Canada’s federal conservative leader will have a second chance of winning a seat in parliament when residents of a rural Alberta district cast their ballots in a closely watched byelection on Monday.
Pierre Poilievre’s bid to take the safe seat of Battle River-Crowfoot comes four months after the Conservatives’ defeat in April’s federal election, in which the party leader lost the riding he had held for more than 20 years.
It was an unexpected blow for the 45-year-old career politician who, before the election was upended by Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada, had been widely expected to become the country’s next prime minister.
Despite Poilievre’s defeat, the Conservatives did, however, win enough seats to form the largest official opposition in Canadian history at the expense of other opposition parties. But without a seat in the House of Commons, Poilievre has been unable to serve as leader of the official opposition, hampering his ability to full attack the Liberal government of prime minister Mark Carney.
Conservative MP Damien Kurek, a three-time lawmaker, took Battle River-Crowfoot with nearly 83% of the vote in April, but stood down in June to allow Poilievre to run.
Because of the federal implications of the vote, the byelection has been overshadowed by a protest movement calling for electoral reform, plunging what might have been a routine vote into chaos and uncertainty.
Members of the Longest Ballot Committee have coaxed 203 candidates to add their names the roster, in protest of what they see as poorly structured electoral rules.
For the first time, Elections Canada will requiring voters to fill out a blank ballot with the name of their preferred candidate, instead of printing thousands of metre-long ballots. Elections Canada says votes will be counted even if the voter misspells the candidate’s name.
The Longest Ballot Committee did something similar in April, when it put 90 candidates on the list in Poilievre’s Ottawa-area riding, dramatically slowing down the vote count.
“If I were one of the 53,684 people in Battle River-Crowfoot who voted for Mr Kurek, I would be angry right now. I would be wondering why someone who had received my vote in three elections would suddenly abandon his position as a member of Parliament for a job as a lobbyist,” Barry Rueger, who is among the 214 candidates contesting the vote, wrote in a piece for the Globe and Mail.
“And I’d be wondering how a candidate who had just been defeated in his own riding in Ontario was supposed to understand my needs, and fill the role of a rural Alberta MP.”
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