Fifth MP Announces Retirement
A fifth Member of Parliament has announced he won’t be running in the next election. Jim Abbott from Kootenay – Columbia, BC was one of 10 remaining MPs first elected from the then-new Reform Party in 1993, when he defeated NDP M.P. Sid Parker.
The B.C. Member of Parliament is the fourth Conservative incumbent to announce his retirement. Bloc Québécois M.P. Jean-Yves Roy is the fifth retiring incumbent. A complete list can be found on the “Search the Database” page under “Nominations Progress in Ridings with Retiring Incumbents”. I don’t know what we should read into the fact that Abbott and New Brunswick Southwest M.P. Greg Thompson have both decided to announce their retirements just before the Commons returns from this break.
Abbott is the second-oldest of the 10 remaining Class of 1993 Reformers, but the Conservative caucus includes a further three MPs their senior. [UPDATE: He is the 10th remaining member *of the Conservative caucus* first elected as a Reformer in 1993. Of course Keith Martin was also elected then, but crossed the floor to the Liberal Party in 2004. Sorry for the confusion.] You can find a full list of MPs by age at the Library of Parliament’s ParlINFO website. I also compiled a list of MPs in the 40th Parliament by year of first election.
Looking at its Google Map*, the riding straddles the lower part of the BC-Alberta border: from Yoho National Park outside Banff, it reaches through Golden and Glacier National Park as far west as the railway town of Revelstoke and then down to Nakusp in the north; and also south along skiing country through Invermere to the sister cities of Kimberley and Cranbrook (the focal point of some of the province’s worst forest fires earlier this decade; coincidentally the very week my partner and I had scheduled a two-week driving trip through the area). To their east are the mining communities of Fernie and Sparwood; while the farming community of Creston, the Mormon community of Bountiful, and most of Kootenay Lake lies to the west. It includes territory claimed by the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council in their treaty negotiations, and the former residential school outside the St. Mary’s Indian Reserve near Cranbrook has been converted into a conference centre and resort hotel with golf course and casino.
Before Abbott’s six-term tenure began, the seat swang back and forth between Parker for the NDP and Stan Graham for the Progressive Conservatives. A former well-known local broadcaster, Abbott took the seat in 1993 with 48% of the vote, and in subsequent years collected as much as 68% before tapering back to a vote share in the mid-50s in the last 3 elections. The NDP has fallen from its earlier mid-40s vote shares of 20 years ago but is still the strongest contender in this seat, the Liberals having fallen to fourth behind the Green Party there in 2008.
I’ve suspected for some time that Abbott might be ready to retire soon, given that the Prime Minister has made some high-profile trips to the riding, and it ranked very high in several recent compilations of stimulus funding by riding. It was also targetted with a lot of federal and provincial radio advertising about the introduction of the provincial carbon tax and the proposal for a federal carbon tax in the summer before the last election, which I noticed on another driving trip through the area with my partner’s daughter.
In any event a similar suspicion may also have led the NDP to delay nominating here until it was clear whether they would be recruiting for an open seat or one occupied by a strong incumbent. The party holds 3 of the 4 provincial seats in the Kootenays (which federally comprise this seat and neighbouring BC Southern Interior). But it doesn’t currently hold Kootenay East which includes Cranbrook, where they ran Ktunaxa treaty negotiator Troy Sebastien. Sebastien, BC Treaty Commissioner Sophie Pierre, and retired former MLA Corky Evans from Nelson-Creston would probably appear on their ideal candidate search list, were 2008 candidate Leon Pendleton not to run again. I’ll have to catch up on my reading to see who the likely Conservative candidates would be, although BC Conservative Party leader Wilf Hanni also ran provincially in the Cranbrook seat as well. The Green Party has already nominated new candidate Bryan Hunt, and I haven’t seen any Liberal names surface as yet.
I’ve deleted Abbott’s entry from the list of nominated candidates, and added his seat to the list of retiring incumbents. One thing’s for sure: he’ll be retiring to one of the most beautiful parts of the country, lucky guy! Thanks to commenter “Shadow” for drawing the clipping to our attention.
