not.”
Coming into the campaign, the Liberals were hoping to make some gains in B.C., said Sanjay Jeram, a senior lecturer of political science at Simon Fraser University.
“And Kingsway, I’d say, would have been one of the ones they’d targeted, with Trudeau showing up and supporting Taggart,” Jeram said, referring to the Liberal leader’s appearance at a campaign kick-off event last month. But the Liberals’ failure to find more support in Vancouver and B.C. was off-set by their strong showing in Ontario, Jeram said.