ST JOHN’S, NL – Tony Wakeham and his Progressive Conservative Party pulled off a surprise win over Premier John Hogan and the Liberals in the provincial election last night. Wakeham won the election with a single seat to give him the majority government. The count went down to the wire with a single poll on Fogo Island.
It was a very tight race but six seats out of forty and one percent of the popular vote was enough for a change of government.
The final numbers were 21 PC, 15 Lib, 2 NDP and 2 Independents. The Independents are unique in they are long time politicians who split with their parties but have major support from their districts and won as Independents with some of the largest margins in the election.
The election also broke a long standing tradition since Joey Smallwood’s post confederation era of rural Newfoundland and Labrador voting Liberal and the urban centres voting Progressive Conservative. It flipped this time.
This election saw the PC Party sweep the rural districts with the Liberals holding a red bulwark in St John’s and the surrounding suburban communities of the north east Avalon Peninsula where a little less than half of the province’s 549,911 people live.
This reflects current political trends in the recent federal and provincial elections across Canada.
Proof that fast changing demographics will upset long standing trends and defy polling predictions and statistics.
“Change” was the consistent theme for the PCs throughout the campaign though what that change was is not very well defined. But change happened.
Newfoundland and Labrador is facing many problems. Severely aging and declining population, declining revenue from offshore oil revenues, very small tax base and a hollowing out of the rural areas once supported by forestry and fishing industries and transportation issues for a sparse population spread out over a massive, remote land mass. Intra-provincial roads and ferry infrastructure are in need of constant repair.
Its health care system is bursting at the seams with demand but the government has systematically failed to address shortages of doctors, nurses and technicians for decades. They seem incapable of offering a regular and attractive employment environment to attract or retain workers.
In this campaign Liberal Premier John Hogan had one plan to help pay for it. A pending contract with Quebec for hydro generating projects at Churchill Falls and Gull Island in central Labrador. It would generate billions of dollars for the government. He had hoped it would be the primary ballot issue.
But an organized opposition to the deal by former Conservative Premier Danny Williams, former bureaucrats and Wakeham sowed doubt and sank the deal as an election issue.
The biggest issue in Newfoundland remains a massive debt, breakdown of healthcare and other services, falling revenue and no one has said how they plan to fix it.
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