Pierre Poilievre’s coattail effect is at play in the Oct. 19 provincial vote, and Canadians across the country should be paying attention.
Provincial electoral campaigns in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and British Columbia are all underway. Federal and provincial electoral arenas are different beasts, with voters often expressing wide variance in their preferences in elections across the two levels of government. Nonetheless, with a federal election looming ever larger in the near distance, the electoral campaign in British Columbia, especially, merits attention.
The Oct. 19 vote serves as a critical electoral test for the right-wing populist juggernaut reaching critical masses of support across Canada as the population indicates it is in the mood for change
David Eby’s NDP government is suffering under the weight of incumbency amid the most acute crises in housing affordability and drug addiction in the country. The harm-reduction approach of the NDP in response to the opioid crisis has come under attack — a bitter debate we can expect to extend across the country in the coming federal election.
The surging federal Conservatives under the populist leadership of Pierre Poilievre has had a remarkable coattail effect on their British Columbian cousins. The speed and scale of the BC Conservatives’ unexpected growth in the slipstream of the federal Tories has given the party little time to develop the sophisticated and expensive on-the-ground voter identification and mobilization infrastructure common to modern campaigns. Bridging that gap with the much better oiled and organized NDP get-out-the-vote operation is largely being hedged on enthusiasm for conservative populism among their potential voters.
Rustad is notably to the right of Poilievre (himself no moderate), however, on several key issues and is leading such a new and untested organization that little in the way of party discipline is to be expected.
The election will provide a critical pulse check for how far the populist tide could wash in — and Canadians across the country should be paying attention.
Dónal Gill is assistant professor of Canadian politics at Concordia University.