Editorial: An election that matters

For some of you, it’s already over. Elections Canada reported this week that an estimated 22,422 electors in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country had voted at the advance polls between Sept. 10 and 13. That’s almost one-quarter of the registered voters in the riding. More than 4,000 voters had also returned their mail-in ballots as of Tuesday, and 3,500 more could still be in the mail.

There is clearly an eagerness on the part of many voters to get it over with, but the majority is still hanging fire until Monday and will numerically decide the outcome of the election after the campaign officially ends.

Will there be any last-minute surprises on either the local or national front? There could have been one this week if NDP candidate Avi Lewis had taken up the challenge put to him by Green Party candidate Mike Simpson at the Sept. 13 all-candidates meeting and gone to Fairy Creek the next day to get arrested with Simpson. It would have made a sensational story, but there would have been as much media attention on Simpson, the challenger, as Lewis, the celebrity-endorsed climate champion who took the bait, and how much good would that have done the Lewis campaign?

The whole idea for the NDP in this riding, as we’ve written before, was to hoover up the progressive environmental vote, sidelining the Greens and drawing significant numbers from the Liberals. We’ll know after Monday how successful that strategy was, but it’s already certain that Simpson and the Greens haven’t rolled over for the NDP and there is no indication that the Liberals will suffer major losses compared to 2019.

While we’re always wary of polls, it may be prescient that the aggregator 338Canada shifted during the past week from labelling the riding a “toss up” between the Liberals and Conservatives to “Liberal leaning,” with the Liberals sitting three points ahead of the Conservatives. The margin of error is seven per cent, so take it with a grain of salt – as indeed we should take all these forecasts. The voters will slot in the correct numbers on Election Day and the results could be dramatically different from what the pollsters and analysts are confidently predicting.

This is an important election. The most vital issues are at stake – public health, the environment, the economy, social supports, government finances, even your rights and freedoms. As Keith Baldrey points out in his column this week, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country is one of about a dozen B.C. ridings that could determine the outcome. Vote wisely.