A dead squirrel...
Federal and Provincial Political Round-up
Anyone who says all the Dipper votes in the last election went to the Liberals doesn’t understand anything about recent Canadian politics. We knew from polling long before now that the Conservatives were attracting all sorts of voters, including former NDP supporters. Now we have a Pollara poll to show us new numbers.
“New Democrats need to pay close attention to this dynamic,” Jordan Leichnitz warned on X, quoting the Pollara tweet at the head of this column. “NDP voters decamped for different reasons - Trump, fear of Poilievre & strategic voting drove white collar voters to the Liberals, while change & affordability concerns drew blue collar voters to the Conservatives.”
“And here’s the rub,” she added, “only one of those two shifts [Trump/Poilievre/strategic voting] is a circumstantial problem. The other could become more permanent if the party doesn’t find ways to reconnect with those voters.”
The New Democrats have a lot of searching to do for their political souls. They are now reduced to fewer members of parliament than are needed for a recognized political caucus. In Newfoundland and Labrador, they ran names-on-ballot across the board including the tired Mary Shortall in Sin Jawns East. She finished a very far distant third, with a little bit over 5,000 votes where the Conservative pulled in 11,000 votes but where the Liberal won with more than 28,000 votes.
Given that this seat was once held by Jack Harris with such overwhelming support as Joanne Thompson now has, Shortall’s abysmal performance is shocking even it winds up being typical of the pathetic showing for the party in every other federal riding in Newfoundland and Labrador. We could call Dave Brazil’s result for the Conservatives pathetic too, but his Brazil’s weak as dishwater result actually reflects nothing more than a shift in voters in the riding than anything else. The northeast Avalon has moved more decisively to the political left, as it would appear but what’s really happened is that the old Confederation tinge disappeared from voting. Anti-Confederates became Pea Seas while the Confederates were the Liberals after 1949. That’s why the Blue seats were in the East. But as the generations influenced by those issues died off, people switched parties for other reasons.
Existential turns out to be the theme of the 2025 election. Liberals won the election by focusing on the supposed existential threat to Canada from Donald Trump. The Dippers wiped out so badly they now face their own existential crisis. And in the Blue corner, there’s plenty of chatter about whether Pierre Poilievre will exist as the Conservative Party leader given that, while he led the party to significant heights, he lost his own seat.
A couple of observations about what might happen next.
Let’s divide the issues into political ones and partisan ones.
Politically, as in how our political system works, there is the convention that requires the leader of a political party to have a seat in the legislature. This usually comes up when a party change leaders in between elections. The typical way this happens is that - in the absence of a by-election through a vacancy for some other reason - the most junior member of the caucus with the new leader, in what is considered a safe seat, will resign to let the new leader get a seat. It is a criminal offence to offer a politician any inducement to do anything so there is seldom a formal promise the junior politician will get a reward but invariably something happens to make sure the sacrifice will not go unrewarded.
In 1987, Clyde Wells won the Liberal leadership in Newfoundland and Labrador. He needed a seat in the House of Assembly. The most junior member of caucus refused to resign and so it fell to a more senior member - Graham Flight - to let Clyde run in Windsor-Buchans. Wells wanted to run in Humber East, the seat he’d held before but since that was held by Pea Sea Lynn Verge, Wells had to wait for the next general election to have a go at Humber East.
Sure enough, he ran in Humber East in the general election and Graham Flight won again in Windsor-Buchans. Wells lost a second time, even though his party won the election handily. Needing a seat, Wells looked to the same fellow who’d balked the first time but Kevin Aylward balked again. Ed Joyce did not and so Wells wound up representing Bay of islands, with Joyce as his executive assistant and the member for the district in all but name. Aylward was the only member of the pre-1989 Liberal caucus who did not not get a seat in cabinet in 1989.
Important thing to notice is that calling the Windsor-Buchans by-election was up to the Premier at the time, Brian Peckford. There are very few things that a first minister gets to advise the governor about alone and when to call a general election or a by-election is one of them. At the time, there was no rule about when to call it so Peckford delayed as long as he could, which is until it became a political embarrassment to the Pea Seas.
That was a partisan calculation by the Pea Seas in 1987 just as in 1989, they made another partisan calculation and didn’t run a candidate against Wells in the Bay of Islands by-election. And by the same token, were the Conservatives to work out a way to get Poilievre into the House through a by-election in a safe Conservative seat - in Alberta, for example - Mark Carney would have a partisan calculation to make about whether or not to run a candidate against him.
