Toronto Centre by-election

Will there even be a by-election for that seat?

Why bother holding a by-election if the whole country is having an election in the Fall anyways?

Misfit wrote:

The NDP is broke. The Greens are looking for a new party leader. The Conservstives are looking for a new leader. No one wants an election during a pandemic and one year after the last election.

Once the Conservatives and Greens have new leaders and in the spring after the budget the Liberals could fall then possibly. But I don't see anything happening now.

I would agree and besides for that most voters would want a very good reason for having an election and a "routine" scandal in the governing party ceased to be that reason a long time ago. Voter cynicism runs deep across all of our political spectrum. The NDP are going to get burnt electorally as the junior partner in a near coalition. Winning this riding can be its lifeline but only if one can convince the voters of Canada's heartland to abandon its love for the benefits of imperial privilege. The GTA elite knows who butters its bread and they vote accordingly and the devil take the hindmost.

What is the basis of the assumption that there will be a general election in 2021?  That would be only two years since the last election, and while the Liberals are in a minority, they don't appear to be in any real danger of falling.

Were there to be an election held in 2021, it would require the acquiescence of virtually every party in the House.  The public would likely be so massively outraged at having to go to the polls again, at a time when for all we know there might STILL not be a Covid-19 vaccine, that it would be one of the few situations in which either a party with no seats in the current House OR a sizable number of independents would actually be elected.

To be fair, New Brunswick is a bit of a unique case because for all practical purposes, there is no pandemic in that province at the moment. That is not the case in the rest of the country.

Also, part of the reason that New Brunswick is going to the polls is that the Opposition wouldn't agree to guarantee the government would survive all confidence votes for the next 2 years. That is granting an unacceptable amount of power and lack of accountability to any government, pandemic or not.

I think about the only way it would happen would be if the Liberals had a lead strong enough to give them at least a plausible shot at regaining a majority and, at the same time, there was a sudden, catastrophic decline in NDP support-it would need to be NDP support to unite the Libs, the Cons and the Bloc in agreeing to an election, especially since it would need to happen in a situation in which both the Cons AND the Bloc would need to feel fairly confident that, at the worst, they wouldn't lost seats, or at least not many.

The one party that might make a suprise break through in that scenario would be the Parti Bernier(A.K.A., the PP), who, currently having no seats, could position themselves as the "anti-party party".

TC is my home riding. 

I suspect Trudeau will want to avoid a by-election for as long as possible. He has six months to call one and then it doesn’t need to be held until  six months after that, surely a perversion of democracy that should be changed.

The NDP has a good base with a 2 to 1 majority in the June ‘18 provincial election. Unfortunately that melted away with Morneau winning by a similar margin 16 months later.

Much depends on the NDP candidate. The provincial party has been plagued by a weak bench with too little emphasis on recruiting strong candidates.

As well, this is the riding where Annamie Paul ran for the Greens, taking a fairly strong 7%. If she becomes Green leader and runs in the by-election she will likely drain enough votes for the Liberals to hold the seat.

People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier says he wants to win back a seat in the House of Commons by running in one of two upcoming Toronto-area byelections. 

Speaking to iPolitics on Tuesday, Bernier wasn’t sure if he would run in Toronto Centre or York Centre, both ridings left empty by the resignations of two Liberal MPs.

https://ipolitics.ca/2020/09/01/maxime-bernier-plans-to-run-in-a-toronto-area-byelection/

I look forward to Maxine Bernie’s going door to door in Cabbagetown or at Church and Wellesley.

I can’t imagine a more inhospitable riding for him than Toronto Centre.

KWT is she a local GTA politician? I have no idea who you are talking about so I guess she is not a strong candidate.

Prince, Kristyn is a long time and well respected city councillor for my ward.

She has loose ties with the NDP which supports her. In the last election she crushed supposed Liberal heavyweight George Smitherman by about  3 to 1. She would be a formidable candidate in the by-election.

Trudeau has called byelctions in Toronto Centre and York Centre for October 26th.

The Liberals named broadcaster Marci Ien as their candidate for Toronto Centre yesterday and already had named Ya'ara Saks as their contender for York Centre.​

The NDP said it has not nominated candidates for the two byelections yet. The Conservatives have not yet responded to CBC's request.

Green Party of Canada leadership candidate Annamie Paul told CBC News she's interested in running in the byelection. Paul ran for the party in that riding in 2019 and is asking for a "special dispensation" because the party's leadership rules do not permit contestants to run in leadership campaigns and byelections.

People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier has said he's considering running in one of the upcoming Toronto-area byelections. 

This will be Elections Canada's first attempt at organizing a vote during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the independent agency has been looking at changes to how elections work —including a two-day weekend voting period instead of the traditional one-day Monday vote — spokesperson Natasha Gauthier told CBC News the byelection call came too soon for it to tweak the Canada Elections Act.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/byelection-call-toronto-1.5729472

jerrym wrote:

Trudeau has called byelctions in Toronto Centre and York Centre for October 26th.

