Gordon Prentice at Large - Politics in Newmarket
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- Written by: Gordon Prentice
11pm. With one third of the polls reporting in Burnaby South NDP leader Jasmeet Singh has a clear lead over his Liberal challenger.
In York-Simcoe the Conservatives, as expected, have held the seat, squashing Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party.
The Liberals have taken Outremont from the NDP.
Voter turnout is lamentable in all three ridings.
Update on the by-election results (posted 26 February 2019)
What can we learn from the results of yesterday’s by-elections? Personally, I think we should be cautious in reading too much into the runes.
But the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbotson takes a stab at it.
“Conservative Scot Davidson held the vote at 54 per cent, while the Liberal vote slumped from 38 per cent in 2015 to 29 per cent Monday night. Even more encouraging for Mr. Scheer, the People’s Party sat at only 2 per cent, suggesting Mr. Bernier won’t be a factor in the fight for the 905, the large belt of suburban ridings surrounding the city of Toronto, named after its area code. The 905 almost always votes for the party that forms the government…
For the NDP, the news is both bitter and sweet. Sweet: Mr. Singh will finally be in the House of Commons. He will arrive with Justin Trudeau’s government staggering over the SNC-Lavalin affair, giving him a perfect opportunity to reboot his troubled leadership, only eight months before the next election.
Bitter: The New Democrats are no longer in the game in Quebec. The NDP appears destined to become again what it was before: a rump, a third place-place party in English Canada, and soon to be only a memory in Quebec.”
Can Vote. Won’t Vote
The majority of voters in the three by-elections didn’t vote. Lots of factors could be in play. The weather, perhaps. Or maybe a sense the result was a foregone conclusion. That may have been the case with York-Simcoe but surely not in Outremont and Burnaby South?
Turnout in York-Simcoe was down from 63.66% in the general election in 2015 to a woeful 19.91% yesterday.
In Outrement, turnout collapsed from 62.42% to 21.38%.
In Burnaby South things were better. 60.78% in 2015 down to a still miserable 29.89%.
Turnout in elections is highly variable but the long-term trend points to falling participation rates. In the federal general election of 20 June 1882 a mere 32% of the electorate in Manitoba voted. The highest voter turnouts in a federal general election were in Yukon on 31 March 1958 and in PEI in 18 June 1962 when in both cases 90% of the electorate voted.
The highest voter turnout nationally in a federal general election was on 31 March 1958 when 79.4% of the electorate voted.
And Chantal Hébert’s take on the results in the Toronto Star (27 February 2019)
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- Written by: Gordon Prentice
The three Federal by-elections in Burnaby South, Outremont and York-Simcoe on 25 February are important pointers to what could happen in the general election this fall.
If the NDP leader, Jasmeet Singh, doesn’t win he is finished. Politics is a rough old trade and I simply point out the obvious. There is no way he could carry on as the Party’s standard bearer and fight the general election as NDP Leader in October if he loses in Burnaby South.
The demography of the riding is also a factor which may unfairly work against him. The Chinese Canadian community is the largest ethnic group. And while that community is clearly not monolithic, a Chinese heritage candidate may nevertheless still have an edge.
The Vancouver Sun tells us that Singh’s
“path to a win got harder when the Liberals’ first candidate resigned over racist remarks and the party appointed Richard T. Lee, who for four terms represented the provincial riding with similar boundaries”
Bitter and Divisive
The Toronto Star tells us this morning that the tone on the campaign trail has been “unusually bitter and divisive” with the candidates’ debates marred by hostile audiences angry about immigration and refugees.
In Outremont – the Quebec riding held by Tom Mulcair since 2007 – things again look bleak for the NDP if we are to believe the polls. And every second news item seems to be about Singh’s turban and what it means to French Canadians who have been obsessing for years about “reasonable accommodation”.
York-Simcoe, immediately to the north of Newmarket, is a true-blue riding – one of the safest for the PCs in the entire country.
Last week, eager to hear the candidates in person I take myself off to Georgina to see them set out their stall and sell their wares in a meeting organised by the Social Planning Council of York Region. I feel a bit like an interloper as I don't have a vote up there.
People's Party challenge
The PC candidate, Scot Davidson, is absent. I don’t know if he simply couldn’t be bothered or if he had another pressing engagement.
The People’s Party hopes to make a big dent in the PC vote with their candidate Robert Guerts. He looks formidable on paper but, in the flesh, he is nothing to shout about.
He is banking on Bernier’s message of right-wing Conservatism having resonance here. Guerts says the Conservatives are morally and intellectually corrupt. This is a man who doesn’t mince words. His People’s Party promises to defund the CBC, privatize Canada Post, end corporate welfare and phase out supply management over four or five years. And they would bring in a 15% flat tax on all incomes between $15,000 and $100,000. And no capital gains tax.
If the People’s Party can cream off a sizeable percentage of Conservative votes they will claim victory. I can’t see it happening - no matter how you define sizeable. The first past the post system is brutally efficient at killing new parties at birth. (When Bernier boasts of doing very well in Burnaby South he is whistling in the dark.)
Shaun Tanaka, an academic at the Universities of Toronto and Queen’s, was the Liberal candidate last time and decides to give it another go. She tells us she increased the Liberal vote in 2015 and this doesn’t surprise me. She comes across as engaging and capable.
