NATIONAL VIEWPOINT: Gridlock continues after byelections

Opinion

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This article was published 21/06/2023 (845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Byelections are so easy to ignore. There is less pomp and circumstance, less media coverage and voter turnout is usually a fraction of what it would be in a general election.

And yet, even with all those shortcomings, they can still be fascinating in their own way, as demonstrated by Monday’s federal byelections: two in Manitoba, and two more held in Ontario and Quebec, respectively.

Although the Liberals and Conservatives both held onto a pair of seats — the very definition of a triumph of the status quo — the results still provided deep insight into the forces shaping politics in this country.

In three of the four ridings up for grabs, the party that held the seat before the byelection was called won in convincing fashion.

This included dominant victories for Conservative Branden Leslie in Portage-Lisgar, Liberal Ben Carr in Winnipeg South Centre and Liberal Anna Gainey in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount.

The only true race was in the rural Ontario riding of Oxford, a historic Tory stronghold. Tory Arpan Khanna eventually held the riding for the Conservatives, but Liberal David Hilderley made it close.

So, with no change resulting from these votes, what did we learn about politics in this country? First and foremost, that the federal electoral gridlock gripping the country remains very much intact.

For the past two general elections, the Liberals managed to squeak out minority mandates with a conveniently efficient vote that captured just enough seats in regions across the country to stay in power. They have been able to do that largely because of the inefficiency of the Conservative vote: gaudy pluralities in the west helped the Tories capture more votes than the Grits, but not enough seats to form government.

Monday’s byelections suggest that dynamic is still very much in play.

The Liberals faced the theoretical prospect of losses in Winnipeg South Centre and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount. In reality, these are two of the safest Liberal seats in the country and the final results confirmed that the core of Grit support remains solid.

(It should be noted that sometime very early on Monday evening, an anonymous but obviously enthusiastic Liberal supporter actually posted Carr as the sitting MP on the Winnipeg South Centre Wikipedia page with only a small fraction of polls having reported. Confident much?)

The same goes for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and the two seats from his caucus that were up for grabs.

Poilievre needed to not only demonstrate an ability to retain seats, but also provide yet another example of how right-wing rivals from the People’s Party of Canada were no threat to the federal Tory brand.

Things were close in the Ontario riding of Oxford thanks to former Tory MP Dave McKenzie’s decision to endorse Liberal David Hilderley in protest over Arpan Khanna’s nomination. Even with that bit of political perversity, the Tories still prevailed.

Way more important to Poilievre’s immediate political future was Leslie’s thunderous victory in Portage-Lisgar over People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier. Even with turnout that was only two-thirds of what it has been in general elections, Leslie garnered more than 20,000 votes — a total that came very close to what outgoing MP Candice Bergen received in 2021.

Bernier came a very distant second with 5,300 votes, about 17 per cent of all those cast.

Given the PPC had its best result ever in Portage-Lisgar in 2021 — nearly 10,000 votes and a second-place finish — and that Bernier decided to parachute himself into the riding for the byelection, that result has to be crushing.

Bernier literally tried every trick in the book, exhuming up every right-wing dog-whistle issue he could think of to stoke the far-right tendencies of Portage-Lisgar voters.

Bernier attacked the transgender community with a policy on gender identity, tried to piggyback on a noxious debate about a proposed book ban for the Brandon School Division, and pledged to introduce a private member’s bill to establish a law to limit access to abortion. He even tackled the issue of “self-defence,” which nobody even knew was an issue.

Bernier also got lots of free publicity when, in the very early days of the byelection campaign, he pleaded guilty to charges of violating pandemic public health laws. Playing the part of pandemic restriction martyr seemed to be the best way to attract support in Portage-Lisgar, the riding with the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the country.

In the end, none of it mattered. A sane politician would look at Monday’s results and abandon his dream to bring far-right populism to the floor of the House of Commons. However, it’s probably safe to conclude that a man who calls himself “Mad Max” isn’t that familiar with the concept of sanity.

In the end, no seats changed hands and no new truths were revealed in federal politics. Instead, we got a reminder of just how fractured Canada’s electorate is right now. And the clearest sign yet that wherever we’re headed, it’s thankfully not toward the future imagined by Mad Max.

» Dan Lett is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist.