Burnaby South

You can watch the results here.

As the count begins two points: first, Mr. Singh pretty much has to win this or his tenure as NDP leader will come to a very quick end.

Second, if People’s Party candidate Laura-Lynn Thompson polls respectably, a solid third or even second, Max can declare victory and push on. Fourth won’t cut it. She has to beat at least one legacy party’s candidate.

Bonus third, if Laura-Lynn Thompson wins, which is most unlikely, Canadian politics will never be the same. All of a sudden the People’s Party becomes viable and the CPC’s mistake in electing Scheer rather than Max is going to become as pressing as Mr. Singh’s demise.

Enjoying political drama as I do, I am hoping Thompson beats the odds and wins; but if she manages a serious finish and Singh is defeated, the next General election is going to become a lot more interesting.

Update: Lots of votes to be counted but Singh looks to have taken the riding and Thompson is running a distant fourth. Canadian politics reverts to the boring mean. Not unexpected and, frankly, Thompson’s socon politics leave me cold. One of my kids asked me if I would have voted for her if she had a serious chance to win. Given my own, largely libertarian politics, probably not. A data point Max might consider.

Social conservatives, however well meaning, tend to be out of step with pretty much the whole of Canadian society. Which is electoral poison. Max needs to recruit smart libertarians if he wants to win. Running socons is not a winning look.

Updater: This shouldn’t matter but apparently it does. Jagmeet Singh is the first non-white leader of a Canadian political party to ever take a seat in the House of Commons.

I once was lucky enough to have a Sikh girlfriend (Hi Sandy!) and I’ve had many Sikh clients over the years. The idea of “non-white” seems very silly to me. Canadian Sikhs have embraced Canada. Their skin tone seems a grand irrelevance. The faster we dispense with “white/non-white/black/First Nations” the better. But, for the moment, we can celebrate the fact that a deeply misguided, socialist, intersectionalist, and slightly brownish Canadian was elected despite not being all that white. How cool is that?