Cracks in the East Van stronghold

With just a few days to go before the federal election, all eyes are on the two front-running parties. As of Thursday, April 24, polls have the Liberals leading nationally with 42.2 per cent of the vote compared to the Conservatives at 38.5 per cent. Meanwhile, the NDP languishes far behind, sitting at 8.8 per cent. The NDP won about 18 per cent of the popular vote in 2021. 

In East Van, national trends and an existential threat from down south appear to be translating into substantial Liberal gains. 

With Canadian sovereignty threatened and tariffs still looming, Vancouver East Liberal supporter Thomas Panos says there is a growing feeling among lifelong NDP voters in his circle that Mark Carney, with his long and illustrious CV, is “just the right man for the moment.” 

“I don’t want to say they’re holding their noses,” Panos said of his more left-leaning friends, “but they’re going to vote Liberal this time, because of the existential threat that we’re facing. It has much less to do with strategically voting against Pollievre, and it’s more like asking ‘who do we think can help us the most?’”

NDP incumbents Don Davies and Jenny Kwan have held their Vancouver Kingsway and Vancouver East seats since 2008 and 2015, respectively, and both ridings are considered orange strongholds. Historically, Vancouver East has gone NDP since the party was founded in 1961, with just two one-term Liberal MP’s breaking up their dominance. Prior to Davies, Kingsway voters picked Liberal representatives for the previous decade but have also largely chosen NDP MPs since the 60s.

However, Kingsway is now being called a “toss-up,” and Vancouver East is seeing Liberal support grow steadily, according to strategic voting resource SmartVoting. 

Conservative candidates are still lagging much further behind the Liberal and NDP candidates in both ridings, so “vote splitting” on the left is not considered a serious concern in either one. But NDP voters in these ridings may be defecting to the Liberal camp for ideological reasons, according to SFU political science professor Dr. Sanjay Jeram. 

“What you have is a ballot question that is turning people to focus on something beyond … their general priorities.”

Jeram calls this a “different kind of strategic voting,” whereby larger international forces could be overriding local issues. 

“I think strategic voting …looks a bit different [this time] in that Mark Carney is not running to the left,” says Jeram. “It's not like the previous election where you had Justin Trudeau moving to the left and actually trying to convince NDP voters that he shares their priorities.”

Despite Carney not pandering to the left, the NDP’s base may be more likely than they have in the past to shift their votes because of demographic changes, in East Van and nationwide. Jerum explained how the NDP base has been changing from “predominantly working class” voters to “one that is sort of mixed but highly educated, and that votes for them based on values.” 

Those [newer NDP voters] are the people … that could be more open to Carney in this context – because they're not voting for their interests, they're voting on feelings,” Jerum said. 

Jerum believes local polls suggest this too. Conservative support appears relatively stable in both ridings, he pointed out, but Liberal support is inching upwards. So, “it just seems like the only logical inference is that it's from NDP voters,” Jerum said.

Milo Wu, a youth counselor living in the Kingsway riding said he’ll be switching his vote. “I have been a lifelong NDP person, but I am voting Liberal this time to send a message of unity. To strengthen the governing voice,” Wu said. 

Longtime self-described “left-of-centre” Liberal supporter Bill Paskiewich, whose house is adorned with all sorts of colourful Canadian paraphernalia, including a pair of Heinz Ketchup socks that hang from his front door, believes that outsider Liberal candidate and real estate agent Mark Wiens could defeat incumbent Jenny Kwan and ride the “Carney momentum” into parliament. 

Paskiewich, a retired mill quality supervisor who has lived in his East Van home for 50 years, says “the anti-Trump thing, and the cost at the till are on everyone’s minds.” Paskiewich adds that he would be out there canvassing for Wiens if it weren’t for his recent knee operation. 

Another nearby resident who was too busy making dinner to answer questions about how he was planning to vote, wanted to make one thing clear over the sound of his dog barking: “All I can tell you is I’m voting for Carney.”

Jerum, who also lives in Vancouver-East, said he’s “never seen the Liberals mobilize in the riding like they have. Anecdotal evidence points to the fact that the Liberals believe they can win.” Jerum concurs, saying he believes the riding is culturally, demographically, and economically diverse enough that the Liberals could benefit from a last-minute push, especially from new voters who may not have felt their vote counted in the past. 

