Front Burner - Will P.E.I. be the first province to go Green?

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

Across Canada, there's never been a Green Party government federally or provincially. But on Tuesday, that could all change when people on Prince Edward Island cast their ballots. If the polls are right, the P.E.I. Green Party is out in front, beating out the ruling Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. Kerry Campbell is CBC's P.E.I. provincial affairs reporter. Today on Front Burner, he joins guest host J.P. Tasker to walk us through how a Scottish-Canadian dentist leading a party that's never won before? could end up the next Premier of P.E.I.

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Hi, I'm JP Tasker, filling in for Jamie Poisson. Hi, I'm JP Tasker, filling in for Jamie Poisson. We've never had a green government in this country, but that could all change tomorrow. There's something happening on PEI. A Scottish-Canadian dentist named Peter Bevan Baker is poised to become the Premier, if we're to believe the polls. Islanders have an opportunity to vote for real, meaningful change. Voting for the Green Party on April the 23rd.

He's still in a tight three-way race, but it's amazing that a Green Party leader could even be leading in the polls at this stage in an election campaign. If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again. Kerry Campbell is an expert in PEI politics.

He's also the CBC's provincial affairs reporter. He'll explain to us why Peter Bevan Baker is now in the lead in that province. That's today on FrontBurner. Hi Kerry, thanks for joining us. Great to be with you, Kerry. Thanks for joining us. Great to be with you, JP. All right. Help us out here. What makes this election so different from all the others? Well, this will be the first time ever the PEI has had a three-way race because going back to the days even before Confederation, PEI has just been a two-party system.

The only time that we've ever had an NDP MLA who won a seat was in 1996. And then we had nobody else until the Greens got their first seat in 2015. I think way back in the mists of time, there was an independent conservative or liberal that snuck their way in. Other than that, though, it's just been kind of a succession of, you know, liberal governments and then it's the Conservatives' turn and then it flips back again. And also Islanders have been very traditional just kind of in the past in their voting habits that, you know, tending to vote the way that their parents voted and their grandparents voted and on and on for generations.

So for PEI to be in this situation, it really is pretty remarkable. We have a tendency to vote the way our parents voted, the way our parents voted before that. And we have to learn to think for ourselves. So why are they willing to buck that trend now? Why is it that the Green Party is leading in the polls this time around, do you think? Well, there's a few different factors that I think you have to look at. One is just the leader of the Green Party who won that seat in the 2015 election, Peter Bevan Baker. It's hard to imagine getting to this situation without him being the leader.

I can't imagine if another person could have done what he's done. He's, you know, very well spoken and charismatic. I thought Islanders were looking for a couple of very simple and very reasonable things. They want a few good, honest people to provide good, honest government. to provide good, honest government. From the time that he was elected, we kind of saw his popularity among Islanders increase to the point where for at least a couple of years now, he's always been, in all the polls,

the number one choice of Islanders to be Premier, far ahead of the actual Premier, Wade McLaughlin, and also far ahead of his party, although now we have seen the party numbers start to catch up with the popularity numbers for Mr. Bevan Baker. So why do you think he's made such a connection with Islanders? Is it just the personality or is it his platform? Well, you know, I think part of it is this is something that actually my wife, who used to cover island politics, now covers Ottawa politics, had suggested to me.

But he's tapping in to this disillusionment that we see, kind of like the populism that we see in other provinces or, you know, with Doug Ford in Ontario or even kind of the Donald Trump thing in the United States that there is on PEI, just like in these other places, this dissatisfaction with the political status quo of the way things have always been done. But it just so happens that the person who has tapped into that in this province is, I mean, you couldn't imagine a politician further removed from the likes of Donald Trump than Peter Bevan Baker. But there's a lot of the same things.

And we've been hearing from a lot of island voters through this campaign saying, you know what, I've always voted for, you know, the Liberals or the Conservatives or whatever. But, you know, I just there's this feeling that people want change and they just want a bigger change, a lot of them at least, than what we had in the past where you switch, you know, back and forth between the Liberals and Conservatives. You know, you see some road work done. I think it'll go green. Why do you say that? Oh, I don't know. Time for a change, I guess. And he was a dentist before he jumped into politics, so he's done more than just line up his former patients. Is that what you're telling me? Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's actually funny. There was the night that the Premier presented the writ.

