The Halifax byelection finally started, but it might not finish | News | Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Liberals went to the legal limit before calling the byelection for the federal riding of Halifax. Three-term member of parliament Andy Fillmore officially resigned the seat on Sep 3, 2024 to run—successfully it turned out—for mayor of Halifax, giving prime minister Justin Trudeau’s ruling Liberal Party a maximum of 180 days to call a byelection according to Canada’s Elections Act legislation. Sunday, March 2 was the 180th day, and that’s when Trudeau finally made the call: The Halifax byelection is now on, with voting day Monday April 14, 2025. Both the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party have had their candidates nominated and ready to go for ages. Mark Boudreau announced last June that he’d seek the Conservative nomination, months before Fillmore resigned, and he became the candidate in October. Lisa Roberts has been the NDP’s Halifax choice even longer, winning the party’s nomination in November 2023 The Liberal Party went the other way, the local riding association holding its nomination meeting Saturday. Shannon Miedema emerged as the Liberal candidate; she only had a few hours to savour the nomination win before the election call came Sunday and the campaign started. A byelection can be seen as a microcosm of a general election. In June 2024, the Conservative victory in an urban Toronto byelection was widely taken as confirmation of leader Pierre Poilievre’s overwhelming national popularity. “Conservatives win longtime Liberal stronghold Toronto-St. Paul\’s in shock byelection result,” said CBC. “Stunning result raises questions about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\’s future.” If we were in a political vacuum, where the only thing happening in the country was the Halifax byelection, the race would make for a fascinating study. The last time a Conservative won the seat was more that 40 years ago, when Stewart McInnes took it for the then-named Progressive Conservatives in the 1984 election. Since then, Halifax has been firmly in either Liberal or NDP hands. The PCs/Conservatives haven’t done better than third place in the 21st century, and in the 2019 election they were fourth behind the Green Party. Could Boudreau pull off a Toronto-St. Paul’s-style win? To the extent Halifax voters value a human approachability in their candidates, Boudreau seems to fit the bill: He posted a photo of his husband in an “MB for MP” t-shirt, and at his campaign launch in February he spoke to the uphill climb Conservatives face in the riding—after being shut out for nearly 15,000 days, “we have our work cut out for us”—and personal challenges he’s faced. “I have been very open and public about my own journey. I know what it’s like to struggle. I grew up living in poverty,” Boudrea said. “I have visited food banks, not knowing where my next meal is coming from. We had to rely on women’s shelters and other community organizations to support us during difficult times.” He said these early experiences taught him the value of a supportive community that lifts its members up—as our “struggling” country is ready for Poilievre’s Conservatives to help it. If this message managed to break through in Halifax, that would send a strong signal about Conservative electability to the rest of the nation. A Roberts win, meanwhile, would show that the NDP under leader Jagmeet Singh still has relevance, and Halifax refuses to accept the binary Liberal-or-Conservative choice that the Liberals and Conservatives have an interest in perpetuating. In our theoretical political vacuum, Roberts is the frontrunner in the byelection. She was elected to the provincial legislature’s Halifax Needham seat in a 2016 byelection, then re-elected in 2017, so she has the best name recognition among the federal Halifax candidates. And with control of the Halifax riding swinging from Liberal to NDP to Liberal over the last few decades, a swing back to NDP feels natural if not inevitable. Then there’s Miedema, the last-minute candidate for the last-minute byelection. The low-energy Liberal approach to the Halifax riding’s needs seems to echo the waning of prime minister Trudeau’s once-famous rizz. Trudeau resigned in January rather than dare face voters again. It would be instructive to see what effect that has on Miedema—if we were in a political vacuum. But we most definitely aren’t in a vacuum. National and international forces are chaotically swirling around us, making predictions even less valuable than usual. What a difference a dictator makes. Don Trump’s ridiculous, depressing ascendancy from convicted sexual abuser and felonious hush-money payer to winner of last year’s US presidential election could only have been good for Pierre Poilievre. The Conservative leader’s familiar rhetorical style of populist sloganeering earned him the moniker of “Canada’s Trump,” along with a similar surge in polling popularity in 2024. (An August ‘24 Toronto Star story dropped the sickest burn on this angle, saying “Pierre Poilievre isn’t Canada’s Donald Trump. He’s our JD Vance.”) As the year ended, Trump was looking forward to his inauguration in January, and Poilievre felt destined to become our next prime minister—either in the Oct 20 election set by parliament as the latest-possible option, or earlier if he could get help from other parties to force an election on the struggling Liberals. Poilievre’s lock on power was so real that just six days into 2025, Trudeau threw in the towel. Trudeau announced his resignation as Liberal leader—and thus as PM—effective as soon as the party chose a new head. To give them some time to do that, he also got the Governor General to prorogue parliament until March 24, pausing Poilievre’s push for an election. At that point in early January, Liberal blood was in the water for all to see, but with parliament prorogued Poilievre couldn’t attack. He issued a threat to force an election as soon as parliament resumed, but otherwise had to bide his time. Trump would be inaugurated Jan 20; the hapless Liberals would pick a new leader March 9; and Poilievre would trigger an easy election win for the Conservatives ASAP after the parliamentary restart March 24. Oh, how Poilievre must wish that plan existed in a political vacuum. One where Trump’s flapping mouthparts couldn’t produce sound. Unfortunately for Poilievre, from the moment Trump was installed on his White House throne, his bullying belligerence has made plenty of noise—Trump’s committed to being the shock heard ‘round the world. From January to now, it’s become political poison to be a “Timbit Trump” (a tag amplified by Liberal leadership contender Karina Gould). Conservative support has been falling in polling while the Liberals are on the rise. “After nearly four years of Conservative dominance in the polls, the Liberal Party of Canada has taken a two-point lead among decided voters, overturning a 26-point deficit from just six weeks ago,” is the message of a Feb 25 Ipsos poll. And according to the Associated Press, just after midnight today—Tuesday, March 4—Trump followed through on his idea of imposing a 25% tax on goods imported from America’s closest trading partners: “Trump’s long-threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico are now in effect, kicking off trade war.” One upshot of this move is that the leader the Liberals pick this weekend will immediately become our (trade) wartime prime minister, a potentially heroic figure who will further draw support away from the Conservatives. You are probably wondering what any of this has to do with the Halifax byelection. Fair. The short answer is it means the byelection probably won’t happen. The longer answer is it shouldn’t happen. If a general election is called at any point before the byelection’s April 14 voting day, the byelection is instantly erased. Boudreau, Miedema and Roberts will still square off for the Halifax seat, but they’ll be doing it alongside all the other candidates in all the other ridings across the country, on a new timeline. And with Don Trump’s pressure weighing heavy over the proceedings, there won’t be any political vacuums. Earlier in the year, Poilievre was promising to force a general election as soon as possible after parliament’s March 24 resumption. If his support keeps dropping to the point where he’s reluctant to go into an election so fast, the Liberals will have to make that call instead—the country\’s need for longterm leadership to deal with four more Trump years is too urgent to put off. But that scenario bakes in at least three weeks of wasted effort (from March 2’s byelection campaign start to parliament’s March…