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Now that Monday’s three byelections are in the books, it’s time to look ahead to the next set of byelections — and what Monday’s results might tell us about what’s in store.
There are currently five vacancies in the House of Commons and a sixth is slated to occur in the coming weeks. Those vacancies are:
Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton: This Quebec riding is located between Montreal and Quebec and is the centre of the province’s dairy industry. Bloc MP Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay vacated the seat in June and is running for the Parti Québécois in the ongoing provincial election.
Scarborough North: Liberal MP Shaun Chen vacated this Toronto seat a few weeks ago due to health issues caused by a car accident last year that makes it difficult for him to travel to Ottawa.
Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie: Alexandre Boulerice left the NDP caucus earlier this year to sit as an Independent after announcing his plans to run for Québec Solidaire in the provincial election. Boulerice was the last surviving NDP Quebec MP elected in the Orange Wave of 2011.
Laurier—Sainte-Marie: Located next door to Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie in downtown Montreal, Liberal MP Steven Guilbeault first left the Liberal candidate and then resigned this seat, citing disagreements with the Carney government’s environmental policies.
Yorkton—Melville: Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall resigned this rural Saskatchewan seat on Monday. She was first elected in 2015.
Brantford—Brant South: Conservative MP Larry Brock has signalled his intention to resign this seat in southwestern Ontario later this month. (Note: the riding is officially called Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, but will have the “Six Nations” portion dropped from the name in a few weeks at the request of the Six Nations of the Grand River.)
As Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton was vacated in June, Mark Carney has until December 19 to call this byelection. Assuming he does not want to call a holiday byelection campaign, it seems more likely this byelection will be called sometime in October or November, after the completion of the Quebec election. If the Liberals intend to call all six byelections at the same time and avoid too much overlap with municipal elections (the last of which will take place in Saskatchewan on November 9), the calls could come in early November, with the byelections being held in early December.
(If the Liberals decide not to call these byelections at the same time, then we could see five of the six called in early 2027.)
This is an interesting set of byelections, with three in Quebec, two in Ontario and one in Saskatchewan. There is a mix of urban seats (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, Laurier—Sainte-Marie and Scarborough North), seats with a rural component but centred on a small city (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton and Brantford—Brant South) and a rural riding (Yorkton—Melville). In the last election, two were won by the Liberals, two by the Conservatives, one by the NDP and one by the Bloc. So, every party will be playing defence.
And at least one party will be playing offence.
The results from the last election suggest that a few ridings are unlikely to change hands. The Conservatives won Yorkton—Melville with 77.6% of the vote, beating the Liberals by more than 60 points. The Liberals won Scarborough North with 63%, beating the Conservatives by nearly 30 points. And Laurier—Sainte-Marie went to the Liberals by a margin of 33 points over the NDP. Barring an upset, the incumbents should easily win these three seats and they are all projected as ‘Safe’ for the incumbent parties.
There will be things to watch in these three safe ridings beyond who wins them — the Liberals will want to hold their vote in their two seats and see how much progress they can make in Yorkton—Melville, the NDP (and Bloc) would like to put up some good numbers in Laurier—Sainte-Marie and the Conservatives desperately need to halt the hemorrhage of support they’ve suffered in the last six byelections — but the real interest will be in the other three seats.
The results in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord on Monday have to be making the Liberals kick themselves for not calling a byelection in Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton at the same time (which they could have, as it has been vacant for longer than both Chicoutimi—Le Fjord and Beaches—East York). If the Liberals can get over 50% of the vote in a riding like Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, they can get that share of the vote in almost any riding in Quebec. The Bloc won Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton by just over 10 points, but the swing that took place in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord was big enough for the Liberals to easily overcome that margin if repeated here.
Considering what just happened on Monday, the Bloc will have to work harder than it might have thought to hold this seat. Nevertheless, with the polls where they are in Quebec at the moment, my projections classify it as a Bloc Toss.
Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie will be a key test for the New Democrats. Since 2011, this riding increasingly became a Boulerice seat rather than an NDP seat, but the New Democrats will nevertheless be the incumbents (and have a decent candidate in Pierre Céré). The party demonstrated in Beaches—East York that, when they put some resources into a byelection, they can put up a strong result. Quebec, however, is a different beast for the NDP and this byelection will be a challenge for them. Flipping it will also be a challenge for the Liberals as the last six byelections have not shown big boosts for the Liberals in urban ridings like this one, and their focus might be elsewhere. The model has it as an NDP Toss, but how much of Boulerice’s coattails the NDP can still ride is hard to project.