Immigration
A question from the audience about restricting immigration gets all the candidates animated. She coolly recites her family history. She describes herself as a fourth generation Japanese Canadian whose father was interned here during the last war. Her answer is a reprimand to those who see Canada through the lens of the “old stock” (as Stephen Harper would say).
Newmarket’s irrepressible Dorian Baxter is also a candidate, claiming a connection with the riding through Bradford where he raised his two daughters.
For a man of the cloth, he startles me with his forthright views on immigration. He tells us “we don’t need every Tom, Dick and Harry here”. He says we should look after Canadians first. We learn he was an immigrant himself 51 years ago – but he tells us he came through the front door.
Dorian asks his audience:
“How many people would open their front door tonight for someone from Toronto?”
That made me sit up and think. I suppose in Dorian's universe they don’t open the Pearly Gates for any old Tom, Dick or Harry.
Dorian, of course, has no hope of winning. But he is always entertaining even when I’ve heard his gags before. He reminds us he
won the Collingwood “Elvis thing” about 23 years ago and when he gets to Ottawa they’re gonna be “all shook up!”
It is difficult not to laugh. It is pure vaudeville, delivered with such panache!
Knowledgeable and passionate
The NDP candidate, Jessa McLean, comes across as knowledgeable about the issues and passionate. She is a powerful speaker. Not for her the bromide we get from so many calculating wannabe politicians. She tells it as she sees it and would make a good MP.
But York-Simcoe is unlikely to give her the chance.
The Green candidate, Matthew Lund, says they are not "old environmental hippies". It is a good line. I close my eyes and try to imagine him in a kaftan and fail.
The other candidates - Keith Komar the Libertarian, Adam Suhr of the National Citizens Alliance - are also-rans and will pick up a handful of votes between them.
Included in their number is the curious arm-waving eccentric, John Turmel, who has run for elective office and lost on more than 90 occasions. He is the most defeated candidate ever in Canada and is regularly thrown out of meetings.
One of his supporters is sitting directly behind me, from time to time making loud comments in Russian or Polish or some other language I couldn't understand.
Exasperated, I pivot round with my index finger over my lips.
Shhhhhh!
I like a good heckle but what I am hearing is all Greek to me.
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- Written by: Gordon Prentice
The Globe and Mail is providing a running commentary on the Stronach family feud each disclosure more jawdropping than the last.
Frank Stronach’s granddaughter, 18-year old Selena, is the latest to go to Court, filing a lawsuit against her aunt, Belinda. A month earlier, Selena’s mother, Kathleen, who is divorcing Frank’s son Andrew, filed a claim for financial support:
“focused on maintaining a lifestyle that includes a 15,000 square-foot home in Aurora, Ont., with five staff, including a chef, two luxury cars, and vacation homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and Muskoka. She and her daughter receive $15,000 a month in direct transfers from the family’s private holding company, The Stronach Group, plus unrestricted use of credit cards, and private jet flights for monthly vacations at five- and six-star hotels. In the divorce claim, Kathleen Stronach said her daughter owns a ranch with one full-time employee, where she raises cattle that are shown in country fairs, and ‘the operation is expensive to run.’ ”
Frank Stronach set the litigation ball rolling last October when he sued his daughter for over $520M
“alleging mismanagement of the family’s various private business ventures, which include U.S. horse-racing tracks and real estate”.
She counter-sued and it has been a Punch and Judy show since then.
"I've never sued anybody in my life."
In Frank’s 2012 autobiography “The Magna Man” he tells us forthrightly how he made his millions. In the early days, after a merger between his company and another he fell out with business partners on the direction the new company should take. They were focussed on aerospace. He saw big profits in the automotive sector. He said he was going to resign, sell his shares and start all over again.
“I told my fellow Board members my intentions and a number of them asked if I would sell my shares to them. We drew up a contract and they issued a promissory note. But when the note came due, they didn’t have the money. I could have tried to collect the money by launching legal action but I have never sued anybody in my life.”
That paragraph will have to be re-written for the second edition.
Anyway… he tells them to forget the money if they resign from the Board (which they do) leaving him in control.
Like most people I never gave the Stronachs a second thought before the family feud erupted.
That said, the Stronachs have always been on the edge of our consciousness. You see the name all over the place, on the side of big buildings in Aurora and Newmarket, but that’s the way it has always been. Aurora, in particular, is the archetypal company town.
Development and Real Estate
People close to Frank Stronach are powers in the land in their own right. His “good friend and partner” Tony Czapka was responsible for real estate acquisitions in the 1970s. His son Peter now runs Tricap, a "family-owned, operated and financed company" which is a major landowner and land banker in Newmarket. Tricap owns land at Davis Drive and George Street that has been sitting empty for years despite getting planning approval in 2009 for a 280 unit 20 storey condo.
For her part, Belinda Stronach is developing one of the last big chunks of open space left in Aurora – the so-called Stronach surplus lands.
Next to the new development, Adena Views, but separated by a landscaped pond, sits the high-end gated development at Adena Meadows with its unusual street names. I see Awesome Again Lane and Glorious Song Lane.
And then it occurs to me. It’s not about the glorious streetscape and the awesome houses. It’s about Frank’s thoroughbreds. Glorious Song and Awesome Again who won million-dollar purses for him.
I don’t know where it will all end up for the Stronachs.
After a brief skirmish in the Courts will Frank call it a day and gallop off into the sunset? Or is it a fight to the death with his daughter Belinda?
But whatever happens, things will never be quite the same again.