Possible glimpse of red emerges in the bluest of Canada’s cities
National Post columnist John Ivison is travelling across Canada to chronicle how election battles are unfolding by region. Today: Calgary.
Kent Hehr was a promising junior hockey player until he was paralyzed in a random drive-by shooting at the age of 19.
But on a sunny Thanksgiving Sunday in the leafy downtown Calgary neighbourhood of Inglewood, almost in the shadows of the glass-and-brass towers of downtown, the 46-year-old lawyer isn’t letting his disability slow him down. He is zooming around on what appears to be a turbocharged wheelchair in his quest to become the first Liberal MP elected in this city in his lifetime.
Lee Richardson won Calgary Centre for the Conservatives with 58 per cent of the vote in 2011, but when he left a year later, his successor Joan Crockatt only narrowly defeated the Liberal and Green candidates in a byelection on a turnout of just 30 per cent.
Since then the riding has elected three NDP provincial members. “It’s a misnomer that Calgary is a conservative place — it’s a fallacy,” Hehr says.
As he powers down the sidewalk, hollering greetings to passersby, his father, Richard, trails in his wake, laden with campaign signs. “We’re making mistakes as fast as we can,” he jokes.
Hehr is a two-term Liberal MLA — a fact that gives him broad name recognition and an easygoing manner on the doorsteps of Calgary Centre. “Hi, I’m Kent Hehr, running to be the first Liberal elected in the city since 1968 and I’m a reasonable guy most days.”
A couple of hours canvassing illustrates why the Liberals, and Hehr in particular, are winning support, even from skeptical voters.
Sue Clark, an IT worker in the health industry, wonders what will happen to Alberta’s oil industry under the Liberals. “My family are losing their jobs,” she says.
Hehr says no political party can control the oil price but the Liberals are committed to building infrastructure like flood mitigation and light- rail transit to take advantage of low interest rates and cheaper labour costs.
“When you’re a geophysicist, that’s not going to help you get a job,” Clark says. Hehr replies it will stop house prices plummeting, while the Liberals will do a better job accessing markets through pipelines.
Clark looks less doubtful. “As long as we don’t get the NDP I’ll be happy — I voted for them, like everyone else in this stupid province. But Albertans have a hard time with Liberals.”
“I’m going to push back a bit on that,” Hehr says. “Under Jean Chrétien in the ’90s, Alberta did very well.”
Then he comes to the “$10 question.”
“Even with your reservations, can I count on your support?”
“I’m considering it,” says Clark. “The biggest reason is the legalizing of marijuana. My daughter has MS and she needs it.”
Hehr senses a convert and asks about her financial situation. “You’ll be $700 a year better off under us. That’s better than a kick in the pants with a frozen boot,” he says, after she tells him her circumstances. “It’d be ludicrous to vote for any other party,” he says.
“I’ll do some really hard thinking,” she promises, as he manoeuvres his wheelchair out of her yard.
The exchange was a demonstration of the best Canadian democracy at work — the skeptical but engaged voter; the persuasive, informed politician. It was also illustrative of why the Liberals have managed to pick up support across the country — their smorgasbord of policies is so broad, candidates can pick and choose what works for them. One minute they are spending more than the NDP on infrastructure; the next, cutting taxes more than the Conservatives — unconstrained by such niceties as balancing the budget.
In all of this, conspicuous by its absence, is the name Trudeau.
Crockatt, the Conservative incumbent, is campaigning in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood south of the downtown core. Her blue signs begin to outnumber Hehr’s red and NDP candidate Jillian Ratti’s orange the further you go from the gleaming towers and apartment blocks, where the floods of new Canadian arrivals land. Hehr’s prospects rest on getting many of those voters out.
A Mainstreet poll from Oct. 5 put Conservative support in the city at 51 per cent, compared to 22 per cent for the Liberals and nine per cent for the NDP. But that support is concentrated in three ridings — Calgary Centre, Confederation and Skyview.
Political strategist Stephen Carter says Hehr, Matt Grant in Confederation and Darshan Kang in Skyview all have a decent chance of being elected. But, he adds, the Conservative get-outthe-vote operation in Calgary is formidable.
Crockatt says memories of past Liberal slights linger.
“Stephen Harper is appreciated by Calgarians for standing behind the energy sector. Justin Trudeau didn’t support the Gateway pipeline and he won’t support the Energy East pipeline. Calgarians find that shocking. They lived through one Trudeau,” she says.
On the doorsteps, she tells a woman: “We need to keep the economy moving. People trust Stephen Harper — he’s an economist.”
This is a city that has been hit hard by the oil sector downturn — unemployment bubbles just under the national average, after years of labour shortages. Everyone knows someone who has been laid off, including Crockatt. “My niece’s fiancé got laid off this week. My sister lost her home last time.”
That sense of almost existential angst lies below the surface in a province of spectacular booms and gut-wrenching busts — and it may make voters less inclined to change.
“I don’t have any other choice,” says Ed, a veteran, who is raking leaves in his yard. He considers the Conservatives the best of an unsavoury lot.
“Too bad you couldn’t go after the Liberals for stealing our money,” he says to Crockatt.