Conservative attack ads, marijuana reforms and not quite enough strategic voting all likely contributed to a narrow margin of defeat, said accountant and Liberal candidate Lawrence Woo, who nearly unseated incumbent member of parliament Alice Wong Monday evening during the 42nd Canadian election.
"I congratulate everyone who took part in this election," said a sportsmanlike Woo on a night Liberal leader and soon-to-be Prime Minister Justin Trudeau swept to power with a majority government, sending Canada in a new direction.
Trudeau gave his acceptance speech hours before Woo's fate became clear:
"We beat fear with hope, we beat cynicism with hard work, we beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together," purported Trudeau.
But that was not the case in the Richmond Centre riding, said Woo.
"I think the attack ads towards the end of the campaign, I think it probably plays a role in this election, which is unfortunate. I don't think attack ads should have any part in an election. But somehow if it works, then fine, more power to them, but personally I don't think it has any place," said Woo, referring to a flurry of attack ads in the Chinese community that pegged Trudeau as someone who wants to put drugs in the hands of children and brothels on street corners.
Wong defeated Woo by one of the narrowest margins in the country with 17,693 votes to Woo's 17,230 (just missing an automatic recount per Elections Canada rules).
Woo also said it was hard to get past the marijuana issue with some members of the community.
"I think it was rather unfortunate. There should be more issues that we should be aware of than marijuana. To the majority of people in this country it's a non issue but to some of us in the Chinese community, probably this was the number one issue. I think that contributed to part of our problems and that was unfortunate," said Woo.
"We have a Liberal government, so I guess the legalization is probably going ahead," he added.
Nevertheless, Woo appeared to shake off his personal defeat.
"It's about time we had a majority government and a Liberal government with a new direction so we can put this country back in its place and make sure the middle class, seniors and students get the help they need," said Woo.
As a political rookie during the campaign, Woo was not afraid to take shots at what he perceived to be a poor performance by Wong in Ottawa over the past four years.
He had Tweeted that Wong was amongst the members of parliament who had spoken the least in the House of Commons and he had vowed, as an MP, he would not "just attend photo opportunities."
When asked what he expects from Wong as a member of the opposition, Woo said:
"She will have to make sure the government does what it says. …Hopefully she can do her utmost for the people of Richmond, because you don't have to be in government to do something for the people in your riding."
Woo also said more apparent strategic voting could have also tipped the scales.
"I wish there was more of those. If I could have gotten a bit more (New Democrats) to vote strategically then probably I would have been on the other side of the fence," said Woo.
In his riding NDP candidate Jack Trovato garnered 4,613 votes, or 11.3 per cent of the popular vote. The Green candidate, Vincent Chiu, took home 1,152 votes, or 2.8 per cent of the vote.
Notably the race was initially called by CTV News as a Woo victory, however Wong slowly came back and won as more polls came in.
In 2011 the parent riding of Richmond saw Wong receive 58 per cent of the vote while Liberals and New Democrats each took home 18 per cent. The Greens scored 4.7 per cent.
The new Richmond Centre riding saw a voter turnout of 58.9 per cent, not including those who registered on election day. In 2011 the turnout in the Richmond riding was 51.0 per cent.
The results narrowly avoided an automatic recount by 56 votes. In order to trigger a recount, according to Elections Canada, the difference between the number of votes cast for the candidate with the most votes and the number of votes cast for any other candidate (463 in this case) must be less than one one-thousandth (1/1000) of the total votes cast (40,688 total votes in this case, so 407).
