Tories, Liberals trip over each other in hunt for Quebec votes

Barrie McKenna Economics Reporter

It takes chutzpah to accuse your political opponent of “cynical electioneering” while blatantly trying to buy votes yourself.

Then again, ‘tis the season of pandering with the October federal election looming.

Take the case of the federal government’s national shipbuilding strategy, a decades-long effort to replace and refurbish federal vessels at an estimated cost of up to $70-billion.

As part of this plan, The Globe and Mail’s Daniel Leblanc reported this week that the Liberal government will award a third of a $1.5-billion contract to maintain the navy’s 12 patrol frigates to Quebec’s Davie shipyard. The rest of the work is going to the Irving shipyard in Halifax and Seaspan in Vancouver.

The Davie shipyard, near Quebec City, is located in a Conservative-held riding and sits in the middle of a cluster of 11 vital seats the Tories hold in the province.

The logical and most cost-effective thing for the government would be to have one or perhaps two shipyards do the work. Instead, the Liberals will split the work three ways, giving a share of the work to Quebec, where they are counting on picking up valuable seats – including some held by the Conservatives.

That prompted Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to blast Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government for swooping in “at the final hour, right before an election to buy people’s votes.” He called it “cynical electioneering.”

Oddly, though, Mr. Scheer is not promising that the Conservatives would do things much differently. Instead, he suggested a Conservative government would also engage in pork-barrel politics by continuing to reward the Quebec shipyard, which has been in and out of financial trouble over the years, with a steady stream of federal contracts, including for a new navy supply ship.

“Canada’s Conservatives have championed the hard-working women and men at the Davie shipyard since day one,” Mr. Scheer insisted.

Are the Liberals trying to buy votes? Almost certainly. They have 40 seats in Quebec. If they have a hope of staying in power, they’ll need to pick up several more in the province to offset probable losses in Ontario and elsewhere. Not awarding the work to Davie would be a liability.