ANALYSIS: 4 Federal Byelections in June: What to Watch For

(Left) Former Interim Conservative Leader Candice Bergen. (Right) Former Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang; Adrian Wyld)

With four byelections taking place across Canada in June, a drop in popular support by more than 5 percent should be an indication for the major parties as a sign of trouble during the next federal election, according to a pollster.

“For any party, a drop in popular support by 5 percent or more would be on the radar,” Nik Nanos, chief data scientist and founder of Nanos Research, said in an interview.

“If an incumbent party is up or minus 5 percent, you can attribute that to the local campaign and also to the voter turnout. But once you get something beyond that, that’s when the parties usually take notice.”

The four byelections will be held on June 19 in the ridings of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount in Quebec, Oxford in Ontario, Winnipeg South Centre in Manitoba, and Portage–Lisgar in Manitoba. In recent elections, all four ridings were relative strongholds for the incumbent parties.

An arrow points to where people can go to cast their ballots on federal election day in Montreal, Sept. 20, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes)

The byelections come as a Nanos weekly tracking poll for the week ending May 5 showed the Conservatives leading the Liberals by seven points nationally, with the Tories holding the support of 35.2 percent of Canadians, followed by the Liberals at 27.7 percent and NDP at 21.7 percent. The two parties were statistically tied in mid-February, with each sitting around 33 percent.

According to Nanos, the results of the byelection can’t be seen as predictive of how the next federal election might unfold, as it is still a long way off. But he said the byelections will be predictive of “the mood on the ground” in these ridings among core supporters.

Portage–Lisgar, Manitoba

Following interim Conservative Party leader Candice Bergen’s resignation from politics on Feb. 1, the riding of Portage–Lisgar was left vacant. Branden Leslie, Bergen’s former campaign manager, will attempt to retain the party’s near two-decade hold on the riding.

Challenging him for the seat will be People’s Party of Canada (PPC) Leader Maxime Bernier, in an attempt to obtain a seat for his party in Parliament. During the 2021 federal election, the PPC had the best results anywhere in Canada in Portage–Lisgar, with 21.5 percent of the vote to the Conservatives’ 52.5 percent.

Oxford, Ontario

Dave MacKenzie held the riding of Oxford for the Conservatives for 19 years before announcing his retirement in January. While political pundits see the riding as a safe “blue” seat, Nanos said the race will be “more complicated” for the Conservatives due to controversies surrounding the nomination process.

MacKenzie’s daughter Deb Tait ran for the Conservative nomination in the riding, but the co-chair of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership campaign in Ontario, Arpan Khanna, won the nomination. Tait said she would be putting her support behind Liberal candidate David Hilderley, claiming the MP for the riding will need to “understand the community.”

Gerrit Van Dorland, an executive assistant to a Saskatchewan MP, was also abruptly disqualified from the race by the party’s national council over a week before the nomination meeting, with some maintaining his pro-life beliefs led to the ousting.

Nanos said such controversies can sometimes decrease turnout for the incumbent parties in byelections, and the Conservatives will have to “fight the Liberals and then fight a narrative that not all is well in the Conservative family.”

Tim Powers, vice-chairman of Summa Strategies, said Oxford will be “one of the most interesting byelections ”because of the “real drama” around the nomination process.

“It should probably be, on any other day, a predictable win for the Conservatives. But the noise that has come in advance of the byelection may have an impact, or it may not,” he told The Epoch Times.

Notre-Dame-de-Grâce−Westmount, Quebec

After former cabinet minister Marc Garneau stepped down in March, the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount riding has been open for a byelection. Since the riding was created by the 2012 federal electoral boundaries redistribution, it has been safely held by the Liberals, with the NDP consistently coming in second place.

The Green Party has seen an opportunity to gain a third seat, with Green Party deputy leader Jonathan Pedneault announcing he will run in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce−Westmount. But Powers said there is slim evidence that the Greens have much of a base in Quebec, especially since the riding has a “historic connection” with the Liberal Party.

“As has been the Green Party’s practice, they’ve tried to get candidates into different races where they get talked about a little bit more, because I think their metrics for success are different,” he said.

Winnipeg South Centre, Manitoba

In Winnipeg South Centre, Liberal candidate Ben Carr is looking to win the seat left vacant by his father, who died in December 2022. Former cabinet minister Jim Carr had held the seat for the Liberals since 2015, defeating Conservative candidate Joyce Bateman during the last three elections.

Jim Carr, minister of international trade diversification, in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/John Woods)

Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said that while he believes the riding will stay Liberal, the party’s share of the vote will probably shrink in the byelection.

“Generally when you have byelections, supporters of the governing party are less likely to turn out to vote than opponents of the governing party. And that’s because everybody knows that no matter what happens in the byelections, the government doesn’t change,” Wiseman said in an interview.

“But, still, because the national trend now shows that the Conservatives are ahead of the Liberals, I expect the Liberal vote will go down.”