Supplementary to my previous blog post

The by-elections have been called, but only the two in Quebec. The Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean should be able to be called for the same date of September 17 now that Michel Gauthier has resigned. Harper wants political conditions for him to improve before risking any of the by-elections in Ontario or British Columbia. Harper can't have thought Outremont to be that winnable for his party since he waited until the absolutely last day before calling the by-election. In my opinion political conditions for Harper in Quebec are not as good as he may have hoped, but still better for Harper than the Liberals would have hoped.

I have also found out that in Welland, Jody Di Bartolomeo lost the NDP nomination to Malcolm Allen in March 2007, and that is the reason Di Bartolomeo is not running for the NDP again. The NDP sometimes ends up denying the nomination to a candidate who came close in the previous election. For example, Steve McClurg came within 100 votes of winning in New Westminster-Coquitlam in the 2004 Federal Election, but in 2005 lost the nomination for the 2006 Federal Election to Dawn Black, who is now the MP for New Westminster-Coquitlam. If McClurg had won the nomination, he might well be the MP now. What happened instead is that McClurg recently became a Liberal and sought the Liberal nomination in Burnaby-New Westminster before giving up his ambition for being an MP and withdrawing.

Jody Di Bartolomeo similarly came fairly close in the last election and evidently wanted to again make an attempt to become an MP. While I wholeheartedly endorse John Maloney to win the next Federal Election in Welland, I feel a little bit sorry for Di Bartolomeo because he was denied a chance to run in the next election.

Outremont and Welland

Because for certain there is a by-election coming in the riding of Outremont, I thought I’d discuss the riding of Outremont. Outremont is a multi-ethnic district in central Montreal that consists of the former City of Outremont plus some surrounding areas. Its MPs are often cabinet ministers. But this has only been the case with Liberal governments. It had Marc Lalonde as an influential cabinet minister during the Trudeau years. When Lalonde retired in 1984, the riding elected an opposition member in the 1984 general election, Liberal Lucie Pépin, by a large margin. Pépin served the next four years as a member of the Official Opposition. In the 1988 election, Pépin lost Outremont by a narrow margin to Tory Jean-Pierre Hogue. This was due to a significant vote split between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party. After this win for the Tories in Outremont, Hogue spent the next 5 years as a government backbencher. In 1993, Hogue was very badly defeated, receiving only 8.91% of the vote, losing to Martin Couchon. Couchon then spent several years in the Chrétien cabinet. As a Chrétien loyalist, Couchon did not seek re-election in 2004. He was succeeded in Outremont by Liberal Jean Lapierre, who then also became a cabinet minister (Transport) under Paul Martin. Lapierre was re-elected in the 2006 election. Although Lapierre had previously served as an opposition member from 1984 to 1992 (he left the Liberals in 1990 and joined the Bloc Quebecois, then resigned his seat in 1992 which Mulroney left vacant until the next general election), he didn’t want to serve in opposition again and quit his seat in January 2007 after serving in the opposition again for less than a year. The seat has been vacant since but Stephen Harper must call a by-election by Saturday.


I also just feel like discussing the Ontario riding of Welland. Federally, this riding is represented by Liberal John Maloney. In the next federal election, Maloney will face a Conservative candidate named Alfred Kiers who evidently is a right-wing Conservative because in 1997 he ran against Maloney as a Christian Heritage Party candidate. Maloney will also face New Democrat Malcolm Allen, who is the deputy mayor of Pelham, Ontario, as well as councilor for Pelham’s Ward One. Unfortunately for Mr. Allen, he is being parachuted into the Welland riding because Pelham is outside of the riding of Welland. He will thus lack name recognition when he runs in the riding. I am not sure why the 2006 and 2004 candidate, Jody Di Bartolomeo is not running again for the NDP considering that he came second both times and in 2006 came within less than 5% of winning the riding.

Provincially, the riding of Welland does not yet exist, but will as soon as the provincial election starts. The current equivalent provincial riding is Niagara Centre. It is represented by NDPer Peter Kormos. Kormos has been in the legislature ever since a 1988 by-election. Back then the riding was Welland-Thorold. Welland-Thorold and its successor Niagara Centre have bucked the provincial trend in every election since the 1970s with the exception of the 1990 election. After this election that the NDP won province-wide, Kormos was briefly in the Bob Rae cabinet before being thrown out of cabinet for appearing fully clothed in the Toronto Sun as a Sunshine Boy. For whatever reason this was considered a scandal by the government and it put Kormos permanently out of cabinet. This “scandal”, however, did not affect his standing with his local electorate. Thus, one can expect the new Welland riding that Kormos is running in to likely buck the provincial trend again and re-elect Kormos. The redistributed results for Welland show a weaker NDP win. The Liberals have a much stronger vote (10 points higher) in the Welland redistributed results but are still 5000 votes behind the NDP. Kormos’ opponents will be Liberal John Mastroianni, a former Welland politician who recently finished second in the race to be mayor of Welland. The Tories will run Ron Bodner, a former mayor of Port Colborne who lost his bid for re-election as mayor of Port Colborne in 2006 by almost 2000 votes. Both would like to think they could beat Kormos. As much as I’d like Mastroianni to beat Kormos, the smart money remains on Kormos being re-elected.