Since 2011, the residents of the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie riding in Montreal have voted to make New Democrat Alexandre Boulerice their representative in Ottawa.
On Monday, Boulerice will thank those voters for that support and ask that, in this fall’s provincial election in Québec, they make him their representative in Québec City, as the Québec Solidaire MNA for the riding of Gouin.
It is a huge loss for the federal NDP who, with Boulerice’s departure, will have not a single MP east of downtown Winnipeg. There will be no New Democrat in Canada’s national legislature from Ontario nor Québec nor any Atlantic Canada province. That has not happened since the 1993 general election when the NDP, under then leader Audrey McLaughlin, managed to win just nine seats spread across Saskatchewan, Manitoba, B.C. and McLaughlin’s own riding in the Yukon.
Mark Carney’s Liberals will be keen to keep any orange off the electoral map in eastern Canada by stealing Rosemont from the NDP in the byelection that will determine Boulerice’s successor.
And the governing party’s control of the timing of that byelection could tilt the odds of that steal in the Liberals’ favour.
Rosemont will not be the only riding this spring to lose an MP who wants a chance at a seat in the provincial legislature. Liberal Nate Erskine-Smith has promised to quit as the MP for the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York as he pursues the chance of becoming the leader of the Ontario Liberal party. He hopes to launch that pursuit by winning a byelection that Ontario Premier Doug Ford must soon call in the provincial riding of Scarborough Southwest. (Erskine-Smith may not win the Liberal nomination for Scarborough Southwest but set that story aside. He told a local media outlet, the Beach Metro Community News, that he will quit federal politics this summer even if he does not win that nomination.)
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The simultaneous vacancies in Rosemont and Beaches will put the federal NDP in a pickle.
It cannot abandon the riding of Rosemont and must defend that seat vigorously with a leader, Avi Lewis, whose ability to speak French is still a work-in-progress.
And yet: a riding like the Beaches is precisely the kind of downtown, urban riding that New Democrats must win as they look to rebuild their electoral coalition. Beaches’ residents elected a New Democrat in the Jack Layton Orange Crush sweep of 2011. The provincial riding of Beaches-East York, which shares the same boundaries as the federal riding, elected a New Democrat in 2018 and the provincial NDP, in the 2024 general election, won the ridings on Beaches’ eastern and western borders.
Forget for a moment that the New Democrats, in last spring’s federal election, notched less than seven per cent of the popular vote. The NDP vote cratered everywhere.
Instead, look to the NDP vote share in other elections. During all of the elections where the progressive/left-of-centre Justin Trudeau was Liberal leader, the NDP routinely won more than 20 per cent of the Beaches vote. And in elections where the Liberal leader was more centre/centre-right — that would be Paul Martin and Jean Chrètien — the NDP in Beaches generally scored better than 30 per cent of the vote.
So, with enough money and work — and perhaps even a candidate named Avi Lewis — the NDP should be competitive in the Beaches. It might even have a shot to win a byelection, a byelection, it should be noted, where the voters will know that the Liberals will hold on to their majority no matter the outcome.
But the federal NDP, right now, is financially vulnerable. So, from a strategic standpoint, the Liberals will try to get the NDP to fight a two-front war, if you will, in the hope that NDP resources it can divert from Rosemont to the Beaches will help the Liberals win Rosemont.
There is another reason the Liberals will want to run byelections in Rosemont and Beaches at the same time — and I’m grateful to for Conservative national campaign manager Fred Delorey for flagging this: The Liberals can get a two-to-one financial advantage over the other suitor for the Rosemont seat, the Bloc Québecois.
The financial advantage comes from the spending limits set under federal elections law. Be it a byelection or a general election, local campaigns have to abide by a set spending limit set by Elections Canada. On this front, the BQ and the Liberals will be equal when it comes to Rosemont. But there is a separate spending limit for the national campaign and that spending limit is based on the number of candidates a party runs in a general election or, in this case, in two or more byelections held on the same day.
But even though the spending limit for a national party is based on the number of candidates it is running, the national party can spend the money anywhere it wants. So the credit the federal Liberals get for running a candidate in Beaches can be spent supporting the Liberal candidate in Rosemont. Unless the BQ runs a candidate in Toronto — unlikely, one would think — the BQ does not get that extra spending authority in Rosemont.
This just happened, by the way, in the April 13 byelections. The federal Liberals took money they were allowed to spend as a result of running candidates in two Toronto ridings — both easy favourites — and diverted it to the Montreal riding of Terrebonne. There, in a close race, they defeated a BQ candidate who had to fight the Liberal machine with less money (and fewer volunteers).
Like University-Rosedale and (the federal riding of) Scarborough Southwest, the Liberals would still be heavy favourites in Beaches-East York. Which makes it likely that the federal party would divert funds it would have been allowed to spend on the race in Beaches to support a steal of an NDP seat in Rosemont.
David Akin is the chief political correspondent for Global News.
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