By-election Round-Up: A Good Night for the Green Party

One should never try to read too much into by-election results.  Everyone knows that. By-election results are more often representative of local political microcosms as viewed by a generally smaller number of voters at the riding level. And yet pundits like to pore over polling results, dissecting them they were animal entrails that can predict the future (that’s called ‘haruspicy’, by the way – and yes, I had to look it up).  With all of that in mind, let me share my own thoughts on what yesterday’s by-election results mean for the Green Party going forward in 2019.

**Disclaimer** No animals were harmed in the creation of this blogpost.

First, the results.

Burnaby South

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh took Burnaby South by a healthy margin.  In what has been described as an electoral gong show, Singh was able to largely avoid controversy and did what he had to do to get elected in a riding where he had no personal history.  

Burnaby South. Source: Wikipedia

Let's not kid ourselves here - the Liberals wanted to win this riding.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau personally campaigned here several times.  After their first candidate, Karen Wang, bowed out for having made racially provocative comments about Jagmeet Singh (or, as she claims, having had a volunteer make them on her behalf - see: "'I am not racist': Wang blames volunteers for WeChat post, remains undecided on political future," Burnaby Now, January 17, 2019), the Liberals turned to former B.C. MLA Richard Lee.  They could have let the by-election run its course with Want's departure, but they opted instead to come back with a strong candidate in Lee.  That Lee lost by the margin he did might say a little something about the Liberals pro-pipeline stance and whether it's going to be a concern for other Liberals running in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.  Burnaby, after all, has been ground zero for pipeline protests (see: "Federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May arrested at anti-pipeline protest," CBC News, March 23 2018).

Notably, the Green Party chose not to run a candidate in Burnaby South, citing "Leader's Courtesy".  I'll link to it again, as I've written in the past that I thought not offering up a candidate would have been a mistake - (see: "Courtesy Shmertecy! Greens are Making a Mistake in Burnaby," Sudbury Steve May, December 30, 2018).  Any "mistake" though, appears to be mine, as the Green Party really couldn't have contemplated a better result than last night's.  A strong Green candidate could have upset this apple-cart, and led to an alternative to yesterday's actual result - a result that might prove to be the most important event for Canadian Greens in our electoral history (at least since the election of Elizabeth May to the House in 2011).  More on that below.

Outremount

In some respects, the story of the night wasn't the NDP leader finally being able to take a seat in the House and address parliament, but rather the NDP's loss of the Outremount riding formerly held by past-NDP leader Tom Mulcair - the first New Democrat to breakthrough under the NDP banner in Quebec - which eventually led to the 2011 'orange crush' under Jack Layton.  What we probably witnessed happening in Outremount last night was the penultimate nail being driven into the NDP's coffin in Quebec. The final hammer blow will likely come this fall.  And in between now and then, you can bet that the Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois and - yes, and the Greens - will all be talking about how the NDP have already lost Quebec.

Outremount. Source: Wikipedia

For the Green Party the vote tally in Outremount appears to be a bit of a surprise, as Green Party Deputy Leader Daniel Green ended up with support in the double-digits - a feat that all Green Party candidates secretly dream of!  More than that, Green actually finished ahead of the Bloc Quebecois, the Conservatives and the People's Party.  No doubt there are some today who are scratching their head about this result, and wondering if Green's third-place finish might signal a potential Parti Vert breakthrough in Quebec.

I'm more inclined to suggest that the local circumstances in Outremount, along with Daniel Green already being a bit of a known quantity in that riding probably had more to do with his strong finish.  Green has been involved with a number of local environmental causes. Green also ran in Stephane Dion's old riding of St-Laurent in the April 2017 by-election which saw Liberal Emmanuella Lambropoulos elected to parliament.  Green raked in almost 8% of the vote in St-Laurent, finishing in third place, beating the NDP's candidate.

