Frankly Speaking

Justin Trudeau is following in his father's footsteps after Monday's federal election - emerging with a minority government in his second election after the Trudeaumania wave disappeared. Canada emerged very divided from the election on Monday, and the first act of the three national party leaders after the results were in did not bode well for future co-operation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke in Montreal just after Conservative leader Andrew Scheer began to speak in Regina. Scheer took to the stage while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was winding up his remarks in Burnaby. The Liberals won a minority government, with 157 seats. Most of those seats are concentrated in the Toronto and Montreal areas, and in the Atlantic provinces. They were shut out in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and their B.C. presence is concentrated around Vancouver. They have no B.C. seats outside Metro Vancouver. The Conservatives have 121 seats, including ...

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...

Surrey and Delta voters chose to go a different direction Monday, with five of the six local ridings now Liberal. Other than Sukh Dhaliwal in Surrey-Newton, who will return to Ottawa as a Liberal MP (he served from 2006-2011), all the MPs elected from the area are new to federal politics. The heavy Liberal representation from this area is a significant change. Most areas of Surrey have not been represented by a Liberal in Ottawa since 1953, while in Delta the most recent Liberal MP was last in office in 1972. What caused this change?   Voters were hungry for it, for a number of reasons. The Conservatives’ governing style turned off many people. Changes to immigration policy, particularly in areas like family reunification, were unpopular with many. The niqab issue was disquieting to recent immigrants. The Liberals ran a positive campaign. Justin Trudeau, who visited Surrey several times, appealed to younger voters. Strategic voting was given a high profile by the media and...