Daphne Bramham: Leaders converge on Vancouver in final push in a tight election race
Credit to Author: Daphne Bramham| Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2019 01:22:37 +0000
With debate week over and the advance polls open, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau flew across the country Friday to campaign in Metro Vancouver Friday.
Who doesn’t love Thanksgiving on the West Coast? But they didn’t come for that. They came because a handful of B.C. ridings may determine who forms the next government and whether it will be a majority or a minority.
The parties are in a dead heat in terms of popular support, according to the most recent polls aggregated by CBC’s poll tracker. But the Liberals have a slight edge on seat projections — 139 to the Conservatives 136.
More than in most elections, every seat matters, not only for the two main parties but for the New Democrats. Popular support for the NDP trails that of its leader, Jagmeet Singh, by more than 20 points with the party currently at around 15 per cent. At that level, the NDP are projected to get only 25 seats across Canada. Currently, 14 of their 39 seats are in B.C.
Singh arrives in B.C. this weekend to campaign in his own seat of Burnaby South as well as others that the NDP hope to hold on to.
Where the leaders spend their limited time is a snapshot of contested ridings.
The noteworthy exception is Vancouver Granville, which has largely been avoided by leaders other than Greens’ Elizabeth May who campaigned there for Independent Jody Wilson-Raybould. Wilson-Raybould is the former Liberal justice minister who resigned, resulting in the ethics commissioner finding that Trudeau acted improperly in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. It threw the Liberals into a tailspin from which it is struggling to recover.
Scheer released his long-awaited platform Friday in Delta where former Tsawwassen First Nation councillor Tanya Corbet is running against Liberal Carla Qualtrough, a cabinet minister in Trudeau’s government.
On his last visit, Scheer’s promise of $187 million for infrastructure specifically mentioned funding for a Massey tunnel replacement. (Trudeau was in Delta earlier in the campaign. He balked at promising that funding, saying it was up to the provinces to put forward the projects they wanted matching funding for.)
With the campaign in the final stretch and the focus being on motivating both voters and volunteers to get voters to the polls, Scheer went from Tsawwassen to an evening rally at a Langley berry farm. Not only is the riding and Liberal incumbent John Aldag being targeted by the Tories, it’s one of 50 nationwide targeted by RightNow, the anti-abortion group that’s working to elect anti-abortion candidates and those who oppose medically assisted dying.
RightNow’s co-founder Alissa Golob has been out door-knocking with Tory candidate Tamara Jansen, who earlier came under fire for hosting blackface parties in the Dutch ‘Sinterklaas’ tradition and for her creationist beliefs.
In 2015, Conservatives had their B.C. seat count cut to 10 from 15. They believe they can get back the five lost when the Liberals won 17 of 42 B.C. ridings and possibly add four others. All but one of those four are in suburban Vancouver.
Meantime, Trudeau headed straight to Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus. He waded through a crowd, but made a swath of student-friendly promises behind the glass walls of the campus bookstore that had been swept by an RCMP dog for bombs before he arrived.
The promises included a 40-per-cent increase in student grants, a two-year grace period after graduation before repayment as well as a “pause” in repayment for parents/graduates until their children reach the age of five, a 25 per cent cut in cellphone charges, and, an increase in the qualifying price of homes for first-time buyers to $800,000.
From Surrey, he was off to Port Coquitlam and a visit to a local business and bolster the campaigns of Port Mood—Coquitlam and Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam candidates Sara Badiei and Ron McKinnon.
McKinnon won Co—PoCo with a slim margin last time. This time, his Conservative challenger is Nelly Shin, who was parachuted into the riding. Like Jansen, Shin is endorsed by RightNow, which is also supporting Tory Nicholas Insley in his run against Badiei.
Interestingly, Trudeau capped his day off with a rally in Burnaby South — Singh’s riding. Neelam Brar didn’t run in the February byelection that Singh won with 38.9 per cent of the votes compared to 26 per cent for the Liberals.
During the byelection, the Liberals’ first candidate was dumped because of racist remarks and former MLA Richard T. Lee stepped in as a replacement.
The other Burnaby riding, Burnaby North—Seymour, has its own intrigues. Incumbent Terry Beech in Burnaby North-Seymour won in 2015 partly on the strength of his opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline, which was subsequently purchased by Trudeau’s Liberal government. Conservatives and the NDP split the remaining votes.
This time, the Conservatives have no official candidate. Heather Leung was disavowed for supporting conversion therapy and describing LGBTQ as having a “perverted lifestyle” of LGBTQ. But because she was cut loose after the deadline for candidates to register, her name remains on the ballot.
That’s left Beech in a tight two-way race against NDP stalwart Svend Robinson.
In such a close race, the leaders are putting in brutally long hours and logging hundreds of thousands of kilometres. With such intense schedules, they all hope to avoid making big mistakes when even the tiniest one could cost a precious few votes.
But they’re bound to happen as Trudeau found out Friday.
“Thanks UBC!” he shouted as he waved to hundreds of students.
“SFU,” a few in the stunned crowd murmured back.
Twitter: @bramham_daphne