The Liberals named broadcaster Marci Ien as their candidate for Toronto Centre yesterday and already had named Ya'ara Saks as their contender for York Centre.​

The NDP said it has not nominated candidates for the two byelections yet. The Conservatives have not yet responded to CBC's request.

Green Party of Canada leadership candidate Annamie Paul told CBC News she's interested in running in the byelection. Paul ran for the party in that riding in 2019 and is asking for a "special dispensation" because the party's leadership rules do not permit contestants to run in leadership campaigns and byelections.

People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier has said he's considering running in one of the upcoming Toronto-area byelections. 

This will be Elections Canada's first attempt at organizing a vote during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the independent agency has been looking at changes to how elections work —including a two-day weekend voting period instead of the traditional one-day Monday vote — spokesperson Natasha Gauthier told CBC News the byelection call came too soon for it to tweak the Canada Elections Act.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/byelection-call-toronto-1.5729472

He probably called the by-elections when he did precisely to capitalize on the organizational issues within the local NDP and Green parties at the moment. Probaly an easy Liberal win. Perhaps the Greens and the NDP fight it out for second place.

Paul only polled 7% in TC in the general election.. 

The NDP did poorly too with only 22% vs Morneau's 57.

Nevertheless, TC elects New Democrats municipally and provincially. Suze Morrison won her provincial seat by more than 2 to 1. We also elected both city councillors and the school truatee. So the NDP has considerable potential in the by-election which may be sabotaged by a big Green vote.

nicky wrote:

Paul only polled 7% in TC in the general election.. 

The NDP did poorly too with only 22% vs Morneau's 57.

Nevertheless, TC elects New Democrats municipally and provincially. Suze Morrison won her provincial seat by more than 2 to 1. We also elected both city councillors and the school truatee. So the NDP has considerable potential in the by-election which may be sabotaged by a big Green vote.

All of which is why it would be a disastrous mistake for the NDP to nominate a "safe" bland centrist candidate.  Their only chance for victory is to run to the left of the Greens and peg Paul-assuming she's the GPC candidate-as a someone who wants her party to be part of the discredited middle-of-the-road "consensus".

nicky wrote:

I am puzzled, Ken, why you write about my post “All of which is why...” we must choose a candidate to the “left” of the Greens. How does that flow from anything I said which was a pretty master of fact account of who has been elected in TC ?

I don’t think any of our NDP elected representatives here are raving Corbynites as you might prefer. Yet they have each managed to get elected.

Forgive me for asserting myself here but I have lived in TC for decades and have been active in the local riding. It is just possible I know my riding better than you do.

Where do you live incidentally?

Where I live is irrelevant.

And what you said is that the NDP has won provincial ridings within TC for several years- a thing I don't dispute- but you made no statements about where the candidates that won happened to be on the ideological spectrum.  

And my point, as much as anything else, is about what happens not just in this byelection but if Lascaris becomes GPC leader.

A Lascaris victory would put the federal NDP into an even greater crisis-the party insiders are still unlikely to tolerate any real change, any break from the austerity and perpetual war "consensus" the Libs and Cons insist on imposing.

If "stay the course" is the response to a Lascaris victory, the NDP will lose most if not all Left voters, and most likely begin to lose what little union support it still gets.

I can't imagine what arguments anyone could make to keep Left voters voting NDP rather than GPC if, at the next election, the GPC has moved to the left of the NDP and is running as an antiwar, antiausterity party.

What case would YOU make for continued Left support of the NDP in that scenario?
For decades, the party has been moving further and further away from any genuine vision of justice and social/economic transformation.  

If it ends up to the right of a Lascaris-led GPC, what reason will there be for the NDP-a party we can already assume will have no chance of winning the next federal election and little chance of even holding its current ground, to even bother standing again on its current policies?

It's not just me asking that question...it's soon going to be most of the Left in Canada.

It was a broad-brush comment, not riding specific.

And kindly leave Corbyn out of this.  He is irrelevant to this discussion and there's no justification to use him against the entire Left.

No Ken, if you want to pontificate about my riding then where you live is relevant.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

A Lascaris victory would put the federal NDP into an even greater crisis-the party insiders are still unlikely to tolerate any real change, any break from the austerity and perpetual war "consensus" the Libs and Cons insist on imposing.

If "stay the course" is the response to a Lascaris victory, the NDP will lose most if not all Left voters, and most likely begin to lose what little union support it still gets.

I can't imagine what arguments anyone could make to keep Left voters voting NDP rather than GPC if, at the next election, the GPC has moved to the left of the NDP and is running as an antiwar, antiausterity party.

What case would YOU make for continued Left support of the NDP in that scenario?
For decades, the party has been moving further and further away from any genuine vision of justice and social/economic transformation.