But even I'm not completely ready to chalk up Green's achievement to his local popularity alone.  Usually when the New Democrats duke it out with the Liberals, the first casualty of that fight is the Green Party.  That doesn't appear to have happened in Outremount - and the fight between the Liberals and the New Democrats was, by all accounts, a very aggressive one.  Both parties wanted Outremount in order to be able to send a message to their base.  Votes for other progressive parties should have been hard to come by - and yet, Daniel Green still scored 12.5%.

York-Simcoe

The least surprising result of the three by-elections was found in the York-Simcoe riding formerly held by Conservative stalwart, Peter Van Loan.  Scot Davison held the riding for the Conservatives, finishing with an impressive 53.9% of the vote.  

York-Simcoe. Source: Wikipedia

There really weren't many questions about the outcome in York-Simcoe, but one of the things some were watching for was how well the People's Party might do in this traditionally Conservative riding.  The People's Party had a solid candidate in Robert Guerts, and they have to be disappointed with his 6th place finish behind even the Green Party. 

But we Greens shouldn't get too cocky about our own 5th place finish.  York-Simcoe is the kind of urban/rural riding that the Green Party should do well in.  It's not that far away from the Dufferin-Caledon riding in which Greens have challenged over the last few federal and provincial elections.  Along with a being home to a good chunk of Ontario's protected Greenbelt, York-Simcoe is home to the environmentally sensitive Holland Marsh - and yet we still couldn't beat an Elvis impersonator running for the Progressive Canadian Party (whatever that is), much less the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats.

Take-Aways for Greens

There are a few things which Greens should feel happy about.  With NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh headed to Ottawa, there will be another progressive voice in parliament to challenge the Liberals.  The rise of the right-wing extremist People's Party will certainly create some challenges for Greens, but there may be some unexpected opportunities there too.  And finally, although I can't figure out how Greens can capitalize on it, there's clearly a realignment of political forces underway in Quebec - and Greens might possibly be a part of it in certain parts of the province.

Let's look at three take-aways from last night's by-elections.

1. Jagmeet Singh's Victory

By far the most important thing for the Green Party was the election of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh in Burnaby South.  With Singh now headed to the House, the NDP can put to rest once and for all the simmering rebellion regarding that party's leadership.  MP's were poised to demand Singh's resignation had he lost the by-election.  But a Singh victory is a signal to the Party faithful that, for better or worse, Singh will be leading the NDP into the fall election.

And that's great news for the Green Party.  As much as I like Singh and feel a connection to him, the fact of the matter is he has been a disaster for the New Democrats.  With the behind-the-scenes leadership rebellion now doused, we can expect to see a number of prominent New Democrats bow out of the the election - likely including Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen, and Victoria MP Murray Rankin among them. Both have openly been musing about their future - with Cullen saying he wouldn't make a decision public until after the by-elections  (see: "MP Cullen undecided about running again," the Terrace Standard, January 22 2019, and "NDP facing an election without a quarter of its caucus as Rankin ponders retirement," CBC, February 8 2019).

The origin of this flyer is unknown.

Cullen, and many New Democrats, might have secretly (and perhaps not so secretly - see photo) been hoping for Singh to lose the by-election.  Changing the leadership of the Party just a few months before the federal election campaign is set to begin would have created some serious challenges for the party.  But heading into the election with a relatively unknown seat-less leader fresh off a by-election loss would have been too much for many New Democrats.  I think Singh would have likely stepped down on his own, rather than face a mutiny in caucus.  Either way, a more well-known New Democrat likely would have been brought to the fore one way or another, and tapped on the shoulder to lead the Party.  Cullen, or perhaps the fire-brand Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus could have been going toe-to-toe with Justin Trudeau this fall.  Now the NDP is stuck with the lacklustre Singh.

Singh has already been leading the NDP towards national collapse.  Losing the Outremount riding to the Liberals in the by-elections is surely another sign of things to come for New Democrats in la belle province, after having lost every be-election held in Quebec since Trudeau came to power in 2015.  And with two Quebec MP's confirming that they won't be running in the fall election (see: "Two Quebec NDP MPs rule out running for re-election," CBC News, February 21, 2019), this collapse narrative will continue to plague the NDP as more MP's join them in sitting out the general election.  New Democrats lack of belief that they can win has already become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as polls show support for the NDP sagging week after week.

