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I’m a Green party candidate, so I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear that I was pretty pleased with the byelection results in Nanaimo-Ladysmith on Monday night. I stayed up until 2 a.m. Tuesday to be sure Paul Manly had indeed won.

Since then, I’ve been listening to the explanations from other parties over why Manly won so decisively with 37.3 per cent of the vote. There was an underlying theme. It went something like this: “This is a protest vote. It’s a message to the Trudeau government.”

Really?

Is it not possible that people voted for the person they felt would do the best job, and for a party that they felt represented their values?

The Green Party’s Paul Manly celebrates after winning the Nanaimo-Ladysmith byelection on May 6, 2019. - Reuters

It is not possible that voters in Nanaimo-Ladysmith are concerned about the climate crisis and elected a candidate and a party that has the best policies on this issue and has consistently tried to raise this issue for more than 30 years?

I’m not naïve: Byelections are not the same as general elections. In this case, you get to try out an MP for six months and then you get a “mulligan,” as many reporters were calling it, a chance to vote all over again. It is, in many ways, a trial run.

However, let’s not overlook the fact that this federal byelection was marked by a much higher voter turnout than the other three held this year. The turnout in Outremont and York-Simcoe was 20 per cent, and in Burnaby South it was 30 per cent. Nanaimo-Ladysmith had a turnout of 41 per cent.

If this was a protest vote, then the electorate was sending a message to the New Democrats. This riding was theirs to lose. The mayor is a New Democrat and the former MLA. The MLA is also a New Democrat and happens to be the former MP – the shift from federal to provincial politics is the reason this byelection was held in the first place.

Nanaimo-Ladysmith is also not an area where the Liberals have done well in the past, although the Trudeau tide in 2015 pushed them into almost a tie for second place, their best showing ever in this riding.

This riding is the amalgamation of a strong NDP riding and a strong Conservative one. How strong? Well, part of this riding (Nanaimo-Cowichan) was represented by Tommy Douglas from 1969 -79 and then by Jim Manly — also an NDPer and Paul’s father — from 1980-88. The other part of Nanaimo-Ladysmith belonged to a strong Conservative riding (Nanaimo-Alberni) which had been held for years by James Lunney.

This win shows the party is maturing and learning what needs to be done to win in tough situations.

So it’s not a huge surprise that a Conservative came second in this race (John Hirst with 24.8 per cent). What is a surprise is that a New Democrat finished third (Bob Chamberlain with 23.1 per cent). Chamberlain was a strong candidate. A well-respected First Nations chief and vice-president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. He was supported by the former MP for the area and by the premier of B.C., John Horgan. There’s also an experienced NDP team of volunteers in the riding.

Explaining how someone wins an election means taking a large number of factors into account. There may have been some voters who were protesting the Trudeau Liberals, but that’s not the whole story.

First of all, the Green party worked hard. This win shows the party is maturing and learning what needs to be done to win in tough situations. Global TV’s chief political correspondent, commenting on the Green party’s ability to “get out the vote” on Monday night, said: “Paul Manly has game, ground game, tonight.” It was a reference to a weakness the Green party has had in the past and seems to have mastered in this one byelection.

Second, the climate has become an issue. With floods in Ottawa, Quebec and New Brunswick, and reports of species disappearing, it was a ballot-box question for voters in Nanaimo. By voting Green, they were voting for action on the climate crisis.

Third, some voters were no doubt annoyed that the New Democrats had forced this byelection because their MP stepped down to take advantage of a provincial opportunity.

Finally, Paul Manly is a respected, sincere and capable person. He has served his community and has shown he will be a good MP who will serve his riding, not just his party. He will also be a tremendous help to another outstanding MP from Vancouver Island: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

There were lots of reasons the Greens engineered a breakthrough in Nanaimo-Ladysmith. Don’t fall for the spin that it was all “just” a protest vote.

Jo-Ann Roberts is a former journalist. She is deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada and a federal Green party candidate for Halifax.

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