Marc Garneau is retiring from Parliament after almost 15 years. The Liberal MP marked his controlled descent onto terra firma in the House of Commons in 2008, elected as a Member of Parliament for the riding of Westmount–Ville-Marie (now Notre-Dame-de-Grace–Westmount) in Montreal. The former astronaut then slogged it out in opposition during Stephen Harper’s rise to a majority government in 2011 – until 2015 when the Liberals formed government under the leadership of Justin Trudeau.
The first Canadian in space launched his bid for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada against the low payload son of a former Prime Minister in 2012, but aborted when it became clear that Trudeau’s selection by Liberal members was following a single-stage-to-orbit trajectory.
In government, Garneau would go on to serve as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Transport, but eventually found himself on the backbench in a push by the PM to renew the faces in cabinet and for superficial gender balance.
Garneau is a cautionary tale for anyone seeking office while relying on their resume to cement their success as a legislator. Though he had some success in cabinet, the navy captain had perhaps the most impressive credentials of any Parliamentarian, but was eventually jettisoned, with the Prime Minister favouring flash over sustained burn.
The Trudeau government’s style has been heavily focused on image in place of the substantive; it is a government concerned more about how their look will play on social media, rather than how their policy will find its foundation.
The former NASA shuttle mission specialist departs at a time when speculation is growing about the successor to Justin Trudeau.
The former private school teacher turned G7 leader is facing a new scandal in Parliament over the alleged interference of the Chinese Communist government during the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections. Beijing is alleged to have agitated and put resources toward the election of a Canadian government led by Justin Trudeau.
During what may be an election year, it is also during this part of the Parliamentary calendar when those who have options outside of elected life start to seriously consider their escape trajectory. This is especially true for ageing governments whose re-election isn’t as likely today as it was yesterday.
Trudeau is more likely than Garneau to be smarting over the loss of his Tik Tok account – now banned from the devices of Parliamentarians as a security risk posed by China. Indeed, Garneau is certainly a man out of time. As the Prime Minister’s image wanes, we may all yearn for an era of renewed substance.
Map release day is always a good day. I’ve been griding away putting together a provincial map of the 2019 Alberta provincial election results. In this election, the newly formed United Conservative Party won a majority government under the leadership of Jason Kenney, defeating incumbent Premier Rachel Notley and the NDP.
You can browse the provincial result riding by riding and click/tap each riding to zoom in and view the results poll-by-poll at a level which describes how different neighbourhoods in Calgary and Edmonton (for example) voted in this election.
The Edmonton-Riverview results map shows an NDP win, but colouring the map on strength (green) and weakness (red) of the United Conservative Party reveals which neighbourhoods where the party that would win the election turned out their vote
Expanding the “poll winner” control will allow you to colour code the riding polls by the strength of each party which contested the riding. Even the relative strength of parties and candidates with little hope can be discerned with ease.
The Calgary-Buffalo map shows the polls where the NDP and UCP battled for downtown Calgary. Expanding the tooltip at the bottom right allows us to see voter turnout poll-by-poll
A helpful tooltip that shows a pie chart of each riding – and at the poll level, each poll – can be expanded to list the candidates and voter turnout for each part of the province.
You may also find it useful to search for ridings by name or by candidate using the search bar at the top of the maps page. Each riding also shows adjacent ridings at the bottom of the page which makes it easy to browse other contests nearby.
A close up of the Edmonton-Gold Bar results map shows houses and apartment buildings. Get a street-level view of the results of the 2019 Alberta provincial election!
The unification of the Progressive Conservative party and the Wildrose certainly changed the political map if you compare the results to 2015 and to 2012. In 2019, a sea of blue with one island of orange in Edmonton with a peppering of orange in Calgary and Lethbridge is the sum of the 2019 map.
So, do take a look! The United Conservative Party’s leadership race is underway after the resignation of Jason Kenney as party leader. How will the party fare against the NDP in the upcoming 2023 Provincial election? Party strategists may find these maps helpful to understand the historical context of politics in each region of Alberta and how the vote has evolved over the past decade.
On a technical note, I switched the maps over from raster to vector format meaning they should look smooth at any magnification. I hope to talk more about that in a later post. As a fun side-effect, you can also tilt the maps!
Downtown Calgary looking south showing UCP areas of UCP strength
The second half of the Conservative Party leadership race is now underway. Midnight on June 4th represented the cut-off for new memberships sold for party members to be eligible to vote for the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
What’s the Pierre Poilievre news? Have Jean Charest and Patrick Brown merged campaigns yet? How’s Leslyn Lewis released her platform yet? Who is Roman Baber and what does he believe? Will Scott Aitchison end up endorsing anyone?
