By-elections in any country always elicit multitudes of exotic viewpoints from pundits, politicians, and policymakers. Anyone exposed to the mass of commentary on the recent Congressional by-election in New York’s 23rd District will believe one of several things. President Obama has failed and is on the way out. Or Republican radicalism is on the rise and will eventually consume the GOP, driving it either to the White House or to oblivion. Or the by-election was an inadequate barometer altogether.
The same can be said for the commentary that has arisen in the wake of the Nov. 9 by-elections in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia. Even though Canadian politics generally escape the state of warfare that embroils our southern neighbours, the implications of last week’s by-elections may be profound, and could reflect tectonic shifts occurring (albeit slowly) beneath the daily fray of Question Period.
For starters, the Liberals were not a factor in any of the four polls. Michael Ignatieff has succeeded in doing what many Canadians thought impossible: performing worse than Stephane Dion. In total, 35.7 per cent of voters cast their ballots for the Tories, 24.2 per cent for the New Democrats, 20.9 per cent for the Bloc Quebecois, and just 14.8 per cent voted for the Liberals. Meanwhile, the Bloc lost the rural seat of Montmagny–L’Islet
Kamouraska–Rivière-du-Loup to the Tories after winning it comfortably in 2008. The Conservatives and the NDP, on the other hand, each improved on their totals with the former picking up a new seat, and the latter placing a strong second in two of the four races, while winning another by an improved margin. So exactly what can be taken from these results?
An interesting place to start is the relatively poor performance of the Bloc. In the 2008 election they lost nearly 6.5 per cent of their vote in Montmagny. Last Monday they lost another 8.3 per cent, vacating the seat for the Conservatives. This type of rural seat in Eastern Quebec has been a safe grab for the Bloc Quebecois since the party’s inception, and forms the principle component of their power base. Could it be that after nearly 20 years of existence, the separatist party is finally showing its age? There hasn’t been a Parti Quebecois government in the province since the departure of Lucien Bouchard, and separatism hasn’t really been an issue at the forefront since Jacques Parizeau blamed the 1995 referendum defeat on “money and ethnic votes.” Gilles Duceppe has performed excellently as leader of the Bloc, outlasting most other federal leaders by years, but the very issue his party was created to address, the status of Quebec within Canada, has long been on the backburner.
The Conservatives have won a bitter sweet victory. Their win in Quebec seemed impossible only months ago—when they were polling below the Green Party in that province—but a narrow victory in a relatively conservative area is a far cry from the breakthrough they need. What’s more, their loss to the New Democrats in New Westminster–Coquitlam by more than 10 per cent does not bode well for their party in British Columbia, where its ally the provincial Liberal government (liberal in name only) is becoming increasingly unpopular. Unlike other provinces, most of B.C. is polarized between Conservatives and New Democrats. If this trend continues, the Tories may expect to lose some critical seats in the rural areas of the province.
As a final footnote to these numbers, the NDP can find immense solace in its performance in the Montreal riding of Hochelga. Though their candidate Jean-Claude Rocheleau finished a good 30 per cent behind Daniel Paillé of the Bloc Quebecois, it’s almost unheard of for the New Democrats to place second anywhere in Quebec. Their back-to-back victories in Outremont were widely viewed as ephemeral, but a second-place showing ahead of the Liberals elsewhere in the city may help solidify their position as a real federalist alternative in the province.
By-elections are contentious events. Many are already saying, as some did in the United States, that these by-elections are largely meaningless. But here in Canada, this seems unlikely given their radical deviance from the status quo. Others are characterizing them as a sure sign of a looming Conservative majority.
Pundits had some interesting ideas about the race in New York’s 23rd. Perhaps, if we are to understand the implications of last Monday’s Canadian by-elections, we should just ask Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck?
