With an election on the horizon, Poilievre's Conservatives sign up dozens of new candidates
The next federal election could be more than a year away but political parties are already deep into plan‐ ning their next campaigns and recruiting new candi‐ dates.
Well ahead in the polls and reporting record-break‐ ing sums in political dona‐ tions, the Conservatives are also leading the pack on nominating candidates new to federal politics.
To date, the Conservative Party of Canada has nomi‐ nated about 40 new faces as candidates. The party cur‐ rently has 118 members of Parliament.
Elections Canada records, coupled with publicly avail‐ able information, show the Conservatives have been naming new candidates al‐ most every week since the beginning of the year, espe‐ cially in Ontario and British Columbia.
The newly-recruited Con‐ servative candidates include:
Karen Stintz, a former longtime Toronto city council‐ lor; she's nominated in the Toronto riding of EglintonLawrence. She was also the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission. The riding cur‐ rently is held by Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Marco Mendicino.
Other new Conservative nominees include a former provincial Progressive Con‐ servative cabinet minister, the former mayor of TroisRivières and a British Colum‐ bia MLA.
Pollster Shachi Kurl, presi‐ dent of the Angus Reid Insti‐ tute, said being able to at‐ tract new candidates is a sign of the Conservative Party's political momentum.
"When you've got a 20point gap in terms of polling across a number of different polls, there's one party that looks like it's got that mo‐ mentum," she said.
It's not clear how many current Conservative MPs are reoffering, or how many have been nominated already. A handful of Conservative MPs - including Colin Carrie, Ed Fast, Ron Liepert and Gary Vi‐ dal - have said they're not re‐ offering.
The party came in for criti‐ cism last week when a former journalist dropped out of the race for the nomi‐ nation in Aurora-Oak RidgesRichmond Hill, claiming the process had been "cor‐ rupted." The party has re‐ jected Sabrina Maddeaux's claim.
The Conservative Party did not respond to a request for comment about their nomination process.
Nominees - but no new faces - for the Liberals
Liberal Party spokesperson Parker Lund provided a list of 88 nominees for the next federal election. So far, all of the nominees are current members of Parliament.
Most of the Liberal cab‐ inet, including Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Foreign Affairs
Minister Mélanie Joly and Public Safety Minister Do‐ minic LeBlanc, are on the list to reoffer.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not yet nominated in his longtime Montreal rid‐ ing of Papineau.
Some other cabinet minis‐ ters not yet nominated in their ridings include Agricul‐ ture Minister Lawrence MacAulay, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Minis‐ ter Gudie Hutchings and Min‐ ister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya'ara Saks.
Parties don't need to nominate candidates until the writ period begins. And given that the next election may not happen until the fall of 2025, current MPs have plenty of time to make up their minds.
In a media statement, Lund said the Liberals will "have more announcements in the weeks and months ahead."
The Liberal Party requires that MPs hit certain quotas before they're eligible to run
In a statement, NDP national director Lucy Watson said the party is "ahead of schedule," with 42 nominated candi‐ dates and six additional nomination meetings sched‐ uled in the coming weeks.
Watson pointed to a handful of new candidates running under the party ban‐ ner this time. They include Montreal city councillor Craig Sauvé (who is set to run in Liberal MP David Lametti's former riding of LasalleÉmard-Verdun), Mayor of Sooke, B.C. Maja Tait and Mary Shortall, the former president of the Newfound‐ land and Labrador Federa‐ tion of Labour.
Former Nova Scotia MLA Lisa Roberts is set to run in Halifax, and former Port Co‐ quitlam, B.C. city councillor Laura Dupont is nominated to run in Coquitlam-Port Co‐ quitlam.
Of the 42 nominations, the party says 13 are incum‐ bents. Five of the party's in‐ cumbents have already an‐ nounced they're not reoffer‐ ing: Richard Cannings, Ran‐ dall Garrison, Charlie Angus, Carol Hughes and Rachel Blaney. A sixth, Daniel Blaikie, has left his role as an MP al‐ ready to work with Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew.
As the only recognized federal party that nominates candidates in just one province, the Bloc Quebecois' task is relatively easy. Instead of running people in all 343 ridings, it only has to nomi‐ nate 77 Quebec candidates.
In a media statement, Bloc press secretary Julien Coulombe-Bonnafous said the party has nominated Simon Bérubé in the Quebec City riding currently held by Liberal cabinet minister JeanYves Duclos.
Coulombe-Bonnafous said more nominations will be announced soon.