He kind of took a couple shots at the other parties and he called Peter Bevan Baker a career politician. I wasn't the first one to use that combination of words, career politician. And nor do I think there's anything negative about being a career politician. So in any case... Which came across as quite a slight,

and then he kind of eventually had to talk those back because, of course, Bevan Baker was just elected in 2015, the same time that Wade McLaughlin, the liberal leader, was. Now, Peter Bevan Baker, though, he ran for the Greens. I think that was his 10th time running for the party. He had run federally and provincially in, I think, Ontario as well before he came to PEI. I remember the first time I interviewed him, he was running federally and it was sometime around the 2010 mark where we were having a federal election every couple years or something. And at that point, he had absolutely no hope of winning. But I was taken by how well he presented himself and thought, well, gee, I would love to do a story about all the

people who keep running with no hope of winning just because he wanted to try to influence the discussion and the ideas that were bouncing around during the election. I had no idea, of course, back then that, you know, eventually he would actually not only win a seat, but now be in a position where he's hoping to form the next PEI government. So if he's had so many stabs at in the past, this time it's different. He's obviously catching on with some Islanders there. What's in the platform? What exactly is he running on this time? Well, you know, he has very carefully, through his time as leader from 2015 through till now, tried to make sure that the Green Party is seen as not a one-issue party, you know, not a party that's just talking about the environment.

So, for example, if you look at the party's platform in this election, you'll see, you know, one of their key commitments is to kind of reverse this centralization that we've seen in health care services in PEI, you know, out of rural community hospitals into the two main city hospitals in Charlottetown and Summerside. So pledging to move a lot of those services back into rural communities. Their biggest financial commitment is to increase social assistance rates. And after that, they're also pledging millions of dollars to help build housing because we're in an affordable housing crisis on PEI. We have a rough – about a 0 percent vacancy rate right now. So, I mean – and those are played up much more in the Green Party platform than the environmental issues. in the Green Party platform than the environmental issues.

So he's worked really hard to try to present to Islanders a well-rounded platform instead of just being the party of the environment. Right, so not a one-issue party by any means. So who do you think he's most appealing to then? Is it disaffected Tories or is it Liberals that are just looking for a change after more than 10 years of government? Which voters is he carving out the most from? Our parties don't really, it took me the longest time when I moved here to try to figure out, well, what's the difference between an island liberal and an island progressive conservative?

Because it just seems to kind of vary from campaign to campaign. The ideological divides that you see in other provinces don't really exist on PEI. Certainly the Greens, they appeal more to younger voters, which even on PEI, we have crazy voter turnout. It's always over 80%, but we still have lower turnout among younger voters. There's also, I should mention, there was kind of, I think, a key issue that really cemented the rise of the Greens and Peter Bevan Baker. And that was in 2016, when PEI had a plebiscite on electoral reform. Islanders were asked to choose from five different electoral models.

Did you know that Islanders are being asked to vote on a new system for electing the PEI Legislative Assembly? Members of the legislature began a conversation with Islanders about alternatives to the system we currently use, the first past the post. And mixed member proportional representation actually came out the winner in that. But the premier at the time, Wade McLaughlin, because the turnout for that plebiscite, very poor by PEI standards, it was, you know, the 34% range or somewhere in there. He said that that wasn't an accurate snapshot necessarily of Islanders thinking. And so that's, we're having a referendum in this election on whether to switch to mixed member proportional. But back in 2016, this movement began called Honor the Vote. And a lot of people were really upset. You could see that their sense of fair play was offended by this because there had never been any threshold set going into it by the premier.

You know, this is what it would take to change the electoral system. And Peter Bevan Baker was the one who championed that cause, the honour the vote cause, in the legislature. And that's when we started to see his popularity really increasing as well, I think, with Wade McLaughlin, when we would have seen his numbers start to decline. Right. So what's going on with the Liberals? They're the ones in power. You know, as far as I know, PEI has one of the strongest economies in the country. Why are they facing such headwinds right now? Yeah, and that must be frustrating for Wade McLaughlin and the Liberal Party, because I know the Conference Board of Canada is projecting that

PEI will have the strongest economic growth in the country this year. And from the beginning, I think Wade McLaughlin has made that economic side his focus. We've had, I think, two or three consecutive balanced budgets now. And so you would think it should be smooth sailing for the liberals. Your calendar's mixed up. You're talking about years ago. We increased over the time that we have been in government the funding for the social programs and family and human services by $35 million. But, you know, this was Wade McLaughlin's first term. Before him, the Liberals in were two previous terms under Robert Giz. So this is seen by many as a three-term Liberal government.

