If this byelection is a sign of things to come, the 2019 general election in October is going to be a total gongshow.
Hunter S Thompson coined the term "Fear and Loathing" to describe a basic political analysis that could be applied to every electoral campaign. He argued that elections always boil down to a contest between these two feelings. The government wants voters to fear the opposition, and the opposition wants them to loath the government. On election day, we find out which of the two emotions was stronger. Whether or not you accept that by-elections give some prediction of what's ahead in a general election, it seems safe to say that Canadian voters will have no shortage of things to fear and loath in our coming 2019 general election.
Here are some observations about the Burnaby South by-election:
1) The government needlessly delayed calling the by-election for crass political reasons.
A by-election occurs when a member of parliament resigns their post before the completion of their term in office. The Speaker of the House of Commons informs the Chief Electoral Officer of the need for a by-election through something called a "Speaker's Warrant". The government then has the authority to fix the date on which the Chief Electoral Officer issues the "Writ of Election" which outlines when the voting day will be and how long the campaign period will last (no shorter than 36 days). The law states the writ is to be issued (or "dropped" as folks commonly say) no sooner than 11 days after the Chief Electoral Officer receives the Speakers Warrant and no longer than 180 days. Kennedy Stewart, the previous MP for Burnaby South, resigned his seat effective September 14th, 2018, meaning the people of the riding went without an MP for 164 days. This is of course well within the limits outlined above, but what makes this timing especially suspect is the fact there was another by-election, in the Ontario riding of Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, held on December 3rd 2018. There is really no good reason why the Burnaby South by-election wasn't held at the same time -- aside from the fact that the Liberals wanted to delay NDP leader Jagmeet Singh's arrival in the House of Commons for as long as possible.
2) The Liberal's campaign was, well, kind of strange.
Being a candidate for federal office isn't easy. It requires you to put yourself up for public scrutiny and judgement, which is often unpleasant and unfair. So I'd like to have a modicum of sympathy for Karen Wang, whose short lived candidacy for the federal Liberal party went completely off the rails resulting in spectacle and public shaming. The episode is worth recapping mainly because it is worth considering as part of evaluating the results the Liberal's achieved.
Karen Wang, a local small business person, used the Chinese social media app WeChat to post a strategic analysis of her path to electoral victory that was blatantly racist.
About a day after this story broke it was reported that Wang had apologized for her post and resigned her candidacy. But that wasn't the end of the story.
Instead of fading quietly, Wang decided to call a press conference in front of a Burnaby public library. However, she'd failed to get the library's permission to use the space and the head librarian asked her to leave, forcing her to have the press conference on the sidewalk instead. Wang used the opportunity to claim that the racist post had been written by a volunteer and that she hadn't seen it, that the Liberal party had forced her to resign, that she felt it was unfair that she'd been labeled a racist, and that she was considering running as an independent candidate (ultimately, she decided against this). She had her crying mother and sister at her side, making the unfortunate spectacle that much sadder. In the days that followed, articles came out about how she'd tried to run with the federal Conservative party before joining the Liberal's but was rejected during vetting.
The Liberal's found recently defeated Burnaby North BC Liberal MLA Richard Lee to run in Wang's place. Lee ran what looked to be a mostly respectable campaign, but he certainly chose some odd colours for his election day vote-at cards.
3) The all candidates debates got pretty ugly. This will probably get worse.
The Burnaby South debates featured some shocking anti-immigration rhetoric, and one of them devolved into a chaotic screaming match (video below). This is thanks mostly to the presence of Laura Lynn Thompson, the candidate for the deceptively named "Peoples Party of Canada" led by former Conservative MP Maxine Bernier. Thompson, during at least two of the debates, exploited the tragic death of Burnaby teenager Marissa Shen to advance her political self interest. She argued that Shen's killing at the alleged hand of a Syrian refugee was proof Canada fails to vet refugees appropriately. She failed to mention that the accused refugee in question had no prior criminal record of any sort. There was nothing in his record to justify denying his refugee claim, meaning stronger refugee vetting would not have filtered him out and potentially stopped Shen's killing. According to Richard Lee, the Liberal candidate, Shen's parents met with him and told him they did not want their daughter's death politicized. Laura Lynn Thompson didn't listen.
