Frankly Speaking

Delta MP Carla Qualtrough was one of the five Liberal MPs elected in the 2015 federal election in Surrey and Delta. All but one of those wins came in ridings where the Liberals have had a hard time being competitive for decades. The broken promise on electoral reform may hurt their re-election chances, as in all five ridings they won, the winning Liberal candidates took significant numbers of votes from the NDP. The federal Liberal government pulled the plug on electoral reform last week – and the fallout in Surrey and Delta may not be fully noticed until the next election in 2019. Four of the six local MPs commented after the about-face by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They said the reversal was disappointing, but not completely surprising, given the magnitude of the task and the lack of consensus about a new system. Conservative MP Dianne Watts took the opportunity to tease her Liberal opponents (five of the six local seats are held by Liberals), saying “that was a prom...

The Liberal wave hit B.C. in a big way, as it did in most parts of Canada. In B.C., the Liberals won in most urban areas, but the extent of their win shows just how urban B.C. has become. For example, Kelowna-Lake Country, a conservative bastion for generations, went Liberal. So did four of the five Surrey seats, Delta, and a seat which straddles Burnaby and North Vancouver. Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge and Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam are also now Liberal. In most of those areas, there has not been a Liberal MP since Louis St. Laurent was prime minister. Four Vancouver seats, one in Richmond, and two other North Shore seats are also Liberal - as is, quite surprisingly, Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon. That may be the most rural seat of the 17 the Liberals won. They still have a chance at an 18th seat- incumbent NDP MP Kennedy Stewart is barely ahead of his Liberal rival Adam Pankratz in Burnaby South, with a number of polls still to be counted, as this is written. The NDP are still powerfu...

I have quite deliberately ignored the federal election campaign until now. It made no sense to write about leaders who talked too much about nothing during the month of August, when no voters were paying attention anyway. However, it is now time to share a few thoughts. This is my column published in the Friday edition of The Peace Arch News and Surrey-North Delta Leader. Although the federal election has legally been under way since Aug. 2, it only really began in earnest this week. There was one leaders’ debate in August, the details of which no one can now recall.   There were very few signs up in August, and they were ignored by almost everyone. Attempts by candidates to portray themselves as saints and their opponents from other parties as the worst types of sinners have, for the most part, gone unheard. Far too much media attention focuses on party leaders. This is not only unhealthy for democracy, as it makes leaders think they are in charge of the entire campai...