The Liberals are probably quite happy to have lost in Burnaby South for these reasons, as many national political pundits have discussed.  Less well known is how all of this appears to play into the Green Party's electoral calculus - which plays itself out on a far more limited scale.

Let's face it: the Green Party will be only seriously targeting certain ridings.  Most of those are in B.C. - on Vancouver Island, and maybe a few on the Lower Mainland (the latter depending on candidate recruitment).  Many of these seats are presently held by New Democratic MP's, including every single seat on Vancouver Island except for Saanich-Gulf Islands, which Green leader Elizabeth May holds.

With Rankin in Victoria and potentially other prominent New Democrats stepping aside, and with a national narrative of imminent NDP collapse playing out throughout the background of the election, there has never been a better time for Greens to be optimistic about a breakthrough in the West.  Those targeted ridings could, with a strong ground game, potentially all go Green.  

And the Greens will have a strong ground game on the Island.  While the NDP will be sending its troops into national battle, Greens can afford to forego a vigorous national campaign and focus instead on regional and local issues in select winnable ridings. That would have been the strategy anyway, even had Singh gone down in defeat last night.  But Singh's victory makes things a little easier - and potentially expands the number of targeted ridings for the Green Party.

2. The People's Party Potential

The result in Burnaby South for the People's Party is no doubt surprising - and unnerving - for some politicos today.  Bernier has to be pretty satisfied with the 10+% that People's Party candidate Laura-Lynn Thompson obtained, even if his candidate in York-Simcoe faired very poorly.  The take-away message here is that if the People's Party can find candidates with a bit of a local profile, they should do well in certain ridings.  Maybe not well enough to win anywhere - but certainly well enough to effect the outcomes of a number of ridings.

Burnaby South was an interesting case.  The Conservatives ran a strong candidate in Jay Shin, but the final results saw a 4% drop in Conservative support over the 2015 federal election.  This suggests that not all of the People's Party support came from the Conservatives - and that Liberal voters, too, may have been attracted to the PPC.  

Or perhaps it only means that Burnaby voters were relatively confident that Singh was going to win and/or Shin had little chance given the NDP-Liberal dynamic there - and those that wanted to felt confident that a vote for the PPC wasn't going to split the vote and change the outcome - but would rather send a message to the Conservative Party that it needed to get its act together.

And make no mistake: that message has been received loud and clear by Conservatives.  10% of the vote in a riding where Cons usually do well, even if they don't always win - that's a very strong outcome for the PPC.  And you can bet it's one that Max Bernier will be using between now and the federal election to drum up interest in his Party. 

Screencap from Anti-Racist Sudbury

Presuming, of course, his party can weather the controversies that it finds itself in almost daily, like the one here in Sudbury which saw People's Party 'candidate' Jason LaFauci announce that he'd been kicked out of the PPC after it came to light that he had publicly called for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to be killed.  Seriously.  You can't make this stuff up (and a special shout-out to Anti-Racist Sudbury for keeping an eye on this sort of disgusting nonsense that now appears to be normalized in our political realm). 

It might seem very counter-intuitive to many Greens that the rise of the People's Party could be seen a positive, given the toxic brand of politics Bernier and his ilk bring to the conversation.  I understand that, and I personally wish the People's Party would fade into oblivion, because they are certainly detracting from the conversations that Canada ought to be having with itself at this time.  Hell, Max Bernier doesn't even believe that climate change is real thing (see: "Reality check: Maxime Bernier says CO2 isn’t a pollutant. Climate scientists say he’s wrong," Global News, October 25 2018).  In my opinion, the man has no place in politics - and certainly the media really should stop paying attention to him.

