Liberal candidate for the Prince Albert riding Estelle Hjertaas claims she's worked harder than her rivals in this election campaign and beyond. It remains to be seen if that will translate into enough votes to finish ahead of the Conservative incumbent and the NDP's Harmony Johnson-Harder. (Glenn Hicks/paNOW Staff)

By Glenn Hicks

the progressive challenge

Can progressive candidates end P.A. Conservative stranglehold?

Oct 16, 2019 | 8:00 AM

With less than a week to go to the federal election the NDP and Liberal candidates for the Prince Albert riding are convinced they can win a seat that history suggests is very much the incumbent Conservative’s to lose.

Despite the campaign efforts of Harmony Johnson-Harder and Estelle Hjertaas, it remains to be seen if either of them can make a dent in fortress Hoback, the three-time winner. Even the so-called Trudeau wave of 2015 didn’t prevent him from securing more votes than the two trailing parties combined. But, the two contenders on the progressive side of the political spectrum are hoping what they’re hearing on their door-knocking forays can translate into what would be an upset.

NDP candidate says things need to be different

“People want to see something different,” New Democrat Johnson-Harder told paNOW, conceding that many voters were caught up in the 2015 ‘Trudeau mania’ as she put it.

“Saskatchewan has been NDP in the past. People were hoping for change in the last election and didn’t see what they were promised [by the Liberals], and I believe those who previously voted Liberal will come back to the NDP.”

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It will require a big swing. In 2015 the NDP candidate finished over 8,000 votes behind Hoback, securing 28.5 per cent of the vote to his 49.8 per cent. Hoback figures he can win by a bigger margin this time. But Johnson-Harder, an Indigenous candidate, figured she could take a run at closing that seemingly insurmountable gap, in part by securing the bulk of Indigenous votes.

“The NDP is and has always been for the working class. We’re all about creating accessibility, levelling the playing field …the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation report, and the UN Declaration of Indigenous rights: those are important issues in our riding,” she said.

Despite the apparent flip-flop of party leader Jagmeet Singh regarding whether he’d form a coalition with Trudeau if the Liberals could not secure a majority, Johnson-Harder for one, said such a partnership would allow the NDP to hold them accountable.

“To really push the needs for pharmacare, reconciliation and climate change even harder,” she said.

Where the vote split among the progressive contenders is most pronounced is on the issue of who will lead Canada’s next government, and that is not lost on local candidate Estelle Hjertaas.

“Ultimately this election is going to be about whether there will be a Scheer-led Conservative government or a Trudeau-led Liberal government and for the progressive voters, most people are focused on preventing a Conservative government,” she told paNOW.

Liberal candidate puts in the work

However, Hjertaas is also eager to highlight her individual efforts and figures that will be the difference in her success.

“I’m very confident that I’ve worked the hardest of all the candidates here. We’ve knocked on 44 per cent of the doors in the entire riding since April, and I’ve been knocking on doors the last four years,” she said.

She claimed a large amount of people who are generally NDP supporters would vote Liberal this time because “they are voting for me, they know the amount of work I’ve put in, not just in this election but in the community the last six years. They’re going to vote Estelle this time.”

It’s a tall order. There would need to be a swing of almost 12,000 votes in the local riding for Hjertaas to topple Hoback based on the 2015 numbers. The last Liberal candidate secured just under 20 per cent of the vote.

While Johnson-Harder and Hjertaas strive for votes on the left and centre, it remains to be seen if either will be part of Canada’s government—coalition or otherwise—after Oct. 21, or again become a distant runner-up to the Conservative incumbent.

On Tuesday meanwhile, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh continued to back away from his weekend talk of forming a coalition government with the Liberals. He said he wanted to be prime minister and told supporters he believed the majority of Canadians wanted a progressive government.

—

glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter:@princealbertnow