2023 By-elections: More Needs to be Done but the Conservatives are “Bringing it Home.”
Canadians in the ridings of Oxford, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, Winnipeg South Centre and Portage-Lisgar have cast their ballot to determine their following Members of Parliament. Although some ridings are still counting the votes, the winners are apparent. Conservative candidates Branden Leslie and Arpan Khanna are bringing it home for Oxford and Portage-Lisgar and are securing their place on Parliament Hill.
In the long-term Conservative rural Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar, voters have chosen Branden Leslie as their next MP. Considering Trudeau’s hostile policies of multiple carbon taxes, which disproportionately hit farmers in a variety of ways from rising production costs to increasing the price of living, there is no chance for the Liberals, or frankly, any radical left-wing political party to win in Portage-Lisgar. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals only won 8.5% of the vote and the NDP 7.1%. The candidate that could have been a threat to the Conservative Branden Leslie would be PPC’s leader Maxime Bernier. PPC’s “only hope” Bernier has long sought a return to the House of Commons and picked the riding he performed relatively well in during the 2021 election cycle. But the 17.2% of the vote he has garnered so far is not even close to the more than 60% of the votes Leslie has. His inconsistent persona and as well as his often far-right positions on a number of issues certainly do not go in his favour.
Despite previous turbulence in the party nomination, Arpan Khanna has secured a relatively strong win in the riding of Oxford, again pushing back against the Trudeau Liberals. "One thing is clear — people believe in Pierre Poilievre's positive vision for our country. We need more freedom in Canada," Khanna said in his victory speech. Indeed, the rising Liberal taxation coupled with the growing number of Liberal scandals has tremendously hit the Liberals and made the Conservative message compelling and resonating among the common working class who feel targeted by Trudeau’s radical policies. Arpan has long been a champion of the Conservative values people long for, or as Pierre Poilievre puts it: the common sense of the common people.
To find out more about his nomination, his views on the current Conservative movement and where he stands on some issues, check out our EXCLUSIVE interview with Arpan Khanna below.
In the other two traditional Liberal constituencies, Conservative candidates performed better than in the last election, putting unprecedented pressure on the Liberals and the NDPs. So far, the CPC’s efforts to get its message across are gradually manifesting in riding all over Canada, but more needs to be done to secure a positive trend of unseating Trudeau Liberals.
In the traditional Liberal riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, former Liberal President Anna Gainey has won as the next MP for the riding. Although much more needs to be done for the Conservative Mathew Kaminski to defeat the former Liberal President, this is tremendous progress done by the Conservatives during this election. Compared to the 2021 federal election cycle in which a 4 percentage point gap existed between the Conservative candidate and the NDP candidate, the gap between them this time is only 0.3%.
Winnipeg South Centre has almost always been dominated by the Liberals. Following the death of Liberal Minister Jim Carr, his son Ben Carr has successfully captured his seat in the House of Commons through this by-election. Though there is still a long way to go for Conservative candidate Damir Stipanovic to fully earn the trust of the voters in Winnipeg South Centre, Damir Stipanovic has widened the lead over NDP from 7.2% in the 2021 election to more than 9%. Siding with the Liberals has been a common practice of the NDP, but this strategy has harmed the NDPs recently due to the increasingly incompetent Liberal administration. Canadians are starting to understand that the NDP is not a true opposition party as it does not oppose the Liberals’ agenda that cripples the working class, those they claim to value the most.
Overall, the momentum of the Conservative movement is growing, and major breakthroughs have been made throughout Canada. However, in order to bring long-lasting and systemic changes to the power dynamics of Canadian federal politics, consistent efforts need to be made to continue this trend of common sense conservatism and truly “bring it home.”
