Lots of nomination news to catch up on towards the end of the week and over the weekend. Let's catch up with some meetings that have already been held, starting with the first one:

• Surrey North, BC - Several readers got in touch to let us know about this nomination meeting we had apparently missed last Sunday, where the NDP nominated Jasbir Sandhu, a restauranteur and associate of the Justice Institute in New Westminster, who is best known for his activism for reparations and an apology in Parliament regarding the Komagata Maru incident. Sandhu will now face first-time Conservative M.P. Dona Marie Cadman, who was elected on the retirement of one-term NDP M.P. Penny Priddy, who herself was elected after the unfortunate passing of former Reform-Alliance-turned-Independent M.P. and Cadman's late husband, Chuck Cadman. The riding was settled by a margin of just 3.2% last time around, with both Cadman and the NDP's Rachid Arab spending some 85% of the limit, with Liberal candidate Marc Muhammad much further back, spending 48% of the limit and obtaining just 15% of the vote. Of the 3 Surrey ridings, Surrey North has the highest proportion of immigrants and visible minorities (including 30.33% South Asian), and the lowest incomes according to nearly every income census measure. It also contains two provincial ridings (Surrey-Whalley and Surrey-Green Timbers) which went overwhelmingly NDP in the recent provincial election. Thus a contest between a Conservative incumbent and local icon on the one hand, and a strong NDP challenger on the other, should be a very interesting study throughout the campaign.
  
• Vancouver Island North, BC - Thanks to a follower on Twitter for bringing a couple of additional clippings to our attention regarding the Liberal nomination meeting held last Monday, September 21, where lawyer and former municipal councillor Mike Holland was acclaimed. Liberals are hoping to improve on their 2008 performance in this riding, where they fell to 4.2% amid a tight two-way race between former NDP M.P. Catherine Bell, and former and returning Conservative M.P. John Duncan. We earlier reported that Bell is planning to run once again for the NDP. Holland told the Comox Valley Echo that he didn't care "whether my votes come from John Duncan or Catherine Bell", he just wanted to make sure that "moderate voters who don't fit either camp" had a voice. Examining the shifts in raw vote between 2006 and 2008, however, it does seem clear that Bell held her vote for the NDP, while the Conservative's Duncan found another 3,000 votes out of the 5,000 fewer votes obtained by the Liberals, with the Greens picking up the rest. This is in marked contrast to the shifts which occurred between 2004 and 2006, where the NDP and Conservative benefitted fairly equally from the earlier 10 percentage point drop in Liberal vote. (Note that the two periods can't be directly compared using raw votes, since the riding's population increased between them). Holland is hoping to regain his party's vote share from the campaign run by Noor Ahmed in 2004, he says, but if he's successful in that endeavour, would we expect to see any improvements come from out of the Conservative or NDP vote? Again, another interesting study for the forthcoming campaign.
• Papineau, QC - The Liberals held a series of three nomination meetings for Montréal incumbent MPs this past week, the first of which saw first-time Liberal M.P. Justin Trudeau acclaimed for a second run in this north Montréal riding, this past Sunday, September 20. Trudeau, whose office was recently broken into and office computer stolen, will most probably be facing a rematch with former Bloc Québécois M.P. Vivian Barbot whom he defeated by 2.8% of the vote last time, in a riding that has switched back and forth between the Liberals and Bloc in each of the last 3 elections by very narrow margins. Barbot announced earlier this month that she intended to run again, although no nomination meeting has been scheduled as yet that I know of.
  
• Honoré-Mercier, QC - The next meeting saw three-term Liberal M.P. Pablo Rodriguez acclaimed for a fourth run in this north Montréal riding, on Tuesday, September 22. While Rodriguez faced tighter contests against the Bloc Québécois in 2004 and 2006, he was able to pull ahead quite a bit more in the last election, managing a 15.7% margin as compared with 3.4% and 5.7% on his two earlier outings.
  
• Westmount – Ville-Marie, QC - The third meeting unfolded on Thursday, September 24 in this downtown riding, where first-time Liberal M.P. Marc Garneau was renominated by acclamation. While the NDP had had high hopes for this riding -- with their star candidate former CBC Radio host Anne Lagacé Dowson and the opportunity to wage a traditional NDP by-election campaign -- in the end a general election was called, eclipsing the by-election and producing a comfortable win for Garneau, who obtained 46.5% of the vote to Lagacé Dowson's 22.9% (still her party's 3rd best performance of any riding in Québec). No word whether she plans to run again, or who any of the other candidates here might be as yet.
  
• Richmond – Arthabaska, QC - Also on Thursday, three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. André Bellevance was acclaimed for a fifth run in this riding, according to La Nouvelle/l'Union. He lost on his first outing in 2000 to former Progressive Conservative M.P. André Bachand, but won the seat in 2004 after Bachand's retirement, facing first a Liberal and later two Conservative second-place challengers in his three successful campaigns. This time he will face recently nominated Liberal Louis Bérubé. No other candidates have been named as yet.
  
