If Milliken Steps Down
Commons Speaker Peter Milliken has called a news conference following his annual summer barbecue in Elginburg, ON. Given that he has never called a news conference in the memory of any reporter at the Kingston Whig-Standard, this could only mean one thing: the long-standing rumours that he would not run again are likely true.
The National Post’s John Ivison first tweeted this story two days ago, during the last seismic event in Ottawa (our little 5.0 earthquake, centred just north of here in Buckingham, QC), and it seems to have been confirmed by this morning’s announcement. Kingston sources say that area Liberals have been quietly conducting a candidate search for the past few months.
Milliken was first elected as a Liberal in the Class of 1988, defeating long-time Conservative M.P. Flora MacDonald, and he went on to become the first third Speaker elected by his peers, once the Commons adopted its new rules and took the naming of the Speaker out of the hands of the Prime Minister. [UPDATE: Thanks to @JerStu for the correction; in fact the first was Speaker John Fraser.]
[Click on image to go to interactive poll-by-poll Google Map.]
His Eastern Ontario riding of Kingston and the Islands, ON is home to Queen’s University, the Royal Military College and CFB Kingston, several penitentiaries, numerous hospitals, the Wolfe Island wind farm, and the Tragically Hip. It has become habituated to high-profile MPs, including Liberal finance minister Edgar Benson from 1962-72, trail-blazing Conservative M.P. Flora MacDonald from 1972-1988, and finally Milliken from 1988 to the present.
Milliken’s vote-share topped out at 56% in 1993, although Conservative candidate lawyer Brian Abrams cut into that support somewhat this past election, coming within 6.5 points of his 39% result. A closer look at the results expressed as a percent of the electorate, however, shows that while the Conservative vote increased by 2,700 votes (or 2.4% of the electorate), Milliken lost 6,200 votes (or 6.8% of the electorate), 1,300 of whom also switched to the Green Party’s Eric Walton, while the remaining 2,200 stayed home. The NDP’s Rick Downes also saw a small pullback in vote share, from 19.2% to 17.5%, which is consistent with that party’s typical range in the riding since the 1970s.
Conservatives moved quickly to renominate Brian Abrams for the forthcoming election on June 23, 2009, but he was not the first candidate out of the gate, as Eric Walton became one of the first Green candidates to be nominated in the country on April 7. The NDP followed on September 22, when small business person Daniel Beals, best known for his activism to save the prison farm program, won a contested nomination to carry his party’s colours.
The Kingston Whig-Standard reports that Liberals have been selling memberships for the past few weeks now, and have several possible candidates in the wings, including former city councillor Bittu George, the Dean of the Queen’s University Law School, Bill Flanagan, and area lawyer Bob Little.
Stay tuned on Twitter (@punditsguide) for more updates.
Tags: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals, Retiring Incumbents
Milliken has made it official and will not run again , think this puts his riding up for grabs and it be one of the more interesting races in Ontario next election. it will definity be a competitive race for the liberal nomination and be interesting with all there troubles if they can find anyone with as much profile as Milliken . or if this riding will become another one of the vacant ontario liberal ridings to fall to other parties .
Yes, I’d have to agree with your assessment of it, RCO. I believe the Conservatives were already doing preparatory work during the last campaign for this eventuality, although of course the Liberals have also probably known for some time that this could happen.
In fact, if you look at the riding associations’ finances from 2009 (on my brand new tab!), you will see that the Liberals already had 83% of the spending limit in the bank at the end of 2009, while the Conservatives had 59%. Sounds like they’re ready to go, to me.
Alice do you know anyone who’s figured out the average % change in support a party receives in an election following the retirement of an incumbent ?
My guess would be a drop in support, although obviously one would have to draw up a list of retirements across a few cycles, ignore special elections, and control for the possibility that an open election attracted a higher caliber of candidates by seeing whether the opposition parties nominated the same candidates as last time, and, of course, adjust for the change in support the party as a whole had in the province during that cycle.
If as a rule of thumb Miliken’s retirement will cost the Liberals in the range of 3-4% this race would instantly become a toss up.
