P.E.I. tide paints province Liberal red

P.E.I.'s Liberal party cruised to a surprisingly easy victory in Monday's provincial election.

The Liberals earned 52.9 per cent of the vote and 23 of the province's 27 districts, compared with 41.4 per cent of the vote and four seats for the Progressive Conservatives.

Premier-designate Robert Ghiz speaks to CBC News in Province House.
(CBC)

"We're going to move this province forward over the next four years to make sure that all Islanders get equal treatment," Liberal Leader Robert Ghiz told party workers in Charlottetown.

In a CBC Radio interview shortly after the CBC projected his victory, Ghiz sounded both modest and upbeat.

Asked whether his own leadership had turned the tide in favour of the Liberals, he replied: "There's no one person larger than the team, and we knew that all along.

"I had 26 other colleagues who had the confidence in me to run our campaign."

He gave credit to the "incredible job" done by the four Liberal members who had served as the only legislative opposition to the governing Progressive Conservatives leading up to Monday's election.

"Being in power for 11 years, I think, had a lot to do with it," he said of the defeat of Pat Binns's long-serving government.

When asked by CBC Television whether he expected the massive reversal of fortune for both parties, Ghiz admitted it was a larger margin of victory than anticipated but that he had felt the desire for change grow during the campaign.

Campaign had surprising twists

The Liberal victory marks the end of a surprising campaign that started with a confident Progressive Conservative party and a seemingly tentative Liberal party.

But it was the Liberal party that built confidence as the campaign progressed, and the Tories who seemed to falter.

'There's no one person larger than the team, and we knew that all along.'—Liberal Leader Robert Ghiz

It was a campaign marked by promises from the chief contenders, the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals, with both parties alleging their rival's pledges would be too expensive to fulfill.

Among the Liberals' key pledges, Ghiz vowed that every Islander would have access to a family doctor by the end of his first term (which by a new law is set to end in May 2011). To accomplish the goal, Ghiz said he would double the recruitment budget for doctors and establish a residency program to train young doctors who might then be more likely to stay on once their training ends.

He also promised to spend more on education, including setting a maximum class size of 15 students up to Grade 3, and improving salaries for early childhood educators. Ghiz said he would lower taxes, shaving the gasoline tax by 4.4 cents per litre and placing a freeze on property tax assessments.

In addition to the new spending and lower taxes, Ghiz promised a balanced budget.

In the CBC Radio interview Monday night, the province's next premier was also asked whether he would stand by his pledge to end the perennial practice of replacing Tory-leaning contract workers on the provincial payroll, in order to replace them with Liberals.

"The days of firing people are over," he said firmly. "The [Canadian] Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been clear on this." 

Binns seemed unbeatable

The victory is a vindication for the Liberal leader, who as recently as a month earlier appeared to have little chance of unseating Binns.

The Progressive Conservatives went into the campaign on a high on April 30, with a mass rally in Pinette, in Binns's home district of Belfast-Murray River. The cheering was so loud by the time Binns dropped the writ, it was difficult to hear the actual election call.

But the campaign appeared to shift in the first week.

At the beginning of Week 2, the Progressive Conservatives announced $15 million for a new junior high school for Stratford. The sudden Tory announcement caught the Eastern School District off-guard: the idea of a new school seemed to have been written off in the previous fall due to declining enrolments and the district had already started work on a plan to cope with the falling number of students.

The school promise was obviously aimed at helping the Tories in the electoral district of Stratford-Kinlock, but it hurt them in the rest of the province.

Analysts were surprised to see the election goodie handed out in Stratford-Kinlock, because the Tories had held the area for a long time — in fact, from 1993 to 1996, it was the only seat that the party held in the province. The school pledge was interpreted by some as a sign that the Progressive Conservatives were finding the campaign tougher than they had initially expected. (Indeed, in the end Stratford-Kinlock fell to the Liberals in a close race.)

The Tories continued to make big capital spending announcements, including a convention centre for Charlottetown and a health centre for Stratford. The costs of these promises were not clearly laid out.

Liberals' trademark was discipline

By contrast, the Liberals were seen as running a disciplined campaign from start to finish, giving the impression of a strategic plan that was adhered to, with staggered announcements in various policy areas.

The extent of the Tories' troubles became clear by the end of the campaign's third week, when the Charlottetown Guardian released a poll suggesting the Liberals were on their way to winning 18 seats in the 27-seat legislature. The headline was prophetic, it turns out: "Red tide surging."

The Liberal victory raises the question of Binns's future. He said during the campaign that, if he were re-elected, he would stay on for the full four-year term. However, at the time, he avoided answering questions about whether he was interested in staying on as leader of the Opposition.

Ghiz will be sworn in as P.E.I.'s 37th premier on June 13.

Voter turnout in Monday's election was up one per cent from the 2003 election, with 83.4 per cent of registered voters casting a ballot in 2007.