Westmount—Ville-Marie and other ridings

My previous post discusses Westmount—Ville-Marie. The latest rumor is that a municipal councilor will run for the NDP in Westmount—Ville-Marie. I think municipal councilors may have a greater success rate in Quebec than in Ontario when it comes to seeking higher office. Recent examples of Ontario municipal politicians seeking higher office have had mixed results. At most, municipal councilors in Ontario only have about a 50/50 chance of succeeding at winning higher office. For example, the very popular David Shiner went down to a decisive defeat in Willowdale in the recent provincial election. However, Liberal Joe Dickson, who was an Ajax councilor, won a decisive victory in Ajax—Pickering. There was the occasional Green candidate who was a municipal councilor and they all went down to defeat. A Cornwall councilor, Tory Chris Savard, went down to a 10-point defeat in Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry. Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry was by far the strongest Tory riding federally to go Liberal provincially in the 2007 provincial election. I always thought this riding would go Liberal in the provincial election, but the strong Tory federal results made Milton Chan at electionprediction.com think otherwise and thus Chan predicted a Tory win in the riding. I was glad when the Liberals won Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry. It keeps Cornwall’s Liberal streak going provincially. Cornwall has been represented by a Liberal provincially continuously since 1987. Prior to that, the riding of Cornwall was represented by the Tories for two years. Prior to that Cornwall was actually represented by the NDP. I wonder whether Mike Harris’ decision to abolish all provincial ridings and adopt the federal boundaries was a move designed to benefit the Tories. One thing it did was remove some political clout from the City of Toronto. Under the 130 seat distribution, the Metro Toronto (as it was called at the time) had 23% of the province’s seats. Under the 103 seat distribution, the former Metro Toronto had 21% of the province’s seats. I think this served the Harris anti-Toronto agenda quite nicely. Because of the switch to federal boundaries, Cornwall is no longer sure to be represented by a Liberal provincially. The reason for this is that rural areas now covered in the amalgamated riding are strongly Tory. This however, has yet to deny Cornwall Liberal representation in any of the 3 elections in which federal boundaries have been used. But Cornwall almost lost Liberal representation in 1999 when the Liberals won the riding by only 600 votes. That particular election was an example of strategic voting that worked. The NDP vote was very low in this riding that election. It was so low that it was one of the rare occasions when 46% of the vote was not enough to win. Instead, the Liberals beat the Tories 47.99% to 46.47%. This 46.47% was higher than the province-wide Tory average and yet the Tories still lost. The strategic voting in this riding did not prevent a Tory majority government but it was enough to keep Cornwall red.

Speaking of electoral districts, Tory MPP Norm Sterling is very strongly against the arrangement whereby 10 Northern Ontario electoral districts keep the 1996 federal boundaries, Parry Sound—Muskoka becomes a hybrid of both 1996 and 2004 federal boundaries, and the rest of the province adopts the 2004 federal boundaries. Sterling says that this gives Northern Ontario too much voting clout. What Sterling does not acknowledge is that under his government, Ontario moved to a 103 electoral district system where Northern Ontario’s per-riding population was back than quite a bit less than the per-riding population of Southern Ontario. To the best of my knowledge Sterling did not object to that arrangement then. Even in the days of having 130 MPPs, many Northern Ontario ridings were significantly smaller in population than those elsewhere in the province. All the McGuinty government did was prevent an electoral district from being eliminated in Northern Ontario which would have created crises for numerous incumbents. McGuinty instead said that we can afford to give Northern Ontario a bit more clout at the provincial level than at the federal level because Northern Ontario is important and disadvantaged and has too often been neglected in the past. I think of keeping the extra seat as a compensation for these disadvantages that Northern Ontario has faced.

Adopting the Northern Ontario federal boundaries would have been disastrous for incumbents. Who knows who would have won the Nippising—Timiskaming riding. That is anyone’s guess. Nickel Belt would likely have had an NDP win, possibly larger, possibly narrower. Sault Ste. Marie would have been a Liberal win. Sudbury would have been a Liberal win. Algoma-Manitoulin—Kapaskuing is anyone’s guess. It may well have gone NDP under the federal boundaries. Tamiskaming—Cochrane would have been eliminated and David Ramsay would have been without a seat. He would have been forced to retire or run in Timmins-James Bay against Gilles Bisson. Ramsay would have for certain lost that contest. Thunder Bay—Superior North would have gone Liberal. Thunder Bay—Rainy River would likely have gone NDP whether or not Howard Hampton was the candidate there. You see, the federal redistribution put Howard’s hometown of Rainy River into Thunder Bay—Rainy River. So Howard may have run in Thunder Bay—Rainy River instead of the new Kenora riding. As it happened, Liberal incumbent Bill Mauro won Thunder Bay—Atikokan by only 50 votes. I would consider Hampton’s hometown a strong NDP area provincially. And thus I expect that had the federal boundaries been in place, the NDP would have won Thunder Bay—Rainy River whether Hampton was running there or in the Kenora riding. As for the Kenora riding itself, it is hard to say. Kenora is Liberal federally, with the Tories in second and the NDP a few hundred votes behind the Tories in third. If Hampton were to have run there it would have gone easily NDP. If Hampton had run in Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Kenora still probably would have gone NDP but could have gone Liberal especially if former Kenora Liberal MPP Frank Miclash had attempted a comeback.

Norm Sterling’s solution is to abolish all Ontario ridings and start from scratch, guaranteeing Northern Ontario 11 ridings. This would mean redrawing all ridings and wiping the political map clean. I do not agree with doing this, at least not until after the 2011 federal redistribution. I feel the current boundaries should be used for the 2011 election. After that, if we are unhappy with the new federal boundaries because they do not suit Ontario as a whole or Northern Ontario, then we can consider wiping the map clean and creating our own electoral boundaries.

Unthinkable but true

Well, the unthinkable has occurred. Lucienne Robillard has announced that she will resign her Montreal seat on January 25, two years and two days since she won the 2006 election. She has given no reason for her abrupt decision to resign. Months ago she had already announced that she would not run again. That is why they nominated Marc Garneau in her riding. I do not know whether Robillard thought that there would not be a spring election so she had to resign now. The media treats a spring election as a near certainty. I am inclined to agree with the media on this one even though I do not like it. I am a Liberal, but not all Liberals seem to have realized that an election a few months from now is likely counterproductive for the Liberals. I do not see ourselves in any more of a position to win then than we are now. Liberals were recently talking boldly about defeating the government on their own non-confidence motion initiative in the new year. However, even if they were given the opportunity to do this, my guess is the non-confidence motion would not pass. My guess is the Bloc would vote against it so that they could pass judgment on the 2008 budget before making a decision on whether to the defeat the government. But it is the 2008 budget that makes me think a spring election likely. I see it as very difficult for this parliament to survive the 2008 budget. The Liberals do not want to keep abstaining and the Bloc already yanked their support of the government this autumn. I see it as unlikely that the Bloc would go back to supporting the government because this fall Duceppe seemed quite enthusiastic about an election despite the fact that it would cause the Bloc to lose seats. The only way an election can be avoided is if the Liberals are around 10 points or even more behind in the polls. In that case, we might see the Liberals abstaining or registering only token votes against the budget. This makes a Westmount—Ville-Marie by-election unlikely. Westmount—Ville-Marie is a target riding for the NDP, especially in a by-election. This is due to the 15% the NDP received there in the last election. However, Westmount—Ville-Marie was always a stronger Liberal riding than Outremont as far back as the Chrétien glory days. The Liberals got 45% there in the last election, compared with 35% in Outremont.