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OTTAWA and VANCOUVER — Buz Knott, campaign co-chair for the Harper Conservatives in Vancouver Quadra, is so exuberant about his party's near win in this week's by-election that he sounds at times as if the Tories actually took the seat from the Liberals.
They didn't, but the March 17 ballot saw the Tories come closer to planting their flag in this wealthy Vancouver riding than they have in 28 years.
It's a sign, says Mr. Knott, 62, who's worked on Tory campaigns in the riding for 40 years, that Conservatives are poised to make real inroads into Vancouver in the next general election - one of three big urban centres that shut out the party in the 2006 ballot.
The incumbent Liberals barely held Quadra - Joyce Murray was the winner - as their support plunged 13 percentage points Monday, losing ground to the surging Green Party and the second-place Tories.
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The Conservatives came within 152 votes of a win, slashing the routine Liberal leads that have painted Quadra Liberal red since 1984 and saw the Conservatives lose by close to 12,000 votes in 2006.
"If you can close a 12,000-vote gap, there's a very strong message there that people are changing the way they have looked on the political landscape in this riding," Mr. Knott said.
The Harper Conservatives trumpet their Vancouver-Quadra showing as proof they're capable of wooing urban voters in big metropolitan ridings such as Vancouver.
Last federal election, the Conservatives failed to win seats in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto ridings - although Vancouver Kingsway MP David Emerson defected to the Tories from the Liberals shortly after the January, 2006, ballot.
"That we can be very competitive in downtown Vancouver is a good-news story for us and something that will be very encouraging for our overall team," said Chuck Strahl, B.C. Tory MP and Indian Affairs Minister, lauding a "strong local organization" for getting supporters to the polls.
"This myth that we can't do well in Vancouver is ... going out the window," he said. "We haven't been within a sniff of that riding [Quadra] for a generation and we came within just a handful of votes."
But the Liberals say the Tories are exaggerating the significance of their Vancouver Quadra showing, pointing out that conservative-minded parties won the largest vote share in recent ballots. In both 1997 and 2000, Liberals note, the combined share of the Quadra vote captured by the Progressive Conservatives and Reform/Canadian Alliance candidates exceeded the winning Liberal vote.
The Liberals say the biggest reason their traditional lead eroded on Monday was the surging vote for the Green Party, which they say stole more votes from the Liberals than the New Democrats.
The Green vote share in Quadra jumped 8.4 percentage points to 13.5 per cent in the by-election from 5.1 per cent in the 2006 ballot.
"There are some folks that may have voted Liberal in the past and wanted to send us [as riding incumbents] a message on climate change and sustainability - and we got that message loud and clear," said Bruce Young, British Columbia Liberal campaign.
"I think the rationale with some of these voters is by voting Green they could ... further move us into a more aggressive position than maybe we've historically taken on the environment."
Another Liberal strategist speaking on background said the Greens risk becoming a major spoiler in the next general election if this bleed-off of Liberal voters continues - a trend that could split the vote and elect Tories instead.
But Tories say another factor in the Quadra by-election is the shift of minority Canadian voters to the Conservatives. It's not one they can measure, especially not before party officials scrutinize results from all polling stations.
Tory officials say that while they suspect they picked up more Chinese-Canadian support, they don't believe this was an overwhelming factor in their showing. The Tories have targeted Chinese-Canadian voters in recent years, as well as Jewish and Korean voters, appealing to concerns about crime and family-values issues.
One Liberal official also privately speculated that the Liberal candidate, Ms. Murray, wasn't as well received by Green voters because of anger over decisions the B.C. government made when she served as provincial environment minister.
