As Trudeau calls May 6 byelection for B.C. riding, campaigns will be party ‘previews’ of fall election

Thestar.com
March 25, 2019
Melanie Green

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a May byelection in Nanaimo-Ladysmith on Sunday just as he touched down in the province to attend the nomination event for the Liberals’ Vancouver-Kingsway candidate, local celebrity Tamara Taggart.

Political scientist Stewart Prest of Simon Fraser University says Sunday’s announcement may be motivated by the Liberals’ desire to move the conversation beyond the SNC-Lavalin affair toward October’s election.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced a May byelection in British Columbia to fill a seat vacated by former New Democrat Sheila Malcolmson.

“Anything else that occupies some attention would be useful,” he said . “(The Liberals) have the opportunity to try out some of the messaging, schedule high-profile campaign appearances ... and start using the lines from last week’s budget which is clearly and explicitly designed to be an election budget.”

Former New Democrat MP Sheila Malcolmson vacated the Nanaimo-Ladysmith seat Jan. 7 to run successfully for B.C.’s governing NDP in the Victoria Legislature.

The byelection, scheduled May 6, is the fourth federal byelection of the year, after three in February. One of those three, in B.C.’s Burnaby South, went to federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh who won his first seat in the House of Commons, a seat vacated by now-Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart.

The Nanaimo-Ladysmith byelection will serve as a “dress rehearsal” for all federal parties for what’s to come in the fall election campaign, Prest said.

“We won’t learn a lot regarding Nanaimo but we may learn quite a lot about how parties are thinking,” he explained. “We saw the NDP doing that already during the Burnaby South byelection. Whenever (Singh) talked about pharmacare, he was clearly pivoting to issues he planned to talk about in the federal election.”

Singh has faced scrutiny for the party’s fledgling finances and the number of MPs who will not be seeking office in October.

Malcolmson was one of several NDP MPs who decided not to run again in October’s federal election. That list includes B.C. MPs Murray Rankin and Fin Donnelly; Alberta MP Linda Duncan; Ontario MPs Irene Mathyssen and David Christopherson; and Quebec MPs Hélène Laverdière, Roméo Saganash, Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet and Anne Minh-Thu Quach.

The boundaries of Nanaimo-Ladysmith were redrawn prior to the 2015 general election, joining two parts of the region. Malcolmson won that year, capturing 33.2 per cent of the vote, with the Liberal candidate taking 23.5 per cent, the Conservatives grabbing 23.4 per cent and the Greens nabbing 19.8 per cent, according to Elections Canada.

Prest expects the riding to remain an NDP stronghold.

Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis Chief Bob Chamberlin, an Indigenous leader in British Columbia and vocal opponent of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has said he intends to seek the NDP candidacy in Nanaimo-Ladysmith.

Chamberlin told the Star that if he gets elected, he would help ensure the federal government lives up to its promise to honour the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Chamberlin was expected to face Lauren Semple, a community organizer, for the NDP nomination. The Star reached out to the NDP for comment but they were not immediately available.

According to Prest, the choice to run Chamberlin as a candidate again signals a turn toward NDP-specific federal issues ahead of the election, such as opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

“It’s certainly a major issue along the coast and a point that a lot of people care about across the spectrum,” he explained, pointing to Liberal MP Joyce Murray who was opposed to the pipeline expansion. “The complicating factor is that Singh himself has carved out a more nuanced position.”

The federal leader has “walked the line” on certain environmental issues, he added. Singh prominently opposed the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion while openly supporting a $40-billion LNG project in Northern B.C., despite members of his own party rejecting the project publicly.

Prest speculated the party could benefit from having a vocal pipeline opponent in the caucus.

The Liberals have already nominated local entrepreneur Michelle Corfield, and the Conservatives’ candidate is John Hirst, a financial services manager in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith riding. The Green party candidate is Paul Manly, who is running again after he placed fourth in the 2015 election there with 20 per cent of the vote. The newly-minted People’s Party of Canada announced their candidate Jennifer Clarke in January, who reportedly works in the financial sector.