It doesn’t have to be politics as usual

It usually takes a while for a new administration to slide into political gamesmanship.

At first, it’s all hearts and flowers and fair play — such as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to call a byelection as quickly as possible to let Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre try to win his way back into Parliament.

The byelection in question hasn’t been called yet, primarily because there are rules and timelines that have to be followed for a newly elected Conservative to resign to create a space for a byelection. Battle River-Crowfoot MP Damien Kurek officially resigned on Tuesday. Kurek had to wait 30 days after his election was posted in the Canada Gazette before he could resign, the Speaker of the House of Commons has to inform Elections Canada of the vacancy and the earliest a byelection call could come is 11 days after that.

The Governor General sets the byelection day chosen by Carney, who can pick a date as far as 180 days after Kurek’s resignation.

If Carney lives up to his word, Poilievre can quickly either be back in Parliament after a win, or leave the Opposition leader’s official Ottawa residence and no longer be the Stornoway stowaway.

But byelections don’t always move that quickly — and a case in point is happening here in Manitoba.

Back in late March, Progressive Conservative MLA Grant Jackson resigned his Spruce Woods seat to run in the federal election under the Conservative banner. Ever since then, his seat has sat vacant — meaning that, for 88 days now, his former constituents haven’t had a representative in the Legislature.

That’s a point that’s been made directly to Premier Wab Kinew in a letter from PC Leader Obby Khan: “Summer is an important time in rural constituencies full of fairs, festivals and events and whomever should be elected to represent Spruce Woods deserves this opportunity to engage with their constituents,” Khan wrote.

Likewise, constituents deserve the opportunity to make their concerns known to their elected representative.

There’s not much drama involved with a byelection in Spruce Woods. It’s a reliably PC seat — since its creation in 2011, it has always elected Progressive Conservatives — and the governing NDP is comfortably in a majority position and doesn’t have to pull out all the stops to try to win there.

Kinew has moved more quickly on two other byelections — to fill the seats left vacant by the resignation of former PC premier Heather Stefanson and the death of NDP cabinet member Nello Altomare. Both of those seats — Tuxedo and Transcona and were seen as likely to elect NDP candidates and both did. And that brings the political gamesmanship back into play.

Kinew could choose to delay the Spruce Woods byelection until as late as Sept. 24 — and it’s entirely within his purview to do exactly that.

But just because you can do something, doesn’t always mean that you should.

The only real questions are who benefits by delaying the byelection, and who loses out?

If, in any way, it’s voters who are losing out, the answer is a simple one. Set a byelection date as quickly as possible and leave the political strategy by the wayside. A significant portion of the public already believes that politicians don’t have their best interests at heart and petty politics just strengthens the impression that politicians put their parties and their own futures ahead of the public good.

Why fuel voter apathy and mistrust — especially in the case of Spruce Woods, where the prospective gains seem so small — when there’s a chance to take the high road instead?