The case I would make is that Leah Gazan is an amazing woman and a good MP, and she is a tireless advocate for justice and the marginalized. With Gazan, you have a fighter in your corner.

The other problem is that not only are Greens a long way from being viable in many ridings, but in many cases they will have to contend with a firmly-entrenched NDP establishment that will pull out all the stops to block a Green rise. That is a recipe for large numbers of embittered people in both camps, and a divided left electorate that cannot elect a Green or NDP MP, which puts more seats in play for the Liberals and Conservatives. I can assure you that if it plays out as you think it will and the NDP loses Winnipeg Centre, it will almost certainly go to the Liberals over the Greens.

Thank you for that response.  

I completely take your point about Leah Gazan-and would strongly recommend that a Lascaris-led GPC not target her or any other MPs from the left wing of the party- and believe that the best possible response the NDP could make to a Lascaris victory would be to elect her or someone like her as the next federal NDP leader, or, failing that, for the federal NDP to stop marginalizing people like her or like Nikki Ashton and adopt the kind of principles she and those like her have pushed the party to embrace.

Doing those things would do a lot to protect the NDP from massive seat or vote losses to the GPC.

Singh will fight the next election as leader- with talk that Justin might try and provoke an early election, a leadership change is not an option- but he's going to have to listen much more to people like Gazan and Ashton, and to the sort of voters who voted for Paul Manly in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith byelection, and reconnect them them.  Since the NDP has no chance of winning the next election, it has no reason to "play it safe" and try to appeal to a "centre" that isn't going to vote for it then anyway-so this would be exactly the sort of year the party should "go big" on the issues and make an appeal to the voters that is both practical AND visionary, concrete and stirring.

Doing that is the best response the NDP could make to a Green Party that, if it moves left, will be in direct competition with the  NDP for every vote in the clearly left-of-centre part of the political spectrum.  It needs to hold onto the sort of voters Lascaris will be most appealing to- the ones who have wanted a chance to vote for a clear break with the status quo, but haven't been offered the chance to do so for decades now.

Ken, there are many errors in your ramblings pos which I do not have time to correct before I leave for work, so to reply to just two for now:

1. I abhor Bob Rae.

2. Toronto Centre has exactly the same boundaries for both provincial and federal elections. Suze Morrison won over 50% in 2018. She is not perceived as someone on the left wing of the party. That may have lost your vote if you lived here but it did not deter a majority of the riding from voting for her.

If I remember correctly, Bob Rae left the NDP because of the NDP's positions on Palestine and Israel at the time. His wife is Jewish and he adopted the Jewish faith to marry his wife. That's what he said anyway.

I do not belivve the NDP has ever run a "bland, centrist" candidate in Toronto Centre. The last canddiate, Brian Chang, is a kickass community activist. The NDP has tended to favour gassroots people connected to marginalized communities, as they should in my view. Linda McQuaig, certainly a leftist, did not manage to win. Nor did El-Farouk Khaki. Cathy Crowe, an awesome street nurse, did not manage to win provincially. Michael Shapcott, very much a leftist, got less than a quarter of the vote too. Can't go back much further since the riding used to include Rosedale, but it's not liek David Berlynn's 10% or so impressed many. There' not much evidence that "mroe left" means more votes in TC. More connected to communities, maybe. 

The NDP candidates are not generally plotted left-right in TC, they are plotted communtiy-oriented or not, gay-community or Regent Park, activist or less-so, etc. Left and centre wityhin the NDP hardly matter in local politcs. Jack Layton was a "left" stalwart, like the TC-area local councillor Pam McConnell, but Jack was no leftist as national leader. It's his communtiy activism that made him seem lefty outside Toronto. But he wan't particularly left. Nor is Suze Morrison, as Nicky pointed out.

I think a knowledge of inner-city Toronto is helpful here, and that knowledge implies the debate is moe about gassroots ownership than about positioning on an arbitary ideological spectrum. Leah Gazan makes a perfect example. Brian Chang would likely havwe been Leah-like in some ways, and a damn site better as MP than Bill Morneau. That said, I assume the Liberals will win this riding handily, barring some miacle like a joint NDP-Green candidate. The demographics of downtown make it harder for the NDP to win these seats than it ocne was. 

So Swallow, are you saying an NDP/Green vote together would bring them within hitting distance because I got the impression the Greens were in the single digits with the NDP at 22%. 

Is this a traditional Liberal seat is it the power of the Bill Morneau name? 

Unfortunately TC federally is more of a Liberal seat than a Bill Morneau seat. He was a pretty invisible MP with a number of ethical clouds hovering over him. I don’t believe he had much of a personal vote.

He was also quite tone deaf. In his first election one of the local weeklies ran a question and answer piece asking all the candidates what was their favourite movie, book, restaurant etc.

All the others picked some local local restaurant. Morneau picked (and I paraphrase) “ Le —-—-, which is a Michelin 3 star restaurant in the village in Provance where my wife and I have our villa.”