The Liberals might instead have their focus concentrated on Brantford—Brant South. The Conservatives won it by just over 11 points, but the shift in the polls we’ve seen in Ontario against the Conservatives has put this riding in doubt. The model has it as a Liberal Toss, and chatter in Conservative circles is also that the party could struggle to hold this seat.
That would be a tremendous blow for Pierre Poilievre. The Conservatives have held this part of Ontario since the 2008 election. It’s never been a rock-solid seat, as the Conservative vote ranged between 40% and 41% in the 2015, 2019 and 2021 elections. But it is nevertheless a seat the Conservatives have held for nearly 20 years. If the Conservatives can’t hold Brantford—Brant South, there are many Conservative-held ridings in southwestern, central and eastern Ontario with a similar profile to Brantford—Brant South that will suddenly look in real danger for the first time since the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives merged to form the Conservative Party in 2003.
The stakes will be high in these six byelections. If we’re still in a similar public opinion environment as today when they occur, the Liberals will enter the byelections the same way that they did the three on Monday: confident they will hold what they’ve got, and confident that they can make some gains. The Conservatives will be under tremendous pressure not to lose another seat and to avoid serious vote-share losses, while the Bloc will have to make good on its claim that they’re the only viable alternative to the Liberals in Quebec. Avi Lewis will have to prove that the New Democrats aren’t entirely doomed in the province and, in order to avoid the mixed reviews from Monday, show their vote has recovered at least somewhat in ridings like Yorkton—Melville and Brantford—Brant South, where they could expect double-digit support as recently as the 2021 election.
Let the next round of byelections begin!
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
What to watch in today’s Ontario provincial byelections, plus news on an imploding B.C. Conservative Party, the passing of an MLA and a new candidate for the PEI Liberal leadership.
Polls show strong support for ending trade negotiations with the United States, and maybe a bump in support for the Liberals. Plus, where things stand in Alberta.
#EveryElectionProject: The 1959 Prince Edward Island provincial election.
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NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Trio of Ontario byelections to test Ford’s rebound
The byelection fun continues in Ontario today, as voters in three provincial ridings are called to the ballot boxes. These byelections are:
Scarborough Southwest: Vacated by the NDP’s Doly Begum earlier this year when she opted to run for the federal Liberals in the same riding.
York—Simcoe: This seat located north of Toronto was vacated by PC cabinet minister Caroline Mulroney, who decided it was the right moment to spend more time with her family. Interestingly, she did not rule out a return to politics.
Hamilton East—Stoney Creek: This riding was vacated by the PCs’ Neil Lumsden before the completion of his second term as MPP.
These byelections are coming at an interesting time in Ontario politics. Support for Doug Ford and the PCs seemed to be declining over the summer, especially in the wake of the controversy over the purchase (and subsequent cancellation) of a private jet for the premier. But then Donald Trump injected himself once again into domestic politics, targeting Ontario in particular after Ford took to social media and the airwaves to insult the U.S. president. Two of these ridings are located on the shores of Lake Ontario (now called Lake America by the U.S. government and lackeys), which Ford has used to his advantage by putting up a big sign with the lake’s name on it. The early indications are that his support is up.
But the polls have been inconsistent over the last few months, so these byelections will be a useful gauge of where the mood sits in the province. York—Simcoe, which the PCs won by nearly 36 points over the Liberals in the last election and have held since 1995, should be an easy hold for the governing party.
But the margin was only 10.5 points in Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. Not only do the PCs have to hold off the Liberals, who appear to have gotten a bit of a boost from the popularity of their federal cousins, but they will have to hold off the New Democrats, who have nominated former Hamilton Mountain MPP Monique Taylor as their candidate.
The importance of the NDP’s incumbents will be tested in Scarborough Southwest, where Begum had won by just over 12 points over the PCs in the last election. Can the New Democrats hold this riding without an incumbent on the ballot? Both Scarborough Southwest and Hamilton East—Stoney Creek could prove to be three-way races, making them harder to predict.
Unless, that is, Ford is getting the same sort of boost that Carney has gotten in the polls (and in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord). If the PCs are able to hold their two seats, they might have Trump to thank for reviving their fortunes once again.
