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BALDREY: Trudeau’s ace up his sleeve is other party leaders

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to take a drubbing over the whole Jody Wilson-Raybould/SNC Lavalin affair it is far from clear whether any fall in his popularity will extend to B.C.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to take a drubbing over the whole Jody Wilson-Raybould/SNC Lavalin affair it is far from clear whether any fall in his popularity will extend to B.C.

In fact, if there is a significant decline in Liberal Party fortunes nationally come the election this fall, this province may provide enough of a backstop to keep Trudeau in at least a minority government position and not create a Conservative majority.

B.C., in particular, unleashed a wave of Trudeaumania in the 2015 election and there is little evidence it has diminished to any significant degree. He is still accorded near-rock star status when he attends events in B.C., and the selfie requests do not seem to be decreasing.

Despite the loud and non-stop national news coverage of the perceived scandal, Trudeau has several aces up his sleeve: the other national political leaders of this country.

It is hard to envision many people jumping off the Trudeau wagon and onto those being driven by the Conservatives’ Andrew Scheer, the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, or the fledging People’s Party’s Maxime Bernier.

Singh, especially, appears to be stuck in neutral. His party has sunk almost out of sight in Quebec, he’s losing incumbent caucus members left and right, and he cannot seem to resonate with the voters. I assume he will win the crucial Burnaby South byelection on Feb. 25, but that victory may prove to be a pyrrhic one. 

If he loses (unlikely but certainly a possibility) his party could be plunged into a leadership crisis that, at the very least, would prove to be a distraction with just precious months to go before the fall vote. Hard to see that hurting Trudeau’s numbers.

Scheer seems to be picking up his game a bit, but still seems a long way from being prime ministerial material. Winning a majority government seems like a distant mirage at this point for the Conservatives.

And Bernier’s party remains a bit of an extremist one, with any support confined to pockets of Quebec (if anything, his party is a threat to the Conservatives in Quebec).

So with a fairly weak opposition presenting themselves as alternatives to his leadership, Trudeau has some room to lose some popularity while not seeing that translate into any big boost for his rivals.

Are Liberals upset about the Wilson-Raybould situation really going to switch to the lackluster NDP in great numbers, or to the ideologically opposite Conservatives to any appreciable degree? I rather doubt either scenario will occur.

Furthermore, when the B.C. results from the 2015 federal election are examined, it shows just how much breathing room Trudeau may have out here. In a number of ridings, the Liberals won big.

Of the 17 seats the Liberals won in B.C., 10 of them were secured by margins of more than 6,000 votes. For the party to lose any of those ridings would require defections on a massive scale to other parties or to the living room couch instead of the voting booth.

The worst-case scenario for Trudeau and the Liberals is likely the loss of just several seats in the outer Fraser Valley (Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge) and Vancouver suburbs (Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam and Steveston-Richmond).

Everywhere else – with the possible exception of Burnaby North-Seymour, where the Trans Mountain pipeline may be a vote determining issue – appears relatively safe.

While federal elections are usually decided in the riding rich provinces of Ontario and Quebec, if the Liberals can hang onto a dozen or so seats in B.C. they might just secure, at the very least, a minority government.

Now, about that scandal. Having covered more than a dozen elections, I long ago concluded that scandals do not move voters the way other issues – especially pocketbook ones – do.

In addition, I am not sure how much the SNC-Lavalin scandal affects B.C. voters anyway.

It certainly does not seem to bother the B.C. NDP government, which without fanfare recently announced the short-list of companies to bid on building components of the new Pattullo Bridge.

Front and center on that short list?

None other than SNC-Lavalin.

Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC. Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca

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