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“Liberal Rush” tricked voters in NDP ridings and exposed an electoral system flaw
George Le Masurier photo
“Liberal Rush” tricked voters in NDP ridings and exposed an electoral system flaw
By
The 2025 federal election turned out pretty much as expected. The Liberals won a strong minority government. The Conservatives swept Alberta and Saskatechen. The NDP lost official status in the “Liberal Rush.” But who could have predicted Pierre Poilievre would be so unpopular in his own riding?
With 168 Liberal seats, seven NDP and one Green, this government looks solid for a whole term. That stability will benefit Canadians as the Mark Carney government deals with Trump and the economic chaos he has caused.
We fortunately escaped the damage to Canada that Poilievre – the “Mini-Me Trump” – would have caused by channeling the US Presidents attacks on education, the CBC and media, clean energy initiatives and more.
Now here comes the “But ….” Despite the positive big picture outcome, this election exposed a glaring vulnerability within our electoral system.
And that vulnerability caused otherwise smart people to forget how our Canadian parliamentary system actually works. Namely: We do not have a proportional representation form of government.
A Canadian majority or strong minority government gives a single party almost dictatorial powers to change and make laws, to decide how to spend our money and to shape our social, environmental and financial futures.
That’s because, like today’s American Congress, our provincial and federal governments vote in a block. If you’re a federal MP or a provincial MLA, you’re expected to vote how your party’s caucus tells you to vote. Exceptions to this rule are rare and usually get you booted out of town.
So it makes sense that when voters go to the polls on election day, they cast their ballots for the party they want to form the government, the party whose values, policies and promises align with their own.
And there’s the problem. What if the party you align with best has no hope of winning your riding? What if there are three parties running candidates in your riding and you like parts of all of them? What if you want to vote for one party in your riding but doing so will result in the election of another party that you detest, that stands for the opposite of everything you value?
Those were the conflicts facing many voters on Vancouver Island this year. And it was the NDP, Liberals and Green parties themselves that squeezed Island voters into this awkward and divisive situation.
When the NDP, Liberals and federal Greens all ran candidates against a single Conservative, the parties forced progressive voters to figure out on their own how the vote would split and where their vote would do the most good.
Sadly, the Liberal party enthusiasm convinced many traditional NDP voters on the Island to buy into the fantasy that a Liberal candidate could win in ridings like North Island-Powell River (NIPR) where they’ve never finished better than third for over half a century.
They sold “The whole country’s going Liberal this year” like snake oil hustlers in the Wild West. It was a hollow promise.
Yes, it’s true that the Liberals got about 12,000 more votes in the North Island-Powell River riding than they did in 2021 – most of those stolen from the NDP.
But they still finished third and accomplished nothing.
The whole push to “Vote Liberal” didn’t help anybody. It didn’t help the Liberal party win the riding. It didn’t help the NDP, which fell about 5,000 votes short. And it won’t help the majority of people living in the riding – especially indigenous people – who will now be represented by somebody they didn’t want and who will be a do-nothing opposition backbencher.
It had, in fact, the opposite effect of what the Liberals intended.
In NIPR, the Liberals, NDP and Greens tallied 47,819 combined votes compared to 30,551 for the Conservative. It should have been a dominant mandate for progressive values: 60.6 percent.
But we still lost. A gift to the Conservatives.
It was the same sad story in Nanaimo and Cowichan. Across the province, this strategy resulted in a gain of four Liberal seats but a loss of 10 NDP seats, for a net loss of six progressive MPs.
Did people get swept by the charm of Mark Carney and think they were voting for him? Canadians don’t elect a prime minister. We elect MPs in ridings and the leader of the party with the most seats becomes our PM.
After this election, the political parties and many individual candidates will take time to reflect on their campaigns and how their strategies correlated with the final results.
Conservatives will try to understand how they lost a 25 point lead in about eight weeks. Pierre Poilievre will reflect on how he lost his seat in Parliament. Political operatives from all parties will try to assess the effect US President Trump had on this election. The NDP will think about its future as a viable federal party.
Voters should take time to reflect, too, on whether their vote choice got the result they wanted. They might also think about which were the informative and trustworthy sources of information they relied on to make those choices, and which were not.
In the election aftermath, there will be a renewed call for electoral reform. Proponents of proportional representation will make another noble attempt, but Ottawa will be wary of such a fundamental change while Trump still has eyes on our natural resources.
The simpler solution is for the three progressive parties on Vancouver Island to embrace the greater good of sustaining and expanding progressive ideals by fielding a single candidate in the next election.
In short, stop fighting among ourselves.
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