Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Is Vancouver-Granville Canada’s newest bellwether riding?

This marathon federal election campaign has featured a menagerie of political slang, from the proverbial “horse race” to strategies like the “dead cat” (a sudden, desperate change in topic) and “dog-whistle” (dastardly hidden meanings).
Vancouver-Granville
Could the new federal riding of Vancouver-Granville, dubbed #VanGran on Twitter, be Canada’s next bellwether? Photo Dan Toulgoet

This marathon federal election campaign has featured a menagerie of political slang, from the proverbial “horse race” to strategies like the “dead cat” (a sudden, desperate change in topic) and “dog-whistle” (dastardly hidden meanings).

Various networks will scan the tallies from coast to coast to coast on Oct. 19 and deliver decisions from their decision desks. You are bound to hear about bellwether ridings — contests that foretell the national result. (Yes, even this is animal-related. Bellwether originally described a bell-toting, castrated ram that led the flock.)

In southwestern Ontario, Sarnia-Lambton has chosen a member of the winning party since 1963. As Kamloops has gone in B.C. elections, so has the rest of the province since 1903.

Could the new federal riding of Vancouver-Granville, dubbed #VanGran on Twitter, be Canada’s next bellwether?

Assembled with parts hived off from NDP-held Vancouver-Kingsway, Liberal-since-1993 Vancouver-Centre, Liberal/Conservative battleground Vancouver-South and a chunk of Liberal-since-1984 Vancouver-Quadra, this made-for-2015 riding was the product of population-driven redistribution. The next House of Commons will swell by 30 members to 338. If no party achieves the magic 170 for a majority, then expect “horse trading” to create a coalition government or force another election.

Insights West vice-president Mario Canseco calls Vancouver-Granville “the jewel in the crown” for whichever party wins.

“There is this part in the middle that is just big houses, Angus Drive, lots of mansions and the map is completely blue there, but it’s a different election than four years ago,” Canseco told the Courier. “You didn’t have a Liberal Party that was as strong as it is now nationally and you didn’t have the NDP starting the campaign with the possibility of running the government.”

Elections Canada describes Vancouver Granville as running “generally along the spine of Granville Street from Fourth Avenue to the Fraser River. In the north, it is within eyesight of False Creek’s south shore and encompasses condo-dotted Fairview Slopes and parts of densely populated Kitsilano and Mount Pleasant. The riding rises to South Cambie, Oakridge and declines to Marpole, three areas undergoing massive change.  

Main Street is part of the eastern boundary. To the west is “Easy Street” (a.k.a. Shaughnessy) and the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Arbutus rail tracks that run through Kerrisdale.

It is a race between two lawyers (Conservative Erinn Broshko and Liberal Jody Wilson-Raybould), an accountant (Green Michael Barkusky) and professional political campaigner (NDP’s Mira Oreck).

Broshko’s career took him into running a biomedical company and then an investment house. He got the Tory nod over former NPA city councillor Jennifer Clarke, a 2011 loser in Vancouver-Centre. Broshko may have the biggest lawn sign anywhere in Canada at King Edward and Granville but, like many Tories, skipped several all-candidates meetings, hoping to encourage centre-left vote-splitting.

Wilson-Raybould and Oreck are both star candidates. Former Crown prosecutor Wilson-Raybould has the higher profile, as an ex-B.C. Treaty commissioner and regional Assembly of First Nations chief. Oreck had a hand in the backroom for Vision Vancouver’s three wins, produced Jewish Council for Education and Research’s viral pro-Obama videos in 2012 and works as an organizer with the left-wing Broadbent Institute think tank.

She lives outside the riding, in East Vancouver but boasts Kerrisdale roots. The Vision Vancouver machine is behind her — from the polling/robocalling operation Stratcom to mayor’s aide Kevin Quinlan to councillors like Geoff Meggs and Heather Deal.

The key to victory in a three-way, plus spoiler, race is getting out the vote. In an Oct. 2 column for Toronto’s Corriere Canadese, Pollara Strategic Insights chairman Michael Marzolini said the NDP held the national edge in the 18-25 bracket over the Liberals, who dominate the 35-to-54s. But the “overwhelmingly Conservative” 55-and-up bloc votes in higher numbers than others.

The northern half of the riding roughly conforms with the provincial Vancouver-Fairview riding, reclaimed for the NDP by George Heyman in 2013. South of 33rd, the bastion of Vancouver’s old money historically backs free enterprise candidates federally and provincially.

Will the rapid demographic changes of recent years along the Granville axis — aging baby boomers cashing-out and wealthy mainland Chinese moving-in — play a role?

Listen for that ring on Oct. 19.

@bobmackin

bob@bobmackin.ca