Maxine Bernier's new party has said it intends to run candidates in every riding in the next federal election. Laura Lynn Thompson used the local debates as a forum to deliver a harmful message that had obvious racist anti-immigrant undertones. Trying to imagine 338 candidates using local community debates to do the same during a general election frankly frightens me. You can see for yourself what I am talking about in the clips below.
This is an edited clip of the debate hosted by the Ismaili Centre of Burnaby. Laura-Lynn Thompson posted it on her youtube channel. During this clip she screams repeatedly about how "it's not racist" to imply a failure in refugee vetting is at fault for the murder of a 13 year old girl.
Personally, I am of the opinion that local debates don't really have much impact on the outcome of an election campaign. Experience has led me to conclude that very few undecided minds watch or attend local debates and the time spent on debate prep is better spent directly canvassing voters. But if the People's Party of Canada is able to field a complete slate of candidates nationwide, it seems likely to expect there will be many more ugly, tense debates across the country. This will do real damage to the already poor quality of political discourse in Canada because it will force campaigns to spend precious airtime and capital responding to utter (often racist) nonsense. That isn't what I want our next general election to be about.
Full video of the Burnaby South all candidate debate hosted by the Burnaby Interagency Council.
4) It sure feels like Trumpian style fascism has come to Canada in the form of Maxine Bernier. It would be foolish to underestimate it.
Fascism is a slippery thing to nail down. It's always different each time and place it occurs, and its nature is to be inconsistent and irrational. To quote writer Umair Haque:
"Fascism is best seen this way. A person who believes that there is a hierarchy of personhood — that some people are more human than others, and some fall below the threshold of being people entirely — and furthermore, that that hierarchy should be institutionalized, is a fascist. A movement composed of such people is a fascist movement. A government managing such a project is a fascist government."
The rhetoric Laura Lynn uses in the debates linked above clearly aims to dehumanize immigrants and refugee claimants. Her decision to selfishly exploit the tragedy of the Shen family to draw unjustified conclusions about Syrian refugees is obviously meant to degrade public opinion of all refugee claimants. This rhetoric either meets the definition of fascism as outlined above, or comes very close to it. Either way, I don't want to hear more of it on the national stage. In all likelihood, we are all about to, whether we like it or not.
Less than two weeks out from e-day, Maxine Bernier posted a tweet that implied enjoying Rupaul's Drag Race was "Government sponsored leftist logic" and that wearing blackface should be more socially acceptable. Yes, really.
Bernier founded his new party in September of 2018, so the February 25th byelections were the first time the party was tested electorally. Laura Lynn was by far the strongest performing of three candidates they ran. She secured 2420 votes, over 10%, with her counterparts in Outremont and York Simcoe getting 322 (2.1 %) and 314 (1.9 %) respectively. Bernier and his barely six month old party are likely quite encouraged with this result. Laura Lynn's double digit showing can be partly attributed to her having run previously for a Burnaby school board seat in 2018's civic election, in which she garnered over 15,000 votes.
After the election, Laura Lynn replied and retweeted a supporter who asked "are the counting machines Soros'" implying that Canadian vote counting machines are owned by George Soros. Nevermind Canada's federal elections don't use vote counting machines (the count is done by hand and volunteers from the different campaigns are allowed to watch it happen). Buckle up Canada, we're in for a bumpy ride.
5) The Conservative's and their distasteful leaflets were at it again.
In terms of considering campaign strategy, the Burnaby South Conservative campaign leaflets are worth reflecting on for a moment.