A source insider the Conservative Party told the CBC that the party expects to process over 600,000 new or renewed memberships sold by the leadership campaigns of Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest, Patrick Brown, Leslyn Lewis, Roman Baber, and Scott Aitchison. A few of those membership will have been sold generally via the Conservative Party website during this period.
At $15 per membership, this means the party expects to rake in over $9,000,000 in revenue from this leadership race. This is a welcome winfall after spending tens of millions establishing abandoned branding exercises of Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole.
Campaigns will boast (and inflate) their numbers for various reasons. Some will try to establish themselves as the front-runner of the race and the candidate-to-beat. Psychologically, people like voting for the winner, so it helps to project this sort of confidence early-on. This will be Pierre Poilievre’s strategy as he’s been running a bit of a scorched-earth campaign with Jean Charest. In a ranked ballot contest, winning down-ballot support is critically important. That is, unless you are looking to win over 50% on the first ballot, making everyone’s second choice a moot point.
Poilievre’s campaign has been focused on exciting new members who have never before been active within a political party. His support of the trucker rally and position against vaccine mandates has attracted new people who have felt like they’ve been outside of the political process, while overtures to the cryptocurrency Bitcoin enthusiasts have inspired younger support. Pierre Poilievre’s principle campaign proxy Jenni Byrne has claimed that the campaign has sold 311,958 memberships. Byrne, perhaps knowing that campaigns inflate their numbers also called for transparency from the party on the process.
The softer side of Pierre. The candidate and his family. (via Pierre Poilievre)
Jean Charest for his part will be looking to rally the anybody-but-Pierre vote. For the former Quebec Premier, that number may be large or small, but will exist given Pierre is the perceived front-runner. Charest will be banking on Poilievre to be running at under 45% on the first ballot and will hope to gather second choice support. Boasting strong second-place numbers will rally support for this purpose behind Charest. At this time, Charest’s campaign has not released their numbers.
Jean Charest cracks a smile during a recent leadership debate (via Jean Charest)
For his part, former PC Party of Ontario leader and current Brampton mayor Patrick Brown boasted early on June 3rd, a total of 150,000 memberships were sold by his campaign with a day-long push later in the day to nudge this total higher. Brown has shown himself to be a formidable organizer in the past, shocking the Christine Elliott campaign during the 2015 PCPO leadership race – a campaign whose success was seen to be inevitable at the time. Brown has been selling memberships to new Canadian communities and hopes to diversify the party base by adding new membership to its rolls. We shall see how many of those new memberships from Brown were added versus renewed.
Patrick Brown and his wife Genevieve Gualtieri vote in Ontario’s 2022 election (via Patrick Brown)
Leslyn Lewis is the only candidate in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership race who ran in the previous contest versus Erin O’Toole. Lewis stunned the O’Toole and McKay campaigns with a stronger-than-expected showing on the first ballot, showing exceptional strength in the prairies. She has also positioned herself as the standard-bearer of the small but disproportionately active contingent of social conservatives in the party’s base – all other candidates declared themselves to be pro-choice on the issue of abortion. Lewis’ position against vaccine mandates suggest that her down-ballot support will eventually go to Poilievre. Her campaign has not yet released their numbers.
Leslyn Lewis and Peter MacKay (via Leslyn Lewis)
Roman has yet to release his numerals. Roman Baber – the former PC MPP who was kicked out of Doug Ford’s governing caucus in Ontario for standing against lockdowns – will likely be a long-shot for leadership as he is not very well-known in the federal party or in the rest of Canada. Rising to national prominance on a single issue has its own shelf-life as well. However, Baber has since taken strong conservative-pleasing stances against communism and against leftwing authority, so he may surprise if he has a good ground game to sell memberships.
Roman Baber campaigns in Vancouver, British Columbia. (via Roman Baber)
Finally, Scott Aitchison, has been congenial-as-a-brand during this leadership race. Hope is an emotion that spurs people to act politically, though fear and anger are stronger. And potential for change is the glue that holds it all together. Will Aitchison’s strategy help him? If he’s running #2 or #3 in this race, down-ballot support has the potential to crown him victorious. However, running at the end of the pack, as many suspect he is, may show a missed opportunity to grab more attention by taking more contentious takes on hot-button issues and personalities.
Scott Aitchison showing that Conservatives can be nice. (via Scott Aitchison)
But yet for the front-runners, this post-cutoff period of the leadership race will likely see more congenial behaviour. Such a shift in tone from Poilievre may indicate less confidence on the first ballot. Candidates will also downplay their more woolly and outlandish appeals to members as they’re not able to chase any new sign-ups. The rest of this game will be about projecting a perceived position in candidate rank, and gathering that all-important down-ballot support from others; appealing to voting blocs banked with other candidates becomes all-too-important.
