In the mid to late '90s I played the political game in this town (Ottawa) being a member's assistant for a Liberal MP in the Chretien government. During that time I met other assistants from MPs of the other parties. I have kept in touch with a few.
I had occasion to have lunch with one of them a few days ago. When I knew him on The Hill he was working for a Reform MP. He came with the wave of Reformers that arrived after the 1993 election.
Inevitably we talked politics and I mentioned my theory that Mr. Bernier would be campaigning in the Conservative ridings of Quebec and Ontario leaving the Liberal and NDP ridings alone. His response was "that is what Preston Manning did to Kim Campbell so I would expect the same from Mr. Bernier." He went on to explain that Mr. Manning was not trying to win the 1993 election because he knew he could not. Instead he was trying for official party status and nothing more. The fact he went on to become the Leader of the Official Opposition was a bonus. Mr. Manning achieved this by focusing his campaign on ridings that tended to generally vote PC. He left the Liberal and NDP ridings alone.
My friend agreed with me that Mr. Bernier is not setting his sights on winning the election and that his ambitions are a little smaller and that he would probably pursue a similar strategy to what Mr. Manning did in 1993.
There are some key differences. Mr. Manning had a true national party with a large enough budget to conduct a national campaign. Mr. Bernier will be campaigning on a shoe string and will probably not have the ability to criss-cross the country searching for votes. However, Mr. Manning's base was in Alberta. He did not have a base in Ontario or Quebec going into the 1993 election. Mr. Bernier, on the other hand, has a base in Quebec and he should have enough money to criss-cross that province and Ontario looking for votes.
If he is even remotely successful he will steal enough votes in Conservative ridings in those provinces to not only deny Mr. Scheer victory but to greatly reduce the number of seats currently held by the Conservative Party of Canada.
I asked my friend what he thought of Mr. Bernier's chances of achieving his objectives. He stated that they were not high but he also stated that they said the same thing about Preston Manning's chances in 1993. He did agree with me that Mr. Bernier would probably not win more than his own seat and maybe a couple more around Quebec City. But he also agreed with me that Mr. Bernier could take enough votes, that would normally go to the Conservatives, to allow the Liberals to take a bunch of close races. He mentioned some long held Conservative ridings in Ontario that were vulnerable to a "Bernier insurgency".
All of that to say that it would appear that Mr. Bernier is beginning to implement this strategy judging by the news report I saw today. He is in Calgary where he is not criticising the Trudeau government. He is trolling for Conservative voters instead. I suspect we will be seeing more of the same as the next few months unfold.
1 comment:
Hopefully his gambit works, and the Liberals don't end up splitting their votes to the NDP and Greens. A recent Abacus poll said that something like 7% of what would be likely be Conservative voters prefer Bernier to Scheer as PM.
That's encouraging from the perspective of a snapshot of what the Bernier "base" might be (and thus the potential for splitting the Con vote), as is the fact that he came second in the leadership race with 49% of the vote (and if Bernier's unpublished book is correct, a number of those ballots for Scheer were suspect).
What's discouraging and in fact frightening is that these numbers are also a snapshot of how much racism and alt-right/hard-right sickness there is in Canada. Scheer is no different but tries to be "stealth" about it (with questionable results at best). Bernier is just more honest about who the Deform Party Cons really are: Canadian T-Party (Trump Party) Republicans. Not surprising in the least when you consider they're both Harperrhoids, and who that slimy fat-cat fascist's backers are.
Post a Comment