P.E.I. 2019 Provincial Election

On April 23 voters in Prince Edward Island will be asked two questions: who do they want to lead the province for the next 4 years and should they change the voting system to mixed-member proportional representation? Premier Wade MacLauchlan has been leading the Liberal government in Charlottetown since 2015 and even though the province of 153,000 owns the nation’s hottest economy, MacLauchlan’s personal popularity numbers are down and the opposition parties are smelling an opportunity. In P.E.I.’s case, the official Opposition isn’t the main beneficiary - rather it’s the second opposition party, the Greens with their Scottish-born dentist turned politician Peter Bevan-Baker as leader, who is running ahead in the polls. The Progressive-Conservatives under Dennis King, the party’s fifth leader in the past 8 years, has been bogged down by political infighting and the NDP under Joe Byrne is trying to win its first seat since 1996.

CPAC’s Bill Kendrick has the story from Charlottetown.