More than a dozen would-be MPs are out knocking on doors this week after the prime minister has officially called Canada’s 42nd federal election.
The North Shore is now carved up into three ridings, including the new Burnaby North-Seymour, which spans the Burrard Inlet and covers everything east of the Seymour River, plus a swath of land that curves along Lynn Creek south of Highway 1.
The new riding has drawn a number of high-profile candidates including retired judge Carol Baird Ellan who will run for the NDP, former District of North Vancouver council member Mike Little for the Conservatives, the Green Party’s s Lynn Quarmby an SFU prof who gained national attention during the protests against Kinder Morgan on Burnaby Mountain and Liberal Terry Beech, also an SFU prof.
In West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, which has since lost Powell River in boundary redrawings, Conservative incumbent John Weston is facing a high-profile Liberal challenger in former West Vancouver mayor Pamela Goldsmith Jones. Former Whistler mayor Ken Melamed is the Green candidate and the NDP has chosen Gibsons business owner Larry Koopman.
The Tories won riding in 2011 with 45 per cent of the vote. The NDP and Liberals finished with 24 and 23 per cent, respectively. The Green Party finished with just above seven per cent.
North Vancouver voters will see incumbent Conservative Andrew Saxton seeking re-election. The Liberals have nominated green tech CEO Jonathan Wilkinson to run while the NDP has chosen Tsleil-Waututh member and pipeline activist Carleen Thomas. The Green Party debuted star candidate former CBC meteorologist Claire Martin in April.
Saxton won the seat in 2011 with 48 per cent of the vote, compared to the Liberals’ 30, NDP’s 17 and Green’s five.
At the outset of the election, most pollsters are reporting a two-way race between the NDP and Conservatives with the Liberals in a distant third.
“The overall projection, which has been going back and forth for several months, is predicting some sort of minority government,” said David Moscrop, UBC political science PhD candidate.
Poll aggregating website ThreeHundredEight.com, goes as far as making predictions, riding by riding.
At the time of the creation of the Bunraby North-Seymour riding, Burnaby-Douglas NDP MP Kennedy Stewart crunched the 2011 Elections Canada poll returns and determined combining the areas would result in an easy Conservative win the next time around. He later opted to run in elsewhere Burnaby.
But Three Hundred Eight founder Éric Grenier’s calculations on Monday indicate a 77-per cent chance of the riding being held by the NDP come October 20. The model also predicts change coming to the other two North Shore ridings. The Liberals have an 85 per cent chance of claiming North Vancouver and 73 per cent chance of winning West Vancouver.
Even though Grenier is highly respected among political scientists, those numbers should be taken with a large grain of salt, said Richard Johnston, UBC political scientist.
Most polling firms don’t use a large enough sample from individual ridings to have confidence in their predictions, Johnston said, so they instead apply regional or provincial data into a formula. That formula doesn’t take into account on-the-ground knowledge that locals would have including how strong the individual candidates are and how effectively they’re campaigning.
“I would be pretty distrustful of any poll claims about riding-level stuff but I think the patterns are pretty broad and pretty clear and that is the NDP votes have lifted,” he said.
The current vote split and prospect of a minority government is likely to revive talk of a formal coalition between NDP and Liberals, Moscrop said.
“The Liberals foolishly ruled them out. They may well have to walk that back in October,” he said
While issues like Kinder Morgan’ pipeline plans and the closure of the Kitsilano Coast Guard station are stoking political discussions locally, they’re still “micro-issues” Moscrop said.
“They may well be able to make (Kinder Morgan) into an election issue. I’m not exactly sure how that’s going to play out because for every person who stands opposed to a pipeline, there’s someone who stands to benefit from it and who is very much in favour of it,” he said. “At the end of the day, these ridings are going to vote on the same issues that the rest of Canadians vote on, which is the economy. That’s what people are thinking about first and foremost when they’re casting their ballot.”
That may prove trickier for the Conservatives than it has been in the past as the country’s economy is in a technical recession with a deficit budget projected and the Canadian dollar floundering with oil prices, Moscrop said.
Still, more than 70 days until the polls close, a lot can happen, Moscrop said.
“Most people will ignore it until early September,” he said. “People are just going to stay tuned out until he kids are back from school and everyone is back from the cottage.”