So we Greens should - and will - use his presence to our advantage.  Already I've been noting that Green supporters are telling people that they will be able to vote their conscious this time around, because of the presence of the People's Party.  Far too often, when a Green candidate goes knocking on a door, a voter tells her or him, "I'd vote for you, but I can't. I've got to vote for the Liberals/NDP in order to keep the Conservatives out."  With division on the right-side of the political spectrum likely to handcuff the Conservatives, Greens can make the case that a Green-vote is low risk.

Plus, look at those New Democrats collapse!

Whether the narrative ultimately plays itself out at the ballot box or not is another question. The idea of a Green Surge is a compelling one, though, and it's one that I think Greens will benefit from.  So keep talking up just how well the People's Party did in Burnaby South.  Real or otherwise, the People's Party is both a bogeyman and a gift horse for Greens.

3. The Green Party in Quebec - Challenges and Opportunities

Year End 2018. Source: Abacus Data

Put aside Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland for a moment - along with one or two other ridings in places like Guelph, Fredericton and Charlottetown. Pundits like Chantal Hebert have started talking about the Green Party in Quebec almost as if we might have a shot to shake-up the political landscape there (see: "Little to celebrate for any party in Monday’s byelections," the Toronto Star, February 26 2019).  Hebert believes that the Green's environmental messaging plays well in Quebec.  Certainly the Green Party's stance on pipelines and pollution pricing might resonate with a good number of voters there.

Voter Impressions of Elizabeth May, September 2018. Source: Abacus Data

And the polls also seem to suggest that the Green Party might be resonating with certain voters there.  At Year End 2018, Abacus found that 9% of voters in Quebec supported the Greens - almost 2% more than the national average.  And Abacus also earlier found that voter's impressions of Elizabeth May were second highest in Quebec, behind only British Columbia.

Quebec has long been known for a volatile political scene that has been more than willing to give non-traditional parties a chance.  The recent election of Francois Legault's  Coalition Avenir de Quebec (the CAQ) to power in last year's provincial election - along with a strong showing for the left-wing Quebec Solidaire is case in point.  This volatility could work to the Green Party's advantage in Quebec, particularly if the Bloc Quebecois under new leader Yves-Francois Blanchet (yes, I had to look that up, too) continues to under-perform.  Find the right riding to split 5-ways, and a strong, locally-known Green candidate might just come up through the middle.

But while Quebec might appear to create some opportunities for the Green Party in the upcoming general election, there are also some significant barriers which Greens will have to overcome.  Unlike in B.C., where there has always been a strong Green provincial party in place (well, "strong" relative to other Canadian Green parties), the Green Party of Quebec has been a bit of a non-entity - especially since present leader Alex Tyrrell (who is no friend of Elizabeth May's - see: "Elizabeth May ordered deputies not to associate with leader of Quebec Greens," Ricochet, September 25 2016) has been fishing in the same pond for voters as Quebec Solidaire.  Tyrrell's "eco-socialist" brand of Green has been a hard-sell in Quebec, and in the last provincial election, Greens finished dismally in 5th place with just 1.68% of the popular vote.

Not that having a friendly provincial party in the wings is a pre-requisite for a breakthrough in Quebec.  The NDP certainly didn't have many provincial friends when the Orange Crush rolled through Quebec in 2011.  But Jack Layton's NDP had an ingredient that is largely absent from the Green Party: French-speaking volunteers with a strong ground game in key ridings, and who could engage in the air war on equal footing with the other parties.  We Greens just don't have that kind of base from which to draw assistance.  And the federal party's historic lack of emphasis on materials and supports for francophone volunteers is no secret.  Even our leader Elizabeth May, who has significantly improved her French-language speaking skills, remains far from bilingual in the same way that every other national party leader is.

And that stuff matters in Quebec.

The NDP in 2011 also had the advantage of a truly national campaign on which to fall back on.  That won't be the case for Greens in 2019.  Even if the Greens wanted to compete with the 4 big parties in Quebec, Green voices are still apt to get themselves lost in the 6-party melee.