A collective sense of patriotic duty seems to be at least in part driving voters to the polls this go-around, with record advance voting numbers perhaps reflecting many voters’ determination to protect fundamental Canadian values. This momentum will likely carry into voting day on Monday.

As Canadians mobilize to vote, Jayden Quiring, a young Liberal campaigner, says he’s been sensing a shift in Vancouver East: “Some houses I’m going to, you can notice opinions changing. Some people just aren’t happy with Jenny Kwan. She’s been in office a long time,” Quiring argued.

Kwan began her political career at age 26 as the youngest ever member of Vancouver City Council, before moving to provincial politics in 1996. In 2001, Kwan was one of two NDP MLAs to survive the party’s collapse at the hands of Gordon Campbell’s Liberals. She was first elected as the MP for Vancouver East in 2015, and has won two subsequent elections. 

In Kingsway, the Liberals have turned the riding into a battleground for the first time since Davies took it over 17 years ago. Liberal candidate Amy Gill, an accountant by trade, will have to fight tooth and nail to unseat Davies, the longest-serving MP in Kingsway’s history. Before his tenure as MP, Davies served workers and unions as the director of legal services for Teamsters Canada for 16 years. 

Some local NDP supporters say they’re going to stay the course. Grace, a longtime Kingsway resident and care aide, said she will be supporting Don Davies again because she likes what he represents: “He is fighting to make life better for working people,” Grace said. Grace was one of several voters Vancity Lookout spoke with who didn’t want to share their last names. 

In the NDP campaign’s homestretch, Leader Jagmeet Singh directly addressed the issue of Liberal gains in his party’s core ridings. Less than a week before election day, Singh told supporters at his Burnaby press conference that “British Columbians will decide what happens next; whether Mark Carney gets a supermajority, or whether there are enough New Democrats in Parliament to hold the line.” 

This message is resonating with longtime Vancouver East NDP voter Julian. “Lately, best-case scenario has absolutely been a minority government where the NDP holds the balance of power,” he says. “A lot of my friends aren’t tremendously impressed with Jagmeet because he hasn’t been making enough of an impact... but he actually achieved stuff, like dental care,” Julian said. 

In Canada’s first-past-the-post system, strategic voting and vote shifting in elections like this one can strain smaller parties, potentially leading to a more polarized two-party system. Jordan, a Vancouver East voter who moved to Canada from Iran 20 years ago and preferred not to give his real name, says it’s unfortunate that the system discourages people from voting for third-party candidates. “If Trudeau had actually followed through on his 2015 campaign promise [of doing away with first-past-the-post in favour of proportional representation], maybe it wouldn’t be like this,” he said

One of the purported advantages of the first-past-the-post system is that it is designed to produce representatives beholden to defined geographic areas. And with its diverse electorate, local issues are still on the table in Vancouver East and Kingsway. Don Davies’ grassroots campaign approach remains focused on local issues, and Davies believes it will pay off. 

Angela Evans, Executive Director of the Collingwood BIA, says the business community would like to see whoever gets elected address local issues, notably high property valuations and taxes, and the lack of rent caps for commercial tenants. 

“Everyone here is pretty micro-thinking, because they’re trying to run their businesses,” Evans said. “Another issue we’re dealing with is loss of funding for our festival, which is very important to the community ... especially for newcomers who rely on these types of events to meet other people in the community.” 

With many newcomers to Canada calling East Vancouver home, Executive Director of Collingwood Neighbourhood House Betty Lepps says the community is also very focused on immigration. “The Neighbourhood House just lost all of its [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada] funding. So we get a sense of this issue being top of mind for the constituents in this area.” 

Other key issues are housing and, increasingly, food security. “We have a food drop program on Thursday afternoons, and we usually get about 100 to 150 people in line, and we’ve now started a waitlist of about another 100 people, because we have a lot of seniors,” Lepps said. 

According to Elections Canada, average resident income for Vancouver East and Kingsway was $55,100 and $48,560, respectively. Although the ridings are becoming more economically and socially diverse, these figures remain lower than all other Vancouver ridings, save Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby. 

Lepps isn’t sure that the ballot question of who might be better suited to stand up to Trump will be the deciding factor for many voters in the area, but she says that many residents have expressed that they “don’t want what is happening down South. They’re proud to be in Canada.” 

While it ultimately remains unclear how much the Trump factor might influence East Vancouver voters, one thing is certain: all eyes will be on Vancouver East and Kingsway come Monday night.