They targeted Laura Lynn with a leaflet that implied she supports recreational drug use (she lodged a complaint with Elections Canada about it) in an effort to suppress her vote. Spending the money and time to do this shows they are worried about the PPC eating into their base, creating a vote split that results in fewer Conservatives getting elected. Just look at Alberta's 2015 election results or most of the time Jean Chretien was Prime Minister: a split conservative vote makes it easier for conservative opponents to win. The silver lining in having the PPC is that it could do real damage to the Conservatives hopes for forming government.
The Conservatives also had an audacious leaflet designed for targeting NDP voters. It encouraged NDP voters not to support Jagmeet's candidacy so the NDP could "get a new leader". As an NDP supporter myself, this seems like a confusing argument to make, but the fact the Conservatives paid money to disseminate this message illustrates just how high stakes the byelection was for the NDP as well as the degree of doubt there was surrounding Jagmeet's candidacy.
The Conservative campaign leaflets in 2015 often made claims about how only Stephen Harper could keep Canada safe from terrorists or featured comments about his policy regarding the Niqab. So the Conservatives are not above using leaflets with a distasteful racist "dog-whistle" message. Given this history, and how bold their leaflets during this by-election were, it seems safe to say that Canadians can expect to see some seriously creative content from Conservative leaflet designers in the coming 2019 campaign. There seems to be potential for some kind of awful contest between the Conservatives and the PPC for whose racist dog whistle is the loudest.
6) Jagmeet Singh's victory means the NDP can breath a giant sigh of relief.
Without a doubt, this is the story that will be remembered most from this by-election -- that the fate of the Federal NDP hung in the balance and that (after a long wait) the new leader of the NDP has finally entered parliament. It would be hard to overstate the nationwide implications for the NDP's election readiness had Jagmeet failed. It would have been nothing short of a total disaster, forcing the party to discard everything it invested in building Jagmeet's brand and leaving a nasty, unappealing leadership mess in its place. None of which would help already underperforming fundraising. New Democrats across the country knew what was at stake and should all be breathing a massive sigh of relief.
The election results are in stark contrast with the doubtful narrative that surrounded Jagmeet's candidacy. The preliminary count gives Jagmeet a 2954 vote margin of victory, which is the largest margin of victory the NDP has seen in this area in 22 years (not since Svend Robinson's 1997 campaign). The knives that were out for Jagmeet from within the NDP should go back in their sheaths. Having Jagmeet in the house will improve media visibility and make it easier for Canadians to get to know him, which will hep with fundraising. This victory gives the NDP a fighting chance in the next election, even if they are starting from way behind. Between that and the potential for a conservative vote split, the NDP is still very much in the race.
Every election ends up as a story, like a choose your own adventure with many possible alternate endings. One version gets written in history books, while others are told by the media and others only exist in the minds of staffers and candidates and volunteers. Time will pass, the successful candidate serves their term and the defeated pick themselves up and return to the life they set aside in order to seek office. The offices close and the signs are put away and then new offices open and new signs come out. The campaign becomes a memory of an intense experience, its legacy defined by the consequences of its outcome and the things said and done by the people who were there.
It is incredible and historic that the first non-white leader of a major federal party was elected to Parliament in Burnaby South and this will be the legacy of this campaign. But when you look closer, the story of the Burnaby South by-election campaign is an ugly one. Given the close proximity to the general election scheduled just eight months away, this isn't the end of a story so much as it is the end of a chapter in a larger story about the 2019 general election. And that story is shaping up to be a dark and twisted one indeed.
Sources and Further Reading
The Calling of a Federal By-Election, Elections Canada
By-elections to the 42nd Canadian Parliament, Wikipedia
Delaying Jagmeet Singh's byelection might be calculated, but it isn't unprecedented, Éric Grenier
Liberal candidate’s WeChat post draws criticism for singling out race of byelection opponent Jagmeet Singh, Toronto Star
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