It’s easy being Green on Vancouver Island these days — and that spells trouble for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP.

There is a battle brewing in the lead-up to the federal election between the NDP and the Green Party. And during the first seismic shift we’ve seen on the left off the Canadian political spectrum in decades, Vancouver Island could be where the fault lines lie.

The recent defection of former Montreal-area NDP MP Pierre Nantel to Elizabeth May’s team may be the most decisive blow dealt so far to the New Democrats, but the two parties have been fighting it out in such places as Comox, Parksville, Nanaimo and Victoria for much of the summer.

There are only seven seats up for grabs, but if you consider Vancouver Island had more NDP MPs after the most recent election than any province outside of Ontario and Quebec, you can see how high the stakes are.

The catalyst for a lot of Green optimism was, of all things, the last byelection to be held in the 42nd Parliament. Usually considered a writeoff with a general election around the corner, instead Paul Manly made headlines when he won Nanaimo-Ladysmith in early May. The NDP fell to a distant third in a riding Sheila Malcolmson had taken easily in 2015 (and Jean Crowder had held for more than a decade when it encompassed parts of two different ridings). Jagmeet Singh, fresh off a Burnaby byelection win, campaigned hard for candidate Bob Chamberlain, but it wasn’t enough and suddenly the Greens had a colleague for Elizabeth May and wind in their sails.

Just how big was that win for the Greens? I live in Victoria, more than 100 kilometres away, but sitting in my mailbox last week was a bulk campaign letter (on 100 per cent recycled paper, at least) under Paul Manly’s letterhead, talking about his “historic win” setting the stage for October and singing the praises of the local Green candidate.

I’ve never gotten any kind of campaign material from an MP in another city before, let alone one three ridings away. The Greens see the victory as a precursor to big things on the Island, and one organizer told me they think they can win as many as six of the seats up for grabs.

Just four short years ago, it was the NDP that took six of seven Vancouver Island seats, a dominant performance for the party during what would prove to be a hugely disappointing election. This time around is shaping up differently.

Longtime Victoria MP Murray Rankin is retiring, Bob Chamberlin is running again in Nanaimo after losing the byelection. In Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, the Greens have nominated lawyer David Merner, who finished second as a Liberal in 2015. He told Black Press that the byelection victory was just a preview of the election fight that will be waged between the Greens and NDP up and down the Island

“These are … priority ridings for the Green Party,” he said. “We know that we can win here. We are going to pour resources into them.”

A recent Mainstreet poll even shows the NDP trailing the Greens and the Liberals in Victoria. With the Greens ahead at 22.9 per cent (the margin of error is huge and there are a large number of undecided voters), still the NDP are sitting at 19.3 per cent support in a riding they’ve held for most of the century.

The New Democrats clearly know they have a big fight on their hands. I was looking at Jagmeet Singh’s schedule for August. The NDP leader spent the 5th in Comox for a parade and was also in Nanaimo. He stayed in Nanaimo to talk health care on the 6th, he was in Parksville at a corn roast on the 13th, and he was in Victoria to campaign with candidate Laurel Collins on the 14th. That’s a lot of visits by any federal leader in just a few weeks, let alone to ridings his party won in 2015. It already has a faint whiff of trying to save the furniture.

The math is simple. A bad showing in Quebec along with big losses on Vancouver Island could be the kind of blow that would send the NDP back into the political wilderness of the pre-Jack Layton days. The Greens, meanwhile, could turn Island success into the backbone of Canada-wide legitimacy. Five or six seats is a huge step in the right direction of Official Party Status for what was long a one-woman show.

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I’m not counting out the NDP on the Island, or anywhere else for that matter. Jagmeet Singh may surprise an electorate disillusioned with the Liberals, but Elizabeth May will be looking to win them over, too.

During the most recent election campaign, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair told a boisterous crowd of 1,200 in Victoria that the NDP was going to paint the Island orange from the B.C. capital all the way to Port Hardy on the northern tip, and they very nearly did. Come this Oct. 21, the electoral map may well instead find the NDP green with envy.

Ben O’Hara-Byrne is a journalist and former foreign correspondent based in Victoria. Twitter: @Ben_oharabyrne

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