I get that Quebec does appear to be ripe for the Green Party's picking in 2019.  But I fear that we just don't have our act together enough to be a serious contender there.  Perhaps one or two ridings where big-name Greens could be persuaded to run (Hello? does anybody still have Georges Laraque's phone number?) could be put in play.  But a breakthrough in Quebec, even with a collapsing NDP, a lacklsutre Bloc, and an electorate looking for something different and willing to try things out - Quebec still seems just out of reach to me.  And that really is too bad - for had the Party given Quebec just a little more attention since 2015, we might have been able to capitalize on this political alignment of the stars.

One Last Thought

If you're a long-time reader of my blog, you might have noted that my posts tend to be tinged with a touch of cynicism.  And although this post surely has to qualify as one of my more optimistic offerings, I still can't help but feel troubled by one critical concern.  Yes, 2019 might prove to be the year the the Green Party of Canada seriously breaks through in a general election.  I really do think that we're going to be sending at least a half-dozen Greens to Ottawa in the fall.  

But for all of that I can't help but wonder whether what's good for the Green Party at this time in Canadian history might ultimately be bad for Canada.  I'm reminded of Elizabeth May's 2008, "I’d rather have no Green seats and Stephen Harper lose, than a full caucus that stares across the floor at Stephen Harper as prime minister.” (see: "Elizabeth May’s strategic voting dilemma," the Tyee, October 8 2008). I get that there is a real possibility that the People's Party might play spoiler for Andrew Scheer's Conservatives - but what might that leave Canada with?

4 more years of Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.  And while I get that Trudeau seems like a much nicer guy that Stephen Harper ever did, I'm not sure how the Liberals signature policies are going to take Canada in the direction that it needs to go now in 2019 - and I fear that the Liberals will continue to take us backward instead.

What troubles me most about a potential Green breakthrough is that it appears that it's going to largely be at the expense of the NDP.  And say what you want about the NDP, but the fact is that their politics most closely align with the Green Party's.  I still hold out hope that green New Democrats like Svend Robinson can overcome the browns in their party like Rachel Notley who are, in my opinion, hold the NDP back from being a truly progressive party.  At a time when climate scientists are telling us we have only until 2030 to get our act together and seriously begin the difficult process of weaning our economy off of fossil fuels, there really isn't any place at all for Notley, B.C. Premier John Horgan and Singh's championship of bitumen and/or LNG pipelines.  Until the NDP abandons these positions and gets serious about climate change, they will continue to fail that 'progressive' test in my books.

But even after saying all of that, there's no real way of denying that I'd much rather see Jagmeet Singh as Canada's next Prime Minister.  But that's....not going to happen.  And we Greens are going to be one of the reasons why it doesn't.

I can't help but wonder if Green success at the expense of the NDP is really worth it.  If the Green Party has aspirations of absorbing and/or replacing the NDP as Canada's third Party, well, maybe there's something there - but I'm not sure that's either a) likely, or b) worth the fight.  As long as we are creatures of the First Past The Post electoral system, Green success to me appears to be similar to emerging the victor in a left-wing shooting gallery. 

I wish there were a way to work with the NDP on a riding-by-riding basis.  But there isn't.  The NDP still barely acknowledge the existence of the Green Party.  Rather than potnetial allies, Greens are viewed as political competitors by New Democrats - and why wouldn't we be just that when we're eyeing almost exclusively ridings with sitting NDP MP's as places where we're going to be the most aggressive?

We've got to do better than this. Whether Canada's next government is Conservative or Liberal, it will matter very little to the global climate.  Neither the Cons or the Libs have demonstrated any desire to get serious about climate change.  Neither have demonstrated any commitment to reforming our archaic electoral system so that every vote will count.  Neither the Conservatives or the Liberals deserve to form government at this time in Canada's history, in my opinion.  

But it looks like we'll be stuck with one or the other after all votes are counted in 2019.  So New Democrats and Greens really need to get our collective acts together before we face off in the election after this one.  In the meantime, woe be to Canada.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the views and/or policies of the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada)