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Liberals lose dominance in Atlantic Canada, fall six seats short of 2015 sweep

'It’s not the same Atlantic Canada that it once was, where people remain loyal to the same party as their grandparents, and party was almost like a religious denomination'

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The Liberals lost their blanket support of the Atlantic provinces Monday night, as the Conservatives won four seats in the Maritimes, the Greens took one seat in New Brunswick and the New Democrats won a single seat in St. John’s.

“It’s not the same Atlantic Canada that it once was,” says Tom Urbaniak, a political science professor at Cape Breton University, “where people remain loyal to the same party as their grandparents, and party was almost like a religious denomination — a party you remain with through thick and thin. A lot of voters are sort of de-anchored from traditional ways.”

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In 2015, the Liberals won every seat in Atlantic Canada, swinging many rural ridings to the left despite their traditional Conservative bent. With the retirement of Liberals, including the long-time incumbent Rodger Cuzner, and along with the unpopularity of the Liberal premier in Nova Scotia and a controversial candidate in Cape Breton, Justin Trudeau’s party dropped from 32 to 26 seats.

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In Fredericton, voters elected Green candidate Jenica Atwin, earning the Green Party its first federal victory beyond British Columbia. Cape Bretoners also departed from a traditional Liberal vote, giving one of two seats to the Conservative Party, which had placed strong bets on the island following the resignation of Liberal MPs Cuzner and Mark Eyking. The Tories had recruited two established local names, Alfie MacLeod and Eddie Orrell, both of whom left their jobs as members of the legislative assembly to run federally.

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While MacLeod lost a tight race to Liberal Mike Kelloway, Liberal Jaime Battiste won Sydney-Victoria amid controversy. As a Mi’kmaq historian and legal advisor, Battiste became Nova Scotia’s first Indigenous member of Parliament. In early October, the Toronto Sun published tweets dated 2012 and later in which Battiste made statements that were misogynistic, homophobic and racist.

Trudeau acknowledged Battiste’s harmful posts but did not drop him as a candidate. Shortly after the publication, Battiste posted on his Facebook page, “Taking the high road and asking all my supporters to do the same. It’s about our future not about the past.”

Cape Bretoners also proved forgiving toward Trudeau when images emerged of the leader wearing blackface costumes.

“It was certainly a topic of conversation, but it was not an existential crisis for the Liberal campaign in this part of Canada,” Urbaniak says. “It stalled the Liberal campaign for a couple of days, but it didn’t play out as a show-stopper.”

Aside from recruiting established candidates, the Tories further prioritized Cape Breton by sending Andrew Scheer to visit the island in August — the first time a federal Conservative leader had visited the region in recent memory.

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As for Jagmeet Singh’s campaign trail, some observers were surprised he did not visit Newfoundland, where he could have touted that he had lived on the island in his early childhood. As the NDP candidate in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, former city councillor Anne Marie Anonsen lost to Minister of Indigenous Services Seamus O’Regan. Still, New Democrat Jack Harris defeated Liberal Nick Whalen in St. John’s East, where Harris had lost by fewer than 650 votes in the previous election.

Although Singh stayed off Newfoundland, he did visit New Brunswick — in particular, the riding of Acadie-Bathurst, where his party held a seat for 18 years — but the Liberals also retained this seat. In Nova Scotia, the Liberals were expected to be hurt by the unpopularity of Liberal Premier Stephen McNeil, who has just a 16 per cent approval rate as of June, with the upset largely triggered by the acute doctor shortage that has left 52,000 Nova Scotians without a family physician. Yet, the party won all but one seat in the province, including the riding of Kings-Hants previously held by Scott Brison.

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Atlantic Canada was ripe for smaller parties to make greater Atlantic headway, says Urbaniak in Cape Breton. While Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada did not even run candidates in 15 Atlantic ridings, the Green Party held potential in Charlottetown given the provincial Green party’s historic win in April, when it became the official opposition in the legislature.

In Nova Scotia, the federal Greens may have been hurt by the state of the provincial Green Party. In 2016, provincial Green Party leader Brynn Nheily told the media the party would dissolve, although the party still ran candidates in the provincial election the following year. Deputy Green Party Leader Jo-Ann Roberts lost the Halifax riding to Liberal incumbent Andy Fillmore, despite Roberts being personally endorsed by David Suzuki.

“There is a chunk of what we would almost call like a ‘protest vote’ out there, and you can almost sense it trying to park itself somewhere,” said Urbaniak. “The Green campaign has been a little bit disappointing in most of the Atlantic region, even though they had a chance to make more inroads. Their candidates for the most part simply weren’t ready. They weren’t getting a lot of resources from the national headquarters. They were kind of left on their own.”

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