After years of working behind the scenes in politics, Dougald Lamont now has five years of experience as a Manitoba legislature member and six years at the helm of the provincial Liberals.
It has been a learning curve, he admits.
With three seats in the legislature and much less money and staff than his Progressive Conservative and NDP counterparts, Lamont’s Liberals often have to fight for time in the spotlight.
However, he believes a smaller party can play a vital role.
“I know that if it weren’t for the fact that we were there, some things would never have been talked about at all,” Lamont said in an interview.
Lamont, 54, spent years in communications jobs, with freelance writing and his own digital ad agency on the side.
In 2014, he co-chaired a mayoral run by Robert-Falcon Ouellette, who was then mostly unknown to the public. Ouellette finished a strong third in the seven-candidate field.
A year later, Lamont was communications director for Ouellette’s run for the federal Liberals in Winnipeg Centre. Ouellette took the longtime NDP stronghold from incumbent Pat Martin.
Lamont won the provincial Liberal leadership in 2017 and ran for a legislature seat the following year in a byelection in St. Boniface, which had been solidly NDP for 19 years. He won, and retained the seat in the 2019 provincial election.
And while many people assume the provincial Liberals are in the political centre, Lamont said his party leans further left than the Opposition New Democrats.
“Right now, it looks like Manitobans have the option of one progressive party and two conservative parties,” Lamont said.
In the last election, Lamont promised more than $1 billion in new annual spending, partly to improve front-line services and partly to boost the economy through infrastructure work. The promise came despite warnings from credit-rating agencies in 2017 about Manitoba’s string of deficits that stretched back to 2009.
In the past, he has questioned cuts to income and small-business taxes by the former NDP government. On a personal blog several years ago, he wrote those tax cuts — not overspending — were a main driver of Manitoba’s deficits.
Lamont has scored some political success despite his party’s small staff and bank account.
He pushed the government last year to take a second look at a decision by the Crown not to lay charges against former fashion mogul Peter Nygard in Winnipeg. The government ordered an outside review and, several months later, police laid charges of sexual assault and confinement. Nygard, who also faces charges in Quebec, Ontario and the United States, has maintained his innocence.
Lamont has also led the Liberals to surprising showings in byelections, including a close call in the Fort Whyte seat in Winnipeg last year. The Liberals’ Willard Reaves came within 200 votes of winning the seat, which has always been a Progressive Conservative stronghold and went to Obby Khan.
Lamont, however, has also misfired on occasion. He once accused Tory cabinet minister Kelvin Goertzen of being in a conflict of interest because Goertzen is a landlord and voted on an omnibus bill that included provisions affecting landlords. Goertzen pointed out he had one house that he rented to his mother.
Lamont also once suggested one of the premier’s advisers donated money to the truck convoy that blocked streets in protest of COVID-19 restrictions. He retracted the suggestion as the donor turned out to be a different person.
Opinion polls suggest the Liberals continue to sit well back of the two major parties in terms of popular support. Under different leaders over the last 20 years, the party has usually ended up with 12 to 15 per cent of the popular vote in provincial elections, and Lamont has not yet shown signs of breaking through.
One political analyst said Lamont has shown himself to be well-informed and hard-working in offering an alternative to voters, but he’s not a natural at some of the glad-handing politics requires.
“I don’t think he’s a naturally gifted campaigner in terms of interacting with people in everyday life and making an instantaneous impression on them,” said Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.
Lamont lives in Winnipeg with his wife, Cecilia. They have four children.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