I’ll have an analysis of the results in next week’s edition of the newsletter.
Are the B.C. Conservatives falling apart?
The B.C. Conservatives, who were just a few thousand votes short of forming government in the 2024 provincial election, have found themselves down nine MLAs in just the last few weeks as internal turmoil appears set to rip apart this party whose success was largely due to the internal turmoil of another party.
The issue is the leadership of Kerry-Lynne Findlay, who narrowly won the B.C. Conservative leadership race in May. She’s replaced people within the party’s organization with further-right loyalists (some of whom have had links with the separatist movement in Alberta), has cozied-up with former Conservative MLAs who were either booted from or quit the party in solidarity with those expulsed MLAs and has adopted a style and language that have made some within the caucus uncomfortable. A caucus meeting scheduled for Monday was abruptly cancelled, ostensibly due to the calling of a byelection in Abbotsford-Mission, but more likely to avoid an open revolt.
The caucus seems to be growing smaller by the day. In mid-August, her former leadership rival Peter Milobar quit the party (and plans to start his own). He was followed in quick succession by the departures of Ian Paton, Rosalyn Bird, Teresa Wat, Brennan Day, Bruce Banman, Áʼa꞉líya Warbus, Donegal Wilson and Scott McInnis. With the resignation of Reann Gasper in Abbotsford-Mission to provide Findlay with a seat in the legislature, the Conservatives are down to just 28 MLAs. They had 44 MLAs after the last election. It’s expected the number might continue to slide.
(Note: I wrote this midday on Wednesday and twice had to come back and increase the number of quitting MLAs. So, at this rate there might be more than nine by the time you’re reading this on Thursday morning!)
Premier David Eby was quick to call the byelection in Abbotsford-Mission for September 26, which will heighten the pressure on Findlay as a victory there is by no means a certainty. Gasper won with 55.4% of the vote in the 2024 election against the NDP’s 44.6% and the New Democrats were able to win in 2020 when there were more candidates on the ballot. It won’t be a two-horse race this time with CentreBC running a candidate (there could be others; nominations close in a few days). If the Conservatives continue to disintegrate over the next few weeks, voters in Abbotsford-Mission might not be so keen to sign on for that.
It was always going to be tough to keep the B.C. Conservatives together, especially as it has drifted further to the right. B.C. politics has long been dominated by the presence of two big parties, one on the centre-left (the NDP) and one on the centre-right (Liberals or Social Credit in the past). Those centre-right parties have been successful when they have managed to earn the support of both federal Conservatives and federal Liberals, but the purity-testing of Findlay and her supporters risks alienating those centrists that decide who forms government in British Columbia.
Prior to the collapse of the re-christened B.C. United, the B.C. Conservatives were little more than a fringe party. They benefited from the unpopularity of Kevin Falcon and the Liberals’ rebrand as B.C. United largely because the Conservative had the right branding at a time when Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were surging in national polling. There was nothing in particular that made British Columbians flock to a party that earned less than 2% of the vote in eight of the previous 10 elections except its ability to capitalize on brand confusion. A virtuous cycle then emerged as the party rose in the polls — higher polling begot more fundraising and more media attention, which helped further boost the party in the polls.
But the Conservatives found themselves with a partial slate of candidates that were nominated when the party was still on the fringes. The withdrawal of B.C. United from the 2024 election forced the Conservatives and BCU into a shotgun marriage. The populist, red-meat conservative elements of the party found themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with the more moderate former B.C. Liberals. The tensions tore the party apart under John Rustad and the leadership race that followed did nothing to calm that tension, particularly when Findlay ran a campaign that continued to emphasise the importance of purging the party of “Liberals”.
Eby, whose personal popularity has been declining, has been blessed by his opponents. He was barely able to beat a relatively weak and unpopular leader in Rustad in the last election. In the next election it now seems likely he will either face a divided field of parties to his right or a leader who has been severely undermined by her own party.
However it goes, the Abbotsford-Mission byelection looks like a win-win for the New Democrats. Either they defeat Findlay and disrupt the Conservatives even further, or Findlay is elected and secured as the leader of a rump B.C. Conservative Party. Everything’s coming up Eby.
ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS
BC MLA PHILLIP PASSES - Joan Phillip, the NDP MLA for the riding of Vancouver-Strathcona, has passed away. An Indigenous and environmental activist, she was first elected in a 2023 byelection after having previously run for the federal New Democrats in the B.C. Interior. Phillip won her seat by a margin of 50 points over the Conservatives in the last election. The NDP has held this part of Vancouver without interruption since 1972. My condolences to her friends and family.