There's definitely some baggage in there, some previous government scandals involving our provincial nominee program, this failed secretive e-gaming proposal to try to make PEI a regulator for online gambling. So I think this has fueled this feeling among Islanders that maybe they are ready for a change. I know I talked to Wade McLaughlin just in the last week about this, and he said, that's not the way that I do business. He says he's proud that he doesn't think there's anything that's happened under his four years as Premier that Islanders look to as that kind of scandal. But those issues are still kicking around,

and it certainly feeds into this feeling among Islanders that they're looking for something different. I think something will change, yeah. Why do you say that? Why do you have that sort of feeling? Well, just people make names of themselves early on and then people don't forget that something was wrong and then they don't pick up on that person later on. They want somebody new. Where are the provincial PCs in all this? You know, traditionally in PEI and elsewhere, people, when they fall out with the liberals, they just bounce over to the Tories.

That isn't happening this time, or at least it doesn't seem like it in the initial polls. Where are they in all this? Well, the Tories keep having, I mean, they really haven't been able to build themselves up under a single leader since they were last in power. They lost the 2007 election, and there's been kind of a revolving door of leaders. They just selected Dennis King. He became the leader of the party in February. But Dennis King came in. It seems like his approach is just to be the nicest candidate. I think I'm very human.

I think I understand people, the challenges that we talk about here. I just think that I've been a great collaborator throughout my life, throughout my career. Very gentlemanly, I think is how you would say the debates have been. It hasn't flared up very much. So the PCs under Dennis King have decided that after 12 years in opposition, that they're just going to talk about positive things. And I admire the passion of these three gentlemen on the stage and many Islanders who have been leading the charge. And I think you could tell from the passion that's up here that I think this issue is in good hands going forward. It's a strange place for a party that's been in opposition to suddenly not be talking about what's wrong with this three-term liberal government, about the baggage that's there under this government.

They're just trying to run the most positive campaign. And, I mean, this has been – I know some of our pundits described it on one of our political panels as a nice off campaign so far because especially you compare compared to what we just saw in the Alberta election, not a lot of shots being fired here. See, I find that all so refreshing, because politics is so negative, both in Ottawa and south of the border right now, so it must be a nice reprieve to have some time away from that sort of attack politics. It's always a pleasure to meet with my fellow leaders here and to talk about the ideas and

the policies and the various visions that we all share for this island. Discover what millions around the world already have. Audible has Canada's largest library of audiobooks, including exclusive content curated by and for Canadians. Experience books in a whole new way, where stories are brought to life by powerful performances from renowned actors and narrators. With the free Audible app, you can listen anytime, anywhere, whether you're at home, in the car, or out on a jog. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book. Go to www.audible.ca slash cbc to learn more. We've been down this road before, of course,

when the polls have it all wrong, and I suppose tomorrow it's entirely possible that things revert to how they usually are. What can the rest of Canada learn from what's unfolding now? You know, we're heading into a federal election, of course, in the fall. Is there anything that we can take away from this election that might apply to the federal scene? You know, is PEI a bellwether of sorts, do you think? I don't know. Honestly, I don't know if you could say that or not. Now, I mean, maybe there is kind of a wave happening when you look at,

you know, New Brunswick and the minority in B.C. that we got last time, depending on what happens here in P.E.I. I don't know if maybe we see politics might be becoming more splintered. Other than that, one thing that it would be kind of nice to see catch on from this P.E.I. election is just the level of civility that we've seen. Here's hoping, although I feel like it won't be quite like that on the federal scene when we hit the ground running in September. All right. Thank you, Kerry. I appreciate your time today. All right. Thank you, JP. My conversation with Kerry was recorded before a horrible accident. Green Party candidate Josh Underhay and his son died after their canoe capsized Friday. Bevan Baker said Underhay, a local school teacher, was a good friend and a valued party member. I simply cannot imagine how much he will be missed, the leader said.

The Greens have suspended their campaign between now and Tuesday's vote. And in Charlottetown, where Underhay was set to run, a by-election will now be held at a later date. That's it for today. I'm JP Tasker. Jamie is back tomorrow. Thank you for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011, and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down.

It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.