Tories steal seat from Bloc as Liberals lose Outremont
Even before polls close, Liberals begin pointing fingers for failure of Dion's hand-picked candidate
CAMPBELL CLARK AND LAWRENCE MARTIN
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
September 18, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT
MONTREAL AND OTTAWA — Stéphane Dion suffered a by-election blow Monday that is expected to cast a shadow over his leadership as the Liberals lost their Outremont stronghold to the NDP and reports of new infighting emerged inside his party. :rofl: :nana: :cheers:
NDP star candidate Thomas Mulcair thrashed Mr. Dion's handpicked standard-bearer, Jocelyn Coulon, and the Conservatives' gain of a Bloc Québécois riding only rubbed salt in the Liberal wounds.
At the same time, a senior official in Mr. Dion's office said they will review allegations from some party activists that backers of deputy leader Michael Ignatieff discouraged some Liberals from working on the Coulon campaign.
The three by-election results – in which the Bloc hung onto the riding of Saint-Hyacinthe–Bagot – suggest Quebec's federal political map is being redrawn.
It suggests the Conservatives are the main competition for the separatist Bloc in the largely francophone areas outside Montreal and Western Quebec, with the Liberals unable to reclaim the francophone vote even in Montreal. :cheers:
The NDP, meanwhile, established an important beachhead just as Quebec voters are rethinking their allegiances – it's their first Quebec seat since a one-time by-election in 1990 that will likely see Mr. Mulcair, a former provincial Liberal environment minister, head to Ottawa as lieutenant to NDP Leader Jack Layton.
The Conservatives picked up a long-time Bloc Québécois stronghold in Roberval—Lac-St. Jean. Roberval mayor Denis Lebel won with a stunning 59.4 per cent of the vote, leaving the Bloc's Celine Houde with only 27 per cent.
The Bloc's Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac won in St-Hyacinthe—Bagot with 42 per cent, beating Tory Bernard Barré, with 98 per cent of the votes counted.
The Liberals garnered less than 10 per cent of the vote in both those ridings, and was fourth behind the NDP in St-Hyacinthe—Bagot.
But Outremont was the most noteworthy — because it proved to be a debacle for Mr. Dion.
Mr. Mulcair took 48 per cent of the vote, to only 28 per cent for Mr. Coulon, with 98 per cent of the polls counted.
Mr. Dion took the stage last night, :crybaby: with Mr. Ignatieff >
nearby, and told the
crowd at Mr. Coulon's headquarters that they will remember the by-election when they win a general election. :blotto:
“At that moment … we will remember this night of Sept. 17 and we will say that we Liberals had the fortitude to pass through a difficult moment to rebound for all Canadians,” he said. :boring:
Mr. Layton,
meanwhile, told an ebullient crowd at a St. Laurent Boulevard bar: “You have changed the political face of Quebec – and Canada.”
Some Liberals were insisting even before Mr. Coulon and Mr. Dion conceded defeat that the by-election was a one-off affected by low turnout and a star NDP candidate, and that it did not reflect what would happen in a general election.
But senior Liberals had suggested the riding would be an acid test for his leadership – and there were whispered rumblings that he could face a mounting challenge if he lost, although many doubt he can be forced out.
But there were also reports of allegations of sabotage by rivals and counter-allegations of false scapegoating.
Monday, a senior Liberal said he expects a review of allegations from some party workers that they were discouraged from working on the campaign by organizers they suspect were behind Mr. Ignatieff.
“We're going to have a hard look at this on the political and the internal side,” the official said. “... We can't just brush this away.”
Party workers also revealed Monday that they have been filing complaints to Mr. Dion's office for months about other activities by former members of the Ignatieff team. They include complaints that the Toronto MP's supporters are aggressively campaigning in an attempt to stack the party's national executive with Ignatieff backers when some national executive positions are up for re-election this fall.