PEI LIBERAL LEADERSHIP - The Prince Edward Island Liberals have their first candidate for the leadership position vacated by Robert Mitchell earlier this year following his second failed attempt to win a seat in a byelection. Dan Kutcher, the mayor of Summerside, has resigned his post to run for the leader’s job. Kutcher has pledged to run for the Liberals in the district of Summerside-Wilmot whether or not he wins the contest on October 25.
POLLING HIGHLIGHTS
Federal poll update
Over the last week, we’ve gotten new polling by Abacus Data, Ipsos (for Global News), the Innovative Research Group, Synopsis Recherche (for La Presse), Liaison Strategies and Nanos Research. Not all of that polling, though, tells us much about what has shifted since the end of negotiations with the United States.
Five of the six polls give the Liberals a double-digit lead, ranging from 10 points in the Abacus poll to 17 points in the poll by Liaison. The Innovative Research Group (which can sometimes stand alone) has the gap at only five points. The NDP ranges from between 9% to 13% in these surveys.
The two pollsters who have been regularly in the field and have recent post- and pre-rupture surveys to compare suggest the Liberals have gotten a bump. Both Abacus and Liaison have the Liberals gaining three points since early or mid-August.
Ipsos shows little change from its previous poll, but that survey was conducted back in April when the Liberals were already at a high. The IRG shows little change compared with its (unreleased) polling over the summer, while the four-week Nanos poll still predominantly includes survey work done before the collapse of negotiations late on August 21.
The polls published over the last week include lots of insight on how Canadians are feeling about the state of relations between this country and the United States. The broad strokes are that people are concerned, angry at the Americans and ready to retaliate. The polls also show:
Not that we needed a poll to tell us this, but Donald Trump is back on the agenda. Abacus finds that 45% of Canadians name Trump and his administration as one of the top three issues, up seven points from mid-August. Only the rising cost of living (62%) ranks higher. In Quebec, Trump ranks as the very top issue with 63% listing it in the top three, the highest in the country. Among those who has Trump as one of their top issues, the Liberals are preferred over the Conservatives by a crushing margin of 62% to 18%.
Support for Carney’s decision to end the trade negotiations is very high in two polls. According to Abacus, 71% of Canadians say it was the right decision, while just 17% say it was the wrong decision. According to Pollara, 78% agree that it was the right thing to walk away, while just 13% disagree.
Carney gets high grades for his handling of the file, with approval for his handling of the trade negotiations at 60% to 18% disapproval, according to Abacus, and his management of Canada-U.S. relations sitting at 68% to 23% disapproval, according to Pollara.
POLLING NEWS BRIEFS
UCP HOLDS LEAD IN ALBERA - Two new surveys suggest the United Conservative Party has held its lead in Alberta in the run-up to October’s independence referendum. Léger finds the UCP leading by 10 points at 51% to 41% for the NDP, with another 9% of Albertans saying they’d vote for another party. The NDP led by 11 points in Edmonton while the UCP was ahead by seven points in Calgary and 33 points outside of the two big cities. The margin is smaller in a new Research Co. poll, with the UCP leading by three points, 46% to 43%, though the poll has some odd regional results with the NDP ahead by just three points in Edmonton and the UCP ahead by two in Calgary and by just 10 in the rest of the province.
On the independence referendum, Léger puts support for Alberta remaining a province at 65%, while Research has it a little higher at 74%. Support for starting the process to hold a binding referendum on independence was nearly identical in the two surveys at 23% and 22%, respectively. While Albertans seem prepared to vote No to independence, they do not look as likely to vote No on the other nine referendum questions. Research found support for the referendum questions related to immigration at between 58% and 66%. Opinions were more split on the constitutional questions, but the ‘No’ option did not lead on any of them.
