top of page
Tom Monto

Kilgour - Conservative, Liberal, Independent - a man elected under FPTP

David Kilgour (1941-2022)

MP 1979-2006


1968

Kilgour's first attempt at a seat in the House of Commons

Vancouver Centre 1968 he ran as Progressive Conservative

He came in third in his district with 18 percent of the vote and did not win the seat.

Since 1962 Vancouver Centre has elected a Liberal MP every time except 13 years 1980-1993 when Pat Carney and Kim Campbell held the seat. Progressive Conservative candidates across BC received 19 percent of the vote but elected no one - although proportionally they were due four MPs.

The NDP with a fairly consistent range of voter appeal from 37 percent to 21 percent in election after election in Vancouver Centre has never held the seat.

Across Canada, the P-Cs received just one percent fewer votes than in the previous election but lost 26 percent of their seats.


Despite this (unfair) rebuff, Kilgour ran again as a Tory in the 1979 election in Edmonton where he had moved to in the interim. He was elected - and re-elected many times, holding a seat in the House of Commons for about 27 years, at first as a P-C, then as an Independent, then as a Liberal, then as an Independent.


In April 1990, he was expelled from the Tory national caucus after criticizing the policies of the Mulroney government.

He sat as an independent for several months before joining the Liberals.


He was then re-elected as a Liberal for many years, finally leaving the party in 2005, due to the government's "sponsorship program" scandal.


Already in his 60s, he did not not run for re-election in 2006.


==========================================================

Kilgour's political career, from the 1968 rebuff to his later successes, was marked by various dis-proportional election results.


While he took a seat in these elections, his party often suffered either failure to take seats in proportion to their vote share or conversely took more seats than its proportion of the vote should have given it.


Over the long term, the P-Cs and the Liberals might see the system working all-in-all about what you'd expect, but what about the other parties and what about in the short term? I - and many other voters - think a more scientific system, a more proportional system - would be more reliable and good.


1979 Kilgour was part of P-C's one party sweep of Alberta seats

P-Cs with only 2/3rds of vote took all the seats in Alberta

Kilgour running in Edmonton-Strathcona won a majority of votes in 1979, 1980 and 1984 so the majority of voters were pleased with the result of those elections.

But consistently the Liberal and NDP voters were ignored.


Across Edmonton there were many dissatisfied voters.

56,000 voters voted Liberal in 1979 and got no representation.

32,000 voters voted NDP in 1979 and got no representation.

Meanwhile, Kilgour, just for example, received a seat by receiving just 26,000 votes, only one half of the Liberal votes and fewer than the NDP vote across the city.


Wasted votes in Edmonton in 1979

Edm-Str 11,000 NDP 12,000 Liberal

Edm-North 6,000 NDP 10,000 Liberal

Edm-East 5000 NDP 9000 Liberal

Edm-West 5000 NDP 12,000 Liberal

Edm-South 5000 NDP 13,000 Liberal


1980 Kilgour's election win in Edmonton-Strathcona was part of P-C's one-party sweep of Alberta seats in 1980.

The P-Cs took all the Alberta seats although receiving just 65 percent of the vote.


1984 Kilgour's election win in Edmonton-Strathcona was part of P-C's one-party sweep of Alberta seats in 1984.

The P-Cs took all the Alberta seats although receiving just 69 percent of the vote.

1988 Kilgour's election win in Edmonton-Strathcona was part of P-C's near-total one-party sweep of Alberta seats in 1980.

NDP-er Ross Harvey took a seat, breaking the P-C's monopoly grip on representation in Alberta that had been in effect since the 1970s.

Harvey's win was but small consolation to NDP voters -- they had actually been due 5 seats if the seats were allocated proportionally.

The P-Cs took all but one of the Alberta seats although receiving just 52 percent of the vote, just barely more than half.

1993

The Reform party took all but four of the Alberta seats although receiving just 52 percent of the vote.

P-Cs received 15 percent of the vote but got no seats.


Kilgour had by then moved to the Liberal Party and won the Edmonton Southwest seat for that party.

He received 23,000 votes, but more than that -- 27,000 -- voted for other candidates in the district.


1997 Kilgour was re-elected the seat. Again he received less than half the votes -- only about 46 percent. The Reform candidate took 41 percent of the vote and the P-C candidate took 6 percent. The NDP candidate took 6 percent so it is unclear who might have won if it had gone to a two-sided contest between Kilgour and the Reform candidate.


2001 he was re-elected again - this time with a slight majority of the votes.


2004 Kilgour, now running in Edmonton-Beaumont, was re-elected to a seat. Again he received less than half the votes in the district -- only about 43 percent. It is not clear he would have won if the contest had gone down to him versus the second-most-popular candidate, Conservative Tim Uppal, who later was elected in Edmonton-Sherwood Park and then in Edmonton-Millwoods.


Liberals took 22 percent of the Alberta vote, which should have meant they would elect 6 MPs from Alberta, but instead they took just two seats.

Conservatives with 62 percent of the vote took 26 of Alberta's 28 seats, instead of the 17 they were due.

The NDP, with 10 percent of the vote, were due about 3 seats but elected none.


Kilgour did not run for re-election in 2006, and the Conservative party candidate received 58 percent of the vote and took the seat.


In each election that Kilgour fought, he was the only candidate of his party to run in that district. It is unclear if the voters who voted for him did so because he was of the party he was with at the time or because he appealed to them as an individual.


Only a contest where voters had choice of two or more different candidates of the same party would that fine distinction be ascertained.

And then only if each voter could not vote for both candidates of teh same party.

Say when Block voting was used in Edmonton in 1921. All five seats were filled in one contest and each voter could cat five votes. It seems that most Liberal-minded voters cast all five votes for the five Liberal candidates and all five were elected. while the supporters of the other parties got no representation at all.

Due to Block voting it is not known how many voters cast one vote for a Liberal candidate, how many used two of their votes to help elect two Liberal candidates and so on.

But only five years later when STV was brought in, each voter had just one vote and no one group could take all the city's seats and each voter could use their vote to help elect just one candidate.

In that election, only one Liberal was elected, and it was proven that that candidate was in fact the most popular of the five Liberal candidates who ran in that district that year.

And the same for the Conservative and the Labour candidates who were elected.

An UFA candidate was also elected in Edmonton. He was the sole candidate of that party in that district, so whether his appeal was party or individual cannot be stated with any degree of certainty.


By the time, Kilgour put himself forward as candidate, the federal election was determined by First Past The Post in single-member districts - even in Alberta provincial elections Edmonton had been split up into separate constituencies; multi-member districts were still used in provincial elections in the Maritimes and in BC -- but not anywhere where Kilgour ran for office, so he never ran in a multi-seat district.


So each election contest where Kilgour competed and won a seat, only a single member was elected with all votes cast for others being ignored and finding no representation.

Was that fair?

How you feel about this depends on whether you were or not one of those who voted for Kilgour.

=================================

2 views

Recent Posts

See All

Early Labour culture

Clarissa Mackie "Elizabeth's Pride A Labor Day story"    Bellevue Times Dec. 5, 1913

Comments


bottom of page