Early call exposes gaps in ridings
Main federal parties scramble to name 140 candidates across Canada
The election may be on, but the three main parties are still fielding incomplete teams as between them, the Conservatives, NDP and Liberals still must nominate about 140 candidates.
The NDP and Liberals say they will hasten nominations so candidates can hit the hustings as soon as possible.
Plugging all those holes could take weeks, but some analysts suggest the election campaign’s unprecedented length offers some flexibility for those playing catchup.
Of the three main parties, the NDP has the most work ahead of it. Spokesman George Soule said there are still 61 ridings in which the party hasn’t named a candidate.
There are a total of 338 ridings across the country for this election.
About 40 NDP nomination meetings have been scheduled for August, but Soule couldn’t say if every riding will have a candidate by Labour Day.
Soule attributed the NDP’s slower pace to its process for identifying prospective candidates. Local riding associations have to prove they searched for women, visible minorities and representatives from other traditionally underrepresented groups to run for a nomination. Only then can a vote be held within the riding.
The NDP will likely expedite some nominations, Soule said, particularly in cases where there is only one candidate running. However, he suggested the party wasn’t feeling any extra urgency to fill its lineup because of the election call.
“We’re very excited about the strength of the team,” he said.
“And we’re definitely at a good pace to be finished very quickly.”
The Liberals, meanwhile, have the most confirmed nominees. Spokesman Olivier Duchesneau said the party still has 35 ridings without a candidate. Dates have been set for nomination meetings in several ridings, and Duchesneau said the party will likely expedite the rest.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau does have the power to appoint candidates, and some Liberals had feared he would appoint former Montreal mayoral candidate Mélanie Joly as the party candidate in Ahuntsic-Cartierville. But Duchesneau said the Liberals will hold a nomination vote in every riding with more than one candidate.
On Tuesday, the Liberal party announced an Ahuntsic-Cartierville nomination meeting for Aug. 23.
The Conservatives sit between the Liberals and NDP with 44 candidates yet to be named, according to political website Pundits’ Guide. Like the Liberals, they also have two nomination meetings scheduled. The Conservative party did not respond to requests for comment.
Analysts say there could be several reasons why a party hasn’t completed a nomination contest in a specific riding. Those include an effort to maximize interest in the party with a hotly contested nomination battle, or fears that the only person running is a potential liability. It’s also possible the riding simply is not a priority.
The Conservatives have a candidate in only one of seven ridings in Newfoundland and Labrador. Tim Powers, a Conservative commentator and vice-chair of Summa Strategies, said that suggests they don’t think they have a chance in the province. Pundits’ Guide lists nine NDP candidates for Alberta’s 34 ridings.
“The ones that probably aren’t done are the ones that are going to be harder for parties to win,” said Powers. “All three major parties want to be able to say, ‘Look, we have candidates in all 338 ridings. We have that because we’re a national party.’ So there’s a symbolic requirement to get some of these things done. But the first order of business is to get the contenders up and running so they can have a shot at winning.”
Some prospective candidates have publicly suggested that even if they win the nomination in their riding, they will be playing catchup against counterparts from other parties who may have been out campaigning for weeks or even months.
“If you take up a long time on the front end for the nomination, then there’s less and less time on the back end to win for the election, which is the whole purpose of the nomination,” Viken Attarian told the Citizen last week. Attarian is running against Joly for the Liberal nomination in AhuntsicCartierville.
Similar concerns were voiced in the lead-up to the Liberal nomination meeting in EglintonLawrence, where lawyer Marco Mendicino recently beat former Conservative MP Eve Adams for the Liberal nomination.
Ian Capstick, a managing partner at MediaStyle and former political staffer, didn’t think there was any reason for panic yet, particularly given the extraordinary length of this year’s federal campaign. He said there are many instances of candidates taking a year off to campaign before an election, but no proof it matters.
“Nobody needs to light their hair on fire yet,” Capstick said. “We’ve seen a lot of candidates join the race at the very last minute and be able to win.”
Powers said depending on the riding and depending on the circumstances, parties have a few weeks to get their teams in place before things start to matter. “But if you’re crossing past Labour Day, you’re limiting the person’s ability to campaign effectively.”