How Canada's rookie federal leaders have fared when seeking seats
CBC Archives | Posted: January 28, 2019 1:30 PM | Last Updated: February 25, 2019
Most of the time, leaders without seats have successfully won them in elections and byelections
If everything goes the way NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh hopes it will, he'll be running for a seat in the House of Commons twice this year.
First, he's seeking to win a byelection on Feb. 25, 2019, in the British Columbia riding of Burnaby South. But to hang onto that seat, he'll have to run again in the general election later this year.
If history is any guide, Singh should feel good about his chances this time around. In recent decades, a long list of rookie leaders — Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats included — have faced the same situation before him and nearly all won the seats they sought.
Future PMs have fared well
The list includes several then-future prime ministers who, like Singh, were leaders seeking seats in a byelection.
Stephen Harper, for example, was not a member of Parliament when he won the leadership of the Canadian Alliance in March 2002.
That's because Harper had left the House of Commons after serving as a Reform MP for a single term in the 1990s.
Less than two months later after his 2002 leadership win, however, Harper won a seat in Calgary Southwest — making him an MP again for the first time in five years.
Jean Chrétien had a similar story. He had been out of politics for several years when he won the Liberal leadership in June 1990.
Like Harper, Chrétien quickly won a seat in Parliament, via a byelection in New Brunswick that December.
And when the general election rolled around in 1993, Chrétien led the Liberals to power and became prime minister.
Brian Mulroney was yet another future prime minister who quickly claimed a seat in Parliament after taking the reins of his party.
He won the PC leadership in June of 1983 and won a seat by the end of the summer. A year later, he and the Tories swept to power in Ottawa.
There were also two other PC leaders in the postwar era who quickly won needed seats in byelections, though they didn't make it to the Prime Minister's Office like Mulroney.
In 1948, George Drew became PC party leader in October and won a seat that December.
Nearly two decades later, Robert Stanfield won the PC leadership in September 1967 and won a seat within two months.
The waiting game works, too
There is also a prominent example of a party leader who — like Singh — waited a while to jump into a byelection.
In November 1998, Joe Clark won the PC leadership for the second time in his life, at a time when the Tories were the fifth-ranked party in Parliament.
The former prime minister didn't take a seat in the House until almost two years later, when Clark became the MP for the Nova Scotia riding of Kings-Hants in September 2000.
Then he had to run for re-election that November after a snap election was called — just as Singh will have to do himself this year.
In the November 2000 election, Clark won a seat in the House of Commons again, though that second electoral contest was in a Calgary riding.
In recent history, the leaders who waited for a general election to roll around — rather than contest a byelection — were typically rewarded with a seat.
Seat-less leaders generally succeed
Prime Minister John Turner did not hold a seat when he won the Liberal leadership in 1984, and he called a general election nine days later. He was elected as an MP that fall, though his party didn't win the chance to govern — bringing his short term as prime minister to an end.
Jack Layton won the NDP leadership in January 2003, but he did not become an MP until the general election of June 2004.
His immediate predecessor, Alexa McDonough, had a similar trajectory: She became the NDP leader in October 1995, but did not seek a seat until the June 1997 general election.
The only New Democrat leader to struggle in this respect was Tommy Douglas, who became the party's first leader in 1961.
A year later, Douglas did not win a seat in the June 1962 general election.
But he had a seat by the end of that year, after winning a byelection in the B.C. riding of Burnaby-Coquitlam in November.
According to The National, the last known federal leader to lose in a byelection is Arthur Meighen. The former prime minister left the Senate in 1942 to seek a seat in the House of Commons that same year and lost.