On the other hand, if the effect were minimal, then i’d have to say the race will lean in the favour of whoever the Liberals eventually nominate.
I don’t off the top of my head, Shadow, but it’s a very interesting question to me, and I think I could pull together some data to answer that one, if you give me a few days.
Thanks for asking it so well.
In the U.K., its a convention that the major parties will not run candidates against the Speaker. Why was this not adopted in Canada? Was it because the Speaker was seen as more partisan than in the U.K., or was it a legacy of being appointed by the Prime Minister?
Who is likely to be the next Speaker?
Pandit, it’s a legacy of having been appointed by the PM, and the fact that since the Speaker is elected by MPs *after* the election, no-one knows who it’s going to be *before* the election.
Still, this Speaker (and Speakers before him) has never run a terribly partisan election campaign, and no-one has ever run very personally hostile campaigns against Speakers either in my recollection.
As to the next Speaker, I would say that while there are several MPs who probably have their eyes on it, the likely successor will depend to a very great extent on the composition of the House of Commons after the next election.
I dare say that any government in a majority situation would be less likely to support an opposition speaker than one in minority which needs every one of its own votes. Milliken has been widely regarded across the Chamber, but he was also the incumbent speaker when the government changed in 2006, and many government members likely also reasoned that they’d rather remove an opposition vote than one of their own.
With the chair open after the next election, MPs might come to different conclusions. So, it should be interesting.
Actually, Alice, if you look at the campaigns of Conservative Blair MacLean in Kingston, not only were they intensely personal (to the point that many people considered them unseemly), but were almost entirely focussed on Milliken’s role as speaker and how he couldn’t effectively represent the riding as non-partisan speaker – and how the only reason Milliken was running at all was to be speaker, not to represent K&TI.
Well, obviously, I’m not up to speed on the local political history of Kingston. I guess we’ll all be paying closer attention now.
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, Ian.
Canada briefly did have an attempt to make the Speaker a non-partisan figure, Lucien Lamoureux ran as an independent in 68 and 72, but only got the major parties to stand down (as is the UK tradition) in 68.
The Conservatives will have some difficulty taking this riding, given the “conservative Conservative” bent of the current government. The City of Kingston has the highest proportion of public sector employment of any city in Ontario. It is approximately 40% public sector, with only 2 private sector employers hitting the “top 10” employers list. By comparison, Ottawa is about 30% public sector. The provincial average is much lower still.
The only Conservative to hold the riding in the last 48 years was Flora — as red a tory as there ever was, and a very good constituency MP who was widely respected by all. She still maintained an open-line radio show well after she was elected. If memory serves correctly, she may even have kept the weekly show active after she became a cabinet member. I believe she may have joined Joe Clark and Scott Brison in not renewing her membership after the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Alliance and dropped “Progressive” from their party name and philosophy.
Prior to Flora, Ben Allmark held the riding for the Tories during the Diefenbaker sweep, that was 50 years ago. Furthermore, Dief was a populist; not a “conservative Conservative”. The Liberals took the riding in 1962, after the “bloom” came off of Dief.
Prior to Ben Allmark, the riding was represented by the late Bill Henderson, a Liberal who was later appointed to the bench.
Harper’s systematic anti-public sector approach, coupled with his recent actions with regard to the military Ombudsman, make things difficult for any local Conservative candidate. Kingston is the education centre for the Canadian military. Our smaller local university is the Royal Military College, and the army base is the largest local employer.
Kingston is a major education centre, with two universities, a community college, the correctional services staff college, and a health-sciences teaching complex. Harper’s attack on the census will cost him votes, as will all his attacks on government officials who dare contradict him, and his attack on the gun registry.
Provincially, the riding remained Liberal throughout the “conservative Conservative” Mike Harris/Ernie Eves provincial governments. The riding was held provincially by the Tories as recently as a quarter century ago — by the very progressive Keith Norton (a Red Tory in the Bill Davis government – later the openly gay chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission) and prior to that by “Gentleman Syl Apps” of Toronto Maple Leaf fame, who served in the 60’s and early 70’s Red Tory Ontario provincial governments.