While a Liberal majority government is headed to Ottawa after the federal election this week, the Bow Valley's elected representative won't be part of that government.
While a Liberal majority government is headed to Ottawa after the federal election this week, the Bow Valley's elected representative won't be part of that government.
Incumbent Conservative candidate Blake Richards won the Banff-Airdrie battle to become member of parliament for his third term on Monday night (Oct. 19).
Richards' lead at the polls occurred early and stayed strong throughout the evening, with 42,227 electors making him their choice in federal office, representing 63.4 per cent of the total vote.
A clear mandate for the incumbent, the voter share was lower than 2011 when he was elected with 74.64 per cent of the vote, or 43,488 ballots cast.
“First and foremost for me, I am humbled by our constituents,” Richards said. “Any time you're chosen to represent your fellow citizens in our parliament, it's a real big honour.
“I had that honour again last night. That's something I thank people for, their support and their trust and confidence.”
He said the result on a national level was not what he hoped for, with the Liberal party being elected as government with a majority of 184 seats and its leader Justin Trudeau set to become prime minister.
The Conservatives took 99 seats to form the official opposition, while Conservative leader Stephen Harper soon announced he would step down as leader, but still represent his riding. The NDP won 44 seats, a sharp decline from its results in 2011 when it won 103 seats and formed the opposition.
“I'm prepared to continue to work hard on behalf of my constituents, be their voice in Ottawa and hold the Liberal government's feet to the fire and hold them to account and press hard for the issues that my constituents have given me mandate to press on; things like balanced budgets, lower taxes, a safe and secure country,” Richards said. “It will be a new experience for me, but one that I'll meet with the same kind of approach I've always had in my previous seven years in office.”
The mood at Liberal Marlo Raynold's campaign celebrations in Canmore was jubilant on election night as a result of the national results, even though locally a clear majority went to Richards.
Raynolds commented that he celebrates the fact that as Canadians “we have shown right across this country that a divisive approach to politics and democracy and an approach of fear no longer works,” he said. “And we can celebrate that as a campaign. We knew we were signing up for an immense challenge.
“I know and understand math a little bit and the 2011 results, the historical results here are a monumental challenge, but to a person and to a volunteer that didn't matter because we were part of something bigger, part of something more important and part of something we could really celebrate together.”
Going into the 11-week campaign in August, the riding was deemed one of the top three safest Conservative seats.
Raynolds said while national numbers for Liberals were amazing, the local campaign has also made gains in the Bow Valley, with him even receiving a call earlier that day from former deputy prime minister Anne McLellan, who was a panellist on CTV's election coverage.
“She said ‘you guys ran an amazing campaign,' ” he said. “In the heat of what is going on at party headquarters all day today in Ottawa, one of the leads there texted me and said ‘Good luck tonight, but one thing you can take away is you ran one heck of a campaign.' We engaged so many people, it was so exciting the amount of energy people brought back to our democracy.”
Compared to 2011, when the Liberal candidate was former judge John Reilly, the party fared far better - although it should be noted the riding changed from Wildrose to Banff-Airdre since then. Reilly only received 6.71 per cent of the vote, or 3,909 votes, and NDP candidate Jeff Horvath 11.33 per cent, or 6,603 votes.
Raynolds received 17,380 votes or 26.1 per cent of the vote - a significant increase that may be geographically tied to support in the Bow Valley. However, Elections Canada data for individual polls was not available by Outlook press deadlines.
Green candidate Mike MacDonald, who stood for his party for the second time, said he had a feeling the election was heading in the direction it did last week.
“Early on I had hopes,” he said. “I hoped we would have a bigger shift, especially in Airdrie as far as the Conservative vote and I knew Marlo had run a strong campaign and had got a quite a few people on board.”
MacDonald was fourth at the polls with 3.8 per cent of the total vote in the riding, which he noted was slightly better than his party's national average of 3.4 per cent.
“That has been pretty consistent in this riding,” he said. “In the last four elections, the Greens have always been a little higher than the national vote here.”
Nationally, he said, the party fared better than it had before, with several strong candidates on the west coast. Although the party only elected one representative, leader Elizabeth May, he expressed hope in the future that that may change as a result of promised democratic reform.
“Hopefully, this is our last first past the post election, because honestly, I think there was so much focus on strategic voting,” he said. “The last number of elections in particular we have seen a lot of that, where people were not necessarily voting for a party or candidate of their first choice, but are actually voting against someone and who has the best chance of beating the person they are against.”
NDP candidate Joanne Boissonneault received 6.8 per cent of the vote on Monday night and said she thought her first campaign was fantastic.
“I'm really positive about (the whole experience),” she said. “People were very supportive and positive and I would do it again.”
The results, for Boissonneault, were a bit shocking, both locally and nationally for her party.
“I'm really shocked with the results,” she said. “I really believed I had more support than that.
“I thought they would have had a lot of support in Quebec and nationally, that they would have had a lot more seats in Alberta as well, especially with Rachel Notley and her win.”
