- MacPolitics: Liberal Insider Kirk Cox Surprised Cumberland Colchester Tory Ellis Lost, ‘Less Surprised’ At Perkins South Shore defeat
By Andrew Macdonald
Liberal insider and lobbyist Kirk Cox thought on election day that the April 28th, 2025, election would see eight Liberals in Nova Scotia go to Ottawa as Member of Parliament.
Instead, Nova Scotians elected ten Liberals out of 11 ridings. Only Conservative Chris d’Entremont in West Nova won for the Tories, as first term MPs. Rick Perkins on the South Shore & Dr. Stephen Ellis in Cumberland Colchester saw defeat to two Liberal rookie politicos.
The Liberal party under leader Mark Carney fell three seats short of a majority.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own Ottawa seat, while the NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, also lost his seat. The NDP were left without party status with only seven seats.
Poilievre did increase the seat count, winning 144 seats, and had the highest popular vote since 1988, when that year Tory leader Brian Mulroney won a second back to back majority government.
On Carney’s failure to secure a majority government, coming within three seats, Cox, a lobbyist with his own firm, Granite Strategies, thinks Carney has a few options to govern for a four-year mandate.
“I think he has a few options. He has some tools that, if he decides to use them, he can get a majority government. He has appointments at his disposal. He can promise floor crossers a full mandate of maybe some meaningful work. He can free up seats with ambassador appointments,” Cox tells The Macdonald Notebook.
“He has tools that we have seen other prime ministers use in the past for these types of situations. Who knows if he will use them? I think he has some possibilities there, should he want to get to 172 MPs.”
“You talk about NDP MPs (who may cross the floor), there are some Bloc MPs who may look for some other work,” adds Cox.
The Liberal insider “is quite surprised” the Liberals took 10 of 11 seats. “I was surprised at how poorly the NDP did, and then I was surprised at how well the Liberals in Nova Scotia were able to convert that NDP support to win,” says Cox, a Bridgewater resident.
He said the Conservatives did well in the Ontario 905 region, taking prior NDP seats, and that denied the Carney Liberals their majority.
“But, if you look in Nova Scotia, the NDP vote by and large went to the Liberals. That is why Cumberland-Colchester was a surprise to me (where Tory Ellis lost). South Shore-St. Margarets (where Tory Perkins lost) was less of a surprise to me, just because there was no NDP candidate running. I live in the riding and I know there are a lot of progressive voters in the South Shore riding,” explains Cox.
“The riding profile has changed a lot over the last 15 years. It is a different riding than when Lloyd Crouse and Gerald Keddy had it.”
“I was less surprised” by Perkins’ defeat. But then he says, “I was surprised by how much (Liberal) Jessica Fancy-Landry won by. I know she worked hard and ran a pretty good campaign. I went to a couple of her campaign events, and they were so well attended. She seemed to run a campaign that picked up a lot of momentum.”
Fancy Landry was easily elected as Liberal MP on the South Shore.
As a Tory MP, Rick Perkins travelled the province when Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre campaigned across the province, being front and centre at those campaign stops over the last two years, with Perkins closely aligning himself to Poilievre.
Was that a mistake to be so close to the party leader? I asked Cox.
“No, I don’t think so. If you are an MP, you are there to work with the team. Being in caucus is a team sport. I think MPs absolutely made the right call by supporting their leader, and helping their leader to events in the province. That is part of being an MP.”
Cox thinks Poilievre will be around to run in the next election, whenever that is held.
“I think he goes the whole way. I think he will run again as leader.”
Cox believes the next election will be in two to three years, although he also believes “Mark Carney can find three extra votes.”
Justin Trudeau, left, Kirk Cox, in the middle, and right is Dale Palmeter.