They also said that former Ignatieff organizers, who perceive the Liberal leader as weak, have been sending campaigners in an attempt to get Ignatieff supporters nominated to run in the next general election.
In response to the allegations, an Ignatieff spokesperson said: “We're not going to comment on rumours and speculation and anything like that.”
Many Liberals were buzzing Monday with rumours that the Dion and Ignatieff camps are pointing fingers at each other :argument: – although at least some of Mr. Dion's camp insist they do not believe charges of disloyalty against Mr. Ignatieff's camp.
Members of Mr. Dion's team feel it is to be expected that after a long leadership fight, there will be some trying times on the unity front. They said they were aware Ignatieff backers have been holding meetings in Toronto, but that they have been told they were to raise funds to cover Mr. Ignatieff's campaign debts.
The Outremont seat came open when Paul Martin's Quebec lieutenant, Jean Lapierre, resigned in January. Both Bloc seats were held by high-profile veterans: Yvan Loubier resigned in Saint-Hyacinthe–Bagot to run unsuccessfully in the March provincial election, and Michel Gauthier, the party's onetime leader, gave up his Roberval–Lac-Saint-Jean seat to retire from politics.
The Conservatives' win in Roberval–Lac-Saint-Jean is partly ascribed to a popular local candidate, Mr. Lebel. But it also indicates a hardening realignment that sees the federal Conservatives and the provincial Action Démocratique emerging as the chief competition to the separatists outside Montreal.
Outside of Montreal, “there's no doubt that the sovereigntists' adversary is no longer the Liberals,” said Jean-Herman Guay, a University of Sherbrooke political scientist.
Recent provincewide opinion polls show the Tories roughly tied for second with Liberals across the province, considerably behind the Bloc, although many believe that hides different regional battles.
The race in Outremont, a riding in the heart of Montreal that is usually a Liberal bastion, has caused some Quebec Liberals to predict that a loss would place Mr. Dion's leadership in jeopardy – or at least cause some in the party to “make some noise” that would unsettle him, in the words of one MP.
The Liberals have almost always won the riding, home to Montreal's francophone elite. The NDP, meanwhile, launched an all-out blitz to Mr. Mulcair that saw Mr. Layton repeatedly campaign in the riding, hoping that the party could establish a beachhead in the province.
More than 100 Liberals, including Mr. Dion's wife, Janine Krieger, and about a dozen MPs manned the phones in an office behind Mr. Coulon's storefront campaign headquarters. Desks were divided by ethnic community, and multilingual MPs such as Mario Silva and Omar Alghabra called those who speak their language.
“You want it to turn as best you can, so you do whatever you can,” said Toronto MP Ken Dryden, whose status as a Montreal Canadiens hockey legend has not been forgotten in the city. He said the by-elections themselves are perhaps not crucial, but they are being made into major symbols: “They're as big as they are made out to be.”
Across town, Mr. Layton and his communications director, Brad Lavigne, stood in shirtsleeves poring over a riding map when a reporter walked in, plotting out a tour of “zone houses” – neighbourhood mini-headquarters for the organization – to pump up the troops.
At the polls, some voters said they felt problems around Mr. Dion's Liberals. Romeo Vézina, a senior citizen who said he has almost always voted Liberal, said the riding had become harder for the Liberals to win as it was extended east – an area where there are more sovereigntists. But he added that the party and Mr. Dion are having problems now: “He does not have the team he needs to support him,” he said before voting at a Fairmount Street school.
Another voter leaving the polls, Phil Koropotkin, said he's not impressed with Mr. Dion, and switched from past elections: “I've always voted Liberal, but it's time for a change. There's nobody there that stimulates me,” he said. “I think the leadership is in for a rude awakening.”
Before the results came in, the race in Outremont and the weak campaigns in the two other races had some senior Liberals from Quebec arguing it was time for the party to wake up and start aiming a major organizational effort at the province.
This G&M story is particularily cruel, excellent >
