By Lloyd Mackey

THERE were four by-elections last Monday, November 9; one on each coast and two in Quebec.

From a distance, I paid particular attention to the one on the west coast, in the suburban Vancouver riding of New Westminster-Coquitlam.

As its title denotes, the riding takes in the historic city of New Westminster and part of its suburb to the north, the city of Coquitlam.

It was held for some years -- with some significant boundary changes along the way -- by Paul Forseth of the Reform party. His last win, in 2004, was by only a few dozen votes, as a previous tendency to elect NDPers as the protest party of choice re-emerged. (By that time, Reform morphed into the Canadian Alliance and merged with the Progressive Conservatives -- thus becoming more mainstream than protest.)

Earlier this year, Dawn Black, the incumbent Dipper resigned the seat to run (successfully, as it turned out) for the provincial NDP, in last spring's provincial election which saw the return to power of Gordon Campbell's lib-con hybrid, the BC Liberal Party.

New Wesminster-Coquitlam is just across the Fraser River from Surrey North, held for years by the late Chuck Cadman and repossessed in the 2008 election by his widow, Dona Cadman. She is now doing a good workmanlike job of rebuilding a "compassionate conservative" presence in a very culturally and politically diverse community.

I watch Surrey North and New Wesminster-Coquitlam pretty carefully because the former is where Edna and I lived for seven years before moving to Ottawa, and the latter is where we went to church (at New Westminster's historic Olivet Baptist).

There is an interesting point of comparison between the two ridings that is worth exploring -- but not to the point of obsession.

Chuck Cadman, as many will recall, lost the Conservative nomination in 2004 and ran as an independent, winning the riding largely on his strong understanding of and advocacy for a grass roots approach to youth justice.

He died of cancer in 2005, and, in the 2006 election, the Conservatives ran a good but politically inexperienced candidate. The winner was a good friend of Dona Cadman's, a former provincial NDP cabinet minister named Penny Priddy. In the 2008 election, with Priddy having retired from the seat, Dona Cadman ran and won by about 1,000 votes.

My observation, over the years in question, was that the emergence of Dona Cadman was the result of careful relationship building between Cadman supporters and the Conservative structures. And the work to restore relationships took place under the radar when Priddy and the NDP were holding the seat.

The New Westminster-Coquitlam circumstances are not synonymous, but there are some interesting comparisons to be made. When Black resigned there were some suggestions that Forseth would try to win the Conservative nomination. (He was well-liked by some segments of the voting community who remember him as the socially-conservative son of a long-time popular New Westminster Pentecostal minister, Marvin Forseth.)

But, for whatever reason, he did not try -- perhaps because Conservative strategists felt he would not be able to capture the political centre needed to win that riding.

And, in the by-election itself, the Conservative candidate, Port Moody councillor Diana Dilworth ran a very much beneath-the-radar campaign, apparently making few public appearances and avoiding most all-candidate meetings.

All of which raises an interesting question: Given British Columbia's provincial propensity for two party politics usually dominated by a lib-con hybrid, will the Conservatives in New Westminster-Coquitlam wait a bit, build some relationships -- as they did in Surrey North -- and make a serious run at the riding in the next federal election?

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Meanile, in Ottawa, a William Wilberforce Weekend attracted 100 or so to a university classroom this past Friday and Saturday (November 13 and 14).

The event, spearheaded by the faith-political interface initiative of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, was an exercise in social advocacy coalition-building. It was based on lessons learned from Wilberforce's 51-year campaign to end the British slave trade. That campaign occurred in the late 18th and early 19th century.

The event began with a group-viewing of Amazing Grace, the film depicting Wilberforce's life and work.

The Saturday portion of the session involved breakout groups, each charged with the task of developing some aspect of a campaign -- in this case, working to block future euthanasia legislation.

The communication group was of some interest to me, as one of the "old guys" in the field. And the choice of the co-chairs was, I would observe, nothing short of brilliant.

It put together Peter Stockland and Faytene Kryskow.

Stockland is a long time Canadian journalist who has been, among other things, editor of the Calgary Herald, publisher of the Montreal Gazette and editorial vice-president of Readers' Digest Canada. In "semi-retirement", he is now executive editor of the Centre for Cultural Renewal, a faith-influenced public policy think tank. He is a serious and devout Roman Catholic.

Kryskow is the 30-something media-savvy high-profile leader of For My Canada (FMC), which, among other things, stages prayer events and visits politicians on The Hill. She is very much in the neo-charismatic sector of the Christian community.

The two worked well together in presenting a communication strategy for an advocacy campaign.

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As it happened, Kryskow was leading her group in visits to 67 MPs during the days following the Wilberforce event. Among their activities was a reception on The Hill where the FMC presented Winnipeg-area MP Joy Smith with a 'Hero' award for her work on piloting an anti-human-trafficking private members' bill through the House of Commons.

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Meanwhile, not far from The Hill, another group of Christians, from a different theological and political perspective, were trying to make a difference as well.

Some 350 students from Ottawa-area Catholic high schools met to hear Sandra Uwase talk about her visit to a refugee camp in Rwanda. Uwase was last year's winner of the Child and Youth Friendly Ottawa (CAYFO) Youth Activist Award.

A conference press release noted that its sessions would include "looking at ways students can work to resolve the conflicts that are a natural part of community living."

Described as a "Peace Conference", the event is a central component "of our outreach and social justice curriculum. Among the resource groups available to help the students in their understanding of the issues were the Ottawa Police Service, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Smoke Free Ottawa and Grandmothers to Grandmothers. (The latter group links Canadian grandmothers with African counterparts who have the responsibility of caring for their grandchildren, whose parents have been lost to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.)

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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

November 19/2009