There would be arguments on both sides, but one of the stronger arguments in favour of an acclamation (that is, not running a candidate against Poilievre) would be as a demonstration of courtesy and good will and just the sheer classiness of the Prime Minister. Politics gives you lots of opportunities to be petty and lots to generous and magnanimous. In this case, there’s more to be gained by a little common courtesy. Honour the convention and let Poilievre get a seat by acclamation.
Practically, there’d be no gain if the by-election were in Alberta since Poilievre would win handily any way. The cost and the by-election itself would be a pointless exercise. In another sense, the Liberals would be better off dealing with the devil they know and potentially with all the issues simmering below the surface inside the Conservative party. Better that than give Poilievre a big political stick to beat them about the head with over what is really a cheap, small-minded play.
Now were the Conservatives to turf Pierre out and turn their guns inward, the Liberals would be just bystanders at the racket. They’d profit hugely since there’s no way the Conservatives would trigger an election while the party was divided and the leadership was in doubt. But that’s not really for the Liberals to decide. Whether or not to keep Pierre is entirely a Conservative question. Mark Carney does have a choice about a potential by-election to let Poilievre have a seat in the House and the best choice he could make is give Poilievre as easy a ride to a seat as possible. And let him stay at Stornoway in the meantime.
Incidentally, Paul Wells tackled the same issue and published after I’d put this to bed. Well’s advice is simple: Carney has bigger things to do than play petty games over Poilievre’s seat and living at Stornoway.
A dead squirrel is right twice a day.
Be right way more often.
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Andrew Parsons finally quit provincial politics.
Told Andrew Furey a year or maybe 18 months ago he was leaving before the next election, then Furey shagged around, finally announced *he’d* be leaving eventually, and so Parsons decided to pull pin. Leaving cabinet and leaving the House as of Thursday.
Parsons waited longer than Tom Osborg, who got so fed up with the crowd in Andrew Furey’s Office last year. Told Furey in March he was leaving and then couldn’t any longer in July when Furey and his office had done nothing to shuffle cabinet. They stuffed John Hogan in the health minister’s job because they were desperate, had no plan, and Hogan wound up staying there until Furey himself quit but didn’t leave.
Now Parsons has finally jumped out of the windows and forced Furey to stay when clearly just a couple of weeks ago he was never going to set foot in the House of Assembly again. In fact, word is that Furey’s back sawing bones at the hospital already.
Now, as a result of Parsons’ departure, Furey must stay in order to make sure there’s enough votes to pass the budget, which he introduced for some stupid reason rather than leave it to his successor to deal with. Furey may even have to actually sit in the House as a backbencher to make sure the Liberals don’t get caught out on quorum during debate. And he will have to careful about pulling shifts in surgery when a vote is possible.
That raises the possibility Furey might even have to take a cabinet seat to help out young John Hogan who must now try and form a cabinet without much material to work with between now and the next election. He has to fill both the health portfolio and the energy and business development jobs. Plus he has to fill the two other trivial portfolios he plans to make up with a caucus of only 20 members.
That’s at least three new cabinet portfolios when Hogan doesn’t have three people on the bench worth putting in cabinet. And that’s not even considering some of the deadwood he already has around the cabinet table that realistically should not be doing the job they have now, let alone give them a more complex portfolio. Now you see why Health Minister Andrew Furey (until the next election) might be in the cards. After all, Hogan got health and the the Premier’s job thanks to the kind of incompetence that now let Andrew parsons run out the door in the midst of all the other moving bits that came from the other par-for-the-course bungles from Furey and his Brain Trust that got them in the mess they are in. Maybe they need to spend less time hang out with Danielle and Justin.
And this guarantees there won’t be a general election until October.
Broke. Tired. Clueless.
Not really the kind of slogan to win an election on no matter when you call it.
Bonus: If you have a half hour to waste, check out Andrew Furey’s good-bye interview with CBC Sin Jawns morning show host Jen Just-read-the-questions-on-the-page-and-ignore-the-answers White. He looks terrible. Broken. He pontificates about lessons, about being bold, but that comes off as tinny and hollow since he was bold about nothing, ever. Furey’s boasts about the province’s finances are just simply not true. A deficit of $3.0 billion is not prudent. It is bordering on criminally incompetent. There is no cash to pay down debt, put aside money for savings, and spend the rest. This is just foolishness. No one can pay the debt down quickly when it has grown during Furey’s term alone by about $2.0 billion a year and is realistically close to $40 billion in an economy of roughly the same size. Furey’s claim about his incredibly naive give-away of Labrador hydro power is also nonsense.
The place is a wreck.
The province Furey leaves to his successor is FOOBA. Found on Ortho, barely alive.