Opinion: With B.C. by-election date finally set, the Liberals await a familiar, humbling outcome

With the deadline looming, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally called a by-election for the suburban Vancouver riding of Cloverdale-Langley City.

The Liberals will almost certainly lose, making the race next month the last of a trifecta of defeats – and offering a grim forecast for the governing party in a general election now months away.

Cloverdale is part of the Greater Vancouver city of Surrey, B.C., with Langley City and township just to the east. It’s a riding John Aldag took for the Liberals in the 2015 election that delivered a majority government for Mr. Trudeau. In 2019, Mr. Aldag narrowly lost to Conservative candidate Tamara Jansen; he won it back again in 2021, though by fewer than 1,700 votes.

Mr. Aldag resigned his seat in May to run as a New Democrat in B.C.’s provincial election. He lost, as John Rustad’s Conservatives captured most of the seats in the region.

That’s one reason the Liberals should fear the outcome of this by-election: as things went provincially in Surrey and environs, so they are likely to go federally as well.

Another reason for the Liberals to fear: Ms. Jansen is representing the Conservatives again, and as a former MP, she will have name recognition.

But the worst news for the Liberals can be found in the polls. According to Leger, the Conservatives are ahead of the Liberals by 25 points in B.C. Abacus has them ahead by 17 points. If an election were held tomorrow, the Tories would virtually sweep the province.

The question may not be who will win Cloverdale-Langley City. The more likely question is how large the Conservative blowout will be.

The Liberals have lost two by-elections already this year, both of them in once-safe seats: Toronto-St. Paul’s and LaSalle-Émard-Verdun in Montreal. If the Grits can’t hold downtown seats in those two cities, why would anyone believe they could hold onto a hotly contested suburban seat in Greater Vancouver?

In a way, losing Cloverdale-Langley City would be worse for the Liberals than losing the other two. By-elections afford voters an opportunity to vent steam. They were certainly venting in Toronto-St. Paul’s and LaSalle-Émard-Verdun.

But the Liberal Party is the party of the downtowns. They could get those ridings back.

Cloverdale-Langley City, on the other hand, is a big-city, car-commuting suburban riding. If the Liberals lose it badly, they are likely to lose much of the suburban Lower Mainland.

The suburban Lower Mainland and suburban Greater Toronto Area tend to vote in sync. And whoever they vote for tends to become the government.

That may be why Mr. Trudeau waited almost to the statutory limit to call the by-election. (He had until Nov. 30.) He knows that by-election night, Dec. 16, will likely be a bad night. He may face fresh calls to step down as Liberal Leader.

Though if Mr. Trudeau hasn’t announced he is stepping down before Dec. 16, then there is little chance that he will.

Were the Prime Minister to announce tomorrow that he was going to resign, that would leave only about five months for the party to choose a new leader, for the new prime minister to announce their cabinet and for the new finance minister to present a budget.

Even if that budget were delayed into May, the government would likely fall on a motion of non-confidence a few days later, with election day set for late June, well before the statutory date in October.

(Since 1900, there have only been three federal elections held in July or August. No one wants to vote in the middle of summer.)

For Mr. Trudeau to survive, the NDP would have to support the budget. That is not likely to happen, now that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has ended the supply-and-confidence agreement.

An election in the spring is the most likely scenario, and Mr. Trudeau is the person most likely to lead the Liberal Party on that date, no matter how badly things go for him in Cloverdale-Langley City.