VANCOUVER—Ousted ex-Liberal MP Jody Wilson-Raybould is still “thinking about options” about her political future — but would beat Liberals in her Vancouver-Granville riding by nearly double digits in an election now, according to a new opinion poll.

If an election were held now, the former attorney general would edge out the party that ejected her if she were to run as an independent, the survey obtained exclusively by the Star found.

Conducted and paid for by Justason Market Intelligence, the poll is the first since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kicked her out of his caucus Tuesday over “broken trust” arising from her allegations of partisan meddling in a corruption case during her time as attorney general.

Reached in her riding Saturday, Wilson-Raybould said she’s still consulting with constituents and supporters but declined to comment on the poll.

“I am not making any decisions at this time but thinking about options,” Wilson-Raybould told the Star by phone. “I’m happy to be back in Vancouver-Granville and am talking to my constituents.”

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But if an election were held today, Wilson-Raybould would beat still-unnamed Liberal, NDP and Conservative candidates in that riding.

According to the April 4-5 survey, 33 per cent of her riding’s voters would cast their ballot for her as an independent, trailed by the Liberals’ 24 per cent support, the NDP’s 21 per cent and Tories’ 15 per cent.

“The Liberals are suffering right now under the cloud they’ve created,” Barb Justason, the firm’s president said in a phone interview. “It’s a cloud of public concern, in this market especially.

“Jody Wilson-Raybould has credibility right now at this second. Is she going to capitalize on this or not while she has this profile?”

Although the landline, cellphone and online panel poll had a relatively small sample size of 241 voters in Vancouver-Granville, Justason said those findings were corroborated by her larger citywide polling across six Vancouver ridings.

The larger 514-voter sample of the city found that Wilson-Raybould enjoys 68 per cent support among Vancouverites, more than double the 28 per cent who side with Trudeau.

In the 2015 election Liberals got an average 44 per cent of ballots across Vancouver’s six ridings, followed by New Democrats with 28 per cent and Tories with 22 per cent.

According to the new poll, today the Liberals’ support among voters citywide has plummeted to just 25 per cent, tied with the Conservatives, while the NDP has gained slightly, reaching 33 per cent.

Liberals remain most popular in longtime MP and former Cabinet minister Hedy Fry’s Vancouver-Centre riding, where she enjoys 37 per cent support.

But this week, her former campaign manager and executive assistant — ex-Liberal Party of Canada B.C. operations director Michael Haack — told the Star Trudeau should resign immediately over the SNC-Lavalin scandal, cancelled his party membership and donations and said he would support an independent Wilson-Raybould campaign and even her leadership of the party.

However, Trudeau’s government maintains support from many voters too, some of whom in her province have been skeptical about the SNC-Lavalin affair and Wilson-Raybould.

“Liberals like me still admire Trudeau’s government,” voter Stephanie Brady told the Star. “I don’t admire almost anything (Wilson-Raybould) did, and I would not want a Conservative government.

“I don’t want the pipeline, as it stands, but otherwise I’m good to go with the Libs.”

Housing affordability is the top issue for 38 per cent of Vancouver-wide voters, Justason’s poll also found, while one-in-five said Trudeau’s “leadership” was their number one concern.

But in Wilson-Raybould’s riding, nearly as many voters said Trudeau’s leadership was their top issue, at 23 per cent, compared to 27 per cent on housing. And nearly twice as many voters named “SNC-Lavalin” there as their top issue.

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Justason issued the caveat that other parties haven’t named their candidates yet, which would likely affect the results.

“Wilson-Raybould would stand a hell of a chance,” she said. “Liberals would have to bring in a star to beat her.

“Everything that’s going on should worry the Liberals, and the poll is just saying what they should be worried about is true in Vancouver. People are not happy with the prime minister’s leadership.”

Last Tuesday, Trudeau ejected Wilson-Raybould and former Indigenous Services minister Jane Philpott, blaming them for what he called an “erosion and breakdown of trust” within the party and aiding their Conservative opponents.

He also called “unconscionable” the former attorney general secretly taping Canada’s top civil servant asking her to override prosecutors’ charges against Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.

“The trust that previously existed between these two individuals and our team has been broken,” Trudeau said. “Whether it’s taping conversations without consent or repeatedly expressing a lack of confidence in our government and in me personally as leader, it’s become clear that Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Dr. Philpott can no longer remain part of our Liberal team.”

Several other Liberals have resigned from caucus over the affair, but others in the party caucus have blamed Wilson-Raybould for the scandal and alleged she has political or personal motives or behaved inappropriately as justice minister and attorney general.

Justason’s survey also found that backing for the former attorney general is particularly robust among older voters — the demographic most likely to cast a ballot.

But the lower support for her former Liberal party echoes an earlier poll just before Wilson-Raybould’s caucus ouster by Research Co. It found dwindling support for the party from the very people who supported it in its landslide 2015 sweep, when Liberals won with less than 5 per cent of the vote in nine ridings.

That survey, released last week, found one-third of 2015 Liberal voters in B.C. think a different leader than Trudeau would do things better while one in four thought “a different party would do things better in Ottawa as a government than the Liberals.” (That poll included 800 people, with a 3.5 per cent margin of error).

Trudeau initially called the Feb. 7 allegations of political interference in the SNC-Lavalin prosecution “false,” before eventually saying there was no “pressure” from his staff.

Wilson-Raybould, in a Justice Committee testimony, said Trudeau asked her to intervene to offer the company a deferred prosecution that would allow them to continue bidding on federal projects, citing 9,000 jobs he said would be lost if the firm left Canada

Several previous Liberal voters in the Vancouver area have told the Star they won’t give their vote again this year while others criticized Wilson-Raybould’s secret recording and the damage her allegations have caused her former party in an election year.

“I was just doing my job,” she told the Star in an exclusive interview a week ago in Campbell River, B.C., adding she had no regrets and was “absolutely ready” for whatever came next in the SNC-Lavalin affair. “I was speaking my truth.”

A federal election must be held on or before Oct. 21, according to law. No party has announced its candidates in Vancouver-Granville.

Justason Market Intelligence conducted its poll April 4-5 and used randomly dialed cellphones and land lines plus online forums, weighted for Census demographics. It included 514 voters across Vancouver’s six federal districts, and 241 residents of Vancouver-Granville and would hypothetically have margins of error equivalent to 4 and 6 per cent, respectively.

With files from Melanie Green

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