12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR
September 3: Ontario provincial byelections in Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, York—Simcoe and Scarborough Southwest
September 14: Alberta provincial byelection in Calgary-Shaw
September 26: British Columbia provincial byelection in Abbotsford-Mission
October 5: Quebec provincial election
October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership
Candidates: Daniel Allain, Don Monahan
October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia
October 19: Alberta referendum
October 25: PEI Liberal leadership
Candidates: Dan Kutcher
October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario
October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba
November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island
November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan
November 14: Federal Green leadership
Candidates: Nira Dookeran, Mike Morrice
November 21: Ontario Liberal leadership
Candidates: Navdeep Bains, Stephanie Bowman, Lee Fairclough, Eric Lombardi, Dylan Marando
November 21: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership
Candidates: Becky Druhan, Amanda Mombourquette
December 5: New Brunswick Green leadership
Byelections yet to be scheduled
CA - Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton (to be called by December 19)
CA - Scarborough North (to be called by February 13)
CA - Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie (to be called by February 22)
CA - Laurier—Sainte-Marie (to be called by February 27)
CA - Yorkton—Melville (to be called by February 28)
BC - Vancouver-Strathcona (to be called by February)
CA - Brantford—Brant South (resignation pending)
THIS WEEK in the #EveryElectionProject
PEI goes with the flow
September 1, 1959
This was originally published on August 31, 2022.
It was 1959 and Prince Edward Island was in an awkward spot. For the first time since the 1920s, the province had been governed for an extended period of time by a party that also didn’t hold sway in Ottawa.
That had to be fixed.
First elected in 1935 a few months before Mackenzie King’s Liberals returned to federal office, by 1959 the PEI Liberals had been in power for 24 years under four different leaders. The latest was Alex Matheson, who took over in 1953 and won the 1955 election.
Louis St-Laurent was the Liberal prime minister at the time. But in the late 1950s the country had swung to the Progressive Conservatives. John Diefenbaker was elected with a minority government in 1957 and he quickly turned that into a landslide majority the year later. That landslide included a sweep of all four seats in Prince Edward Island.
Undaunted, Matheson sent the province to the polls to boast of his “forward-looking program”, which included free text books for elementary school children, pensions for unmarried women and widows starting at the age of 60 and new trading relationships abroad.
All well and good, but what about Diefenbaker?
All four of his PEI MPs actively participated in the campaign to help elect their provincial cousins, now under the leadership of Walter Shaw.
A 71-year-old farmer and retired deputy minister of agriculture, Shaw didn’t have a seat in the legislature when he took over the opposition PCs, who had just a handful of seats. Matheson obliged Shaw by giving him a bench he could sit on on the floor of the legislative assembly in order to provide some guidance to his MLAs.
Shaw’s platform included the provincial government taking over the portion of teachers’ salaries paid by cash-strapped local school boards. He also pledged support for fishermen and farmers and called the PCs the “party of the causeway”.
Of course, Diefenbaker had merely promised an engineering study about a possible causeway linking Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick, but Shaw made it seem that a vote for the PCs meant a vote for a causeway that was definitely going to happen (it didn’t).
Shaw leaned hard on the notion that PEI needed a friend in the prime minister’s office, saying that Islanders “see the advantage of keeping the province in line with a generous Conservative administration in Ottawa.”
With some degree of self-interest, Matheson said that provincial and federal politics should be kept separate. But his campaign understood they were swimming against the current and instead put a “Matheson government” forward in its advertisements rather than the Liberal brand. Shaw and the PCs, meanwhile, featured Diefenbaker prominently in their advertisements.
It was an unsubtle message, but it worked.
After winning only three seats in 1955, the PCs captured 22 in 1959. The Liberals were reduced to just eight seats, six of them in the southeast corner of the island.
Despite the lop-sided seat result, the voting was actually quite close — the PCs took 50.9% of the vote, a gain of six points since 1955, while the Liberals took the remaining 49.1%.
Bagpipers and 2,500 supporters greeted Shaw for his victory speech, but the results were also greeted warmly in Ottawa. Though they had won a thumping victory only a year before, the Diefenbaker PCs needed some good news. The Liberals had successfully been re-elected on an anti-Diefenbaker message in Newfoundland the month before and new Gallup polling was showing support for the federal PCs slumping. An upset win in PEI improved the mood.
But it wouldn’t last. Diefenbaker’s government became unpopular and was reduced to a shaky minority in 1962. Similarly, Shaw experienced the loss of a few seats when he took Islanders back to the polls that same year. But he held on and in 1966 tried to secure a third mandate for his PCs.
Except by then there was a big problem for Shaw.
The Liberals were back in power in Ottawa.
Would a Chicoutimi—Le Fjord-level underperformance put Yorkton—Melville in play?