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* To the commenter who wrote the other week to say not enough detail appears in the rural maps, please note that these maps are fully interactive, which means that you can click on the + sign to zoom in, or else just double-click on the spot you want to zoom in to. You can also click and hold down your mouse to pan map right or left, up or down.
Tags: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Retiring Incumbents
"… it ranked very high in several recent compilations of stimulus funding by riding."
Surely you're not suggesting that Harper is using federal monies for partisan gain? Shock horror!
They would hardly be alone in at least paying attention on that score; in ANY part of the political spectrum.
I think both of us could rattle off any number of instances by all sides. Just interested to note the artform is still alive and well.
I'm reminded of Dupplesis saying to a small Quebec town something along the lines of, "it would be a pity if you did not vote Union Nationale, you might not get your bridge/school/police station otherwise."
Duplessis, darn it all.
An alternative explanation is that Abbot's long tenure gave him a greater influence over how gov't funds were allocated.
Not that seniority/influence is any better a way to decide these things then political considerations.
I'm just not sure there is an optimal way to disburse funds. A system that looked at areas with the highest unemployment would nessecarily become another west to east equilization program.
Such a program would collapse from a lack of democratic support and harm unity.
Spreading the pork around, as objectionable as it is, seems to be a tried and true system.
Interesting to note that all the retiring CPC incumbents won by enormous margins. Some were inevitably so, for example Lethbridge, where a Skunk with a blue stripe could easily win, others would have had assistance from an able, and-or popular MP. I expect that there will be vigorous Liberal & NDP nomination contests in those ridings. I also find it interesting that the announcements came at this time. I wonder if there is any significance to this.
Here's my theory about the retiring CPC incumbents.
Conservative MPs know that for months their team has been laying the conditions for pulling the trigger on an election. You'd have to be either genuinely ill or not care what your colleagues thought of you to decide to pack it in then.
And being on the edge like that probably makes some of them realize they aren't really wild about doing this again. Even if they win effortlessly, its a grind followed by a few more years of the circus on the Hill that gets old for most MPs.
They know far better than the rest of us when the odds of an election in 1,2 or even 6 months recedes. When it does, a few go for the opening.
I am not sure how much longer Nancy Charest will remain a candidate for the Liberals after her comments reported by the Sun.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/03/02/13086316.html
Here`s a quote from the Hill Times:
`At least one of the outgoing Tories, Rick Casson (Lethbridge, Alta.), told The Hill Times he is ready for retirement and announced his decision to step down last December because he had earlier promised his party riding association he would give them enough warning to find a candidate to succeed him for the next campaign. `
It has the ring of truth. My guess is that the CPC`s guess is a fall election, giving plenty of time to establish the successors to these seats. They`ve hedged by allowing minimum 3 months.
Rumour has it Bill Bennett, the BC Liberal Kootenay East MLA has ruled out going for the job.
I remember a few years ago I remember getting ol` Abbott to tell me that climate change doesn`t exist… they don`t let them speak that freely any more.
I`ve already heard of a lot of internal politics brewing around this one (party staffers asking people to run, etc.)–people in this riding vote for Abbott because they like them, but a substantial amount of them are socially conservative dippers, as you can see with them turning in fairly reliable dipper votes provincially.
I expect to see a pretty competitive tory nomination race on this one–it`s been such a damn long time that there`s been a competitive race that riding… that is… for the nearly guaranteed tory seat.
But hey, maybe the dippers will get lucky, the riding will become another BC Southern Interior after a tory candidate screw up. This is one nomination race definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Thanks for the local intel, Anon.
I was also reading something about the state of play for the Conservative race at Alex Tsukanis' blog (must look up the reference), a few weeks ago.
They certainly are discussing the riding over at Babble as well. One wonders how the imminent HST-based recall initiative would play there.
Regardless, I do agree with you that much of Abbott's local vote was a personal one at least in part. His challenge will be to try and ensure that's passed along to any successor.
cheers.