• Oshawa, ON - Probably the most significant nomination for the NDP on Thursday, September 24 was the acclamation of CAW Local 222 president Chris Buckley in one of the traditional auto industry ridings in southern Ontario, which was at one time the preserve of then-NDP Leader Ed Broadbent. Buckley's name was placed into nomination by former federal and provincial candidate and CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan, and Oshawa municipal councillor and former Broadbent aide, Nester Pidwerbecki, according to NewsDurhamRegion.com. I've run down its electoral history extensively already here, but suffice it to say that the NDP has come within 5 7 percentage points of taking the riding in each of the last three campaigns, and does not appear keen to give up trying; while the Conservatives recently brought in Senator Mike Duffy to rally the troops for three-time Conservative M.P. Colin Carrie. No Liberal candidate is on the horizon as yet, while the Greens have nominated first-time candidate Gail Bates. The nomination is significant for the NDP, of course, both because of the riding's history and because of the party's strained relationship with the CAW under its previous president, Basil J. ("Buzz") Hargrove. Moreover, even within the CAW, Local 222 has often gone its own way: it was the very last local in Canada to split with the UAW and join the CAW, and in the early 1990s sought to affiliate with the Reform Party and break with the NDP. Buckley's candidacy, along with that of Malcolm Allen in Welland, and the recent ascendancy to the presidency of the party by CAW staffer Peggy Nash, all signal a rapprochement between the CAW and the NDP, much as the CAW has moved to strengthen its relationship with other OFL member unions over the past year under the new CAW president Ken Lewenza.
  
• Windsor West, ON - A much less surprising nomination in another auto town occurred the same night, when four-term NDP M.P. Brian Masse was acclaimed for another run here. He will be facing the same Conservative opponent as last time, Lisa Lumley, who moved into second place ahead of the Liberals. Masse was re-elected with over 50% of the vote in 2008, however, having increased his vote share in each of his last three campaigns.
  
• Vancouver East, BC - Much further west, another NDP incumbent was renominated later the same evening, as we learned from five-term M.P. Libby Davies' tweet. The nomination meeting appeared to have been moved up to Thursday from its original date of Saturday, October 17, as Davies tweeted, in order to "be ready". Given that Davies is her party's House Leader, we might wonder what she knows that we don't know about how events are set to unfold in the coming weeks. To date Davies has no nominated or even identified opponents in this riding, which she has won with over 50% of the vote on each of her last three outings.
  
• St. John's East, NL - NDP M.P. Jack Harris was acclaimed the following night at the other end of the country, according to the news release on his Facebook page. No challengers have emerged from other parties as yet. Harris took nearly 75% of the vote in 2008 here.
  
• Ahuntsic, QC - One M.P. who would probably give her eye teeth for 75% of the vote is two-term Bloc Québécois member Maria Mourani, who has won her riding by 834 and 423 votes respectively in each of her last two campaigns, representing margins of victory of less than 2% of the vote each time. Mourani was renominated by acclamation on Friday night, according to the Courrier Ahuntsic, and will probably be facing newly recruited Liberal candidate Noushig Eloyan who recently resigned from the municipal Vision Montréal slate at Liberal Québec lieutenant Denis Coderre's urging to seek the nomination here, as we reported earlier.
  
• Welland, ON - NDP Leader Jack Layton joined his first-time M.P. Malcolm Allen at a series of events around the Niagara earlier Saturday (September 26), followed by his nomination meeting at which Allen was acclaimed. Allen now faces former Liberal M.P. John Maloney who was nominated to run again back on June 19, and freshly nominated Conservative candidate Leanna Villella (I apologize for mis-spelling Ms. Villella's first name as Leanne in a previous blogpost). The riding had been the 3rd closest 3-way race of the 2006 election, and moved up to the #2 spot in the same category this past election, a fact which undoubtedly explains Layton's presence in the riding and at Allen's nomination meeting.
  
• Winnipeg Centre, MB - Also on Saturday, Liberals met in this downtown Winnipeg riding to acclaim community development specialist Allan Wise as their candidate. Wise now joins already-nominated Conservative candidate Bev Pitura, Green candidate Jacqueline Romanow, and eventually five-term NDP M.P. Pat Martin, whose original nomination meeting scheduled for Friday has apparently been postponed due to events related to the provincial NDP leadership campaign in which one of his provincial MLA counterparts in the riding, Andrew Swan, is running.
  
• Richmond, BC - Probably the most significant nomination meeting for the Liberals this weekend was the well-attended and very hotly contested nomination in this riding, which pitted two former MPs and long-time rivals against each other and another former nomination contestant from a neighbouring riding. While former MPs Chan and Peschisolido had challenged one another for the Liberal nomination once before in 2004, when Chan came out on top of Peschisolido (then a sitting M.P. but one who had crossed the floor from the Canadian Alliance); this time it was Peschisolido who was successful. And in the cruelest of ironies, it was largely Chan's supporters who probably put him there, once their own candidate dropped off the ballot after placing a distant third behind both newcomer Mason Loh and Peschisolido, reported the Richmond Review late Saturday evening. Indeed one report had Loh winning the first ballot, with Peschisolido only taking the lead once Chan dropped off. Just 1,500 of the expected 4,000 eligible voters cast a ballot, the Review says. Both unsuccessful chinese candidates pledged their support to the italian victor for the coming election. The riding is currently represented by first-time Conservative M.P. Alice Wong.
  

Well, that's enough for me tonight. I'll come back and write the upcoming meetings and other nomination news for you on Sunday morning.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Greens, Liberals, NDP