REEVELY Ex-councillor to stand in Ottawa-South for Tories
Former city councillor running in Ottawa South blasts Liberals on finances and ‘lies’
The Progressive Conservatives in Ottawa South have nominated former city councillor Karin Howard to run against Liberal John Fraser in next year’s provincial election — a quiet success for a party struggling with some very noisy messes.
The party needs new local leaders in Ottawa West-Nepean, after much of the riding executive quit last weekend over a botched nomination meeting that leader Patrick Brown rubber-stamped. It needs new local leaders in Kanata-Carleton, after the riding executive quit over Brown’s expulsion of renegade MPP Jack MacLaren from the party. Its own members backbite as if they were in different parties.
And then there’s Howard, running up the blue banner at her nomination meeting at the Jim Durrell Recreation Centre on Sunday afternoon.
“I believe in the truth and I believe that you serve the public and you have to account. I’m sorry, but this government doesn’t tell the truth. This government can lie happily,” Howard said Tuesday.
Howard’s a textbook Progressive Conservative candidate: a lawyer and volunteer who lived abroad for a while and served on Ottawa’s pre-amalgamation city council. She has an advanced degree in law, having studied legal mechanisms for political accountability like Stephen Harper’s Federal Accountability Act and Ottawa’s integrity commissioner and lobbying rules.
During her last stint in public office, Howard’s reputation suffered a bit over whether she kept her council job too long while she moved in stages to China for her husband’s foreign posting halfway through her second term in 1998. Otherwise, her record was of competent, middle-of-the-road representation, with an emphasis on increasing transparency.
That’s still what animates her. After almost 20 years out, Howard edged back into politics lately, sticking up for her community association in its criticisms of the rushed playground at Mooney’s Bay (she has campaigned for Mayor Jim Watson before but probably won’t be doing that again). And now, she says, she’s running for office again because the provincial Liberals have to go.
“Provincially now, decisions have been, by any neutral standard, fairly poor. When you look at the auditor-general’s reports ... there’s a depth of incompetency that has been proven over and over again. (There’s) something in the Ontario Liberal government that continually makes poor decisions, especially when it comes to contracting and innovations,” Howard said Tuesday. “They have a pattern of not respecting or listening to the legal advice they’re getting on contracts and on projecting costs out.”
Ottawa South has been a pretty safe Liberal seat since the early 1990s. Its current MPP, Fraser, walked away with more than 50 per cent of the vote in 2014, just shy of Dalton McGuinty’s best showings when McGuinty was the premier. But Howard’s a more experienced, more deeply rooted candidate than the Liberals have faced there in a while.
Howard said she’ll hold Fraser’s feet to the fire for the government’s failings. The province is too deeply in debt and, despite the Liberals’ boasts to the contrary, Howard argues they’ve only balanced the provincial budget this year by selling chunks of Hydro One and other assets they can only liquidate once. She can’t stand to watch it anymore.
“It is about the record of performance of the Ontario Liberals over the last many years,” she said. “There may be nice candidates who are Liberals, nice people who are Liberals — I’m not supposed to say that, of course — but it’s not about promises. It’s about what they have done,” Howard said.
Her own party is, though, cleaved by these fights over much more contentious nominations than hers. Across the province, candidates have complained the decks have been stacked or they’ve been disqualified at the last minute to favour Brown loyalists. Some have taken their own party to court.
The president of the Tory association in Ottawa West-Nepean, Emma McLennan, quit — and then released the letters she sent the party over Brown’s decision to appoint her riding’s candidate, Karma Macgregor, following a nomination vote that saw bunches of ballots stuffed into voting boxes in wads and more votes than there were registered voters. “When you denied our members their right to a fair vote, you made a mockery of the basic principles of democracy that we value as Canadians,” McLennan wrote, in a two-page flaying. Howard is aware. “I can only speak for me, and what I bring in Ottawa South. I can promise you I’m there on accountability,” she said. Brown’s work ethic is exceptional and she believes he’s committed to open, accountable leadership for the province.
He’s raised millions of dollars more for the Tories than Kathleen Wynne has for the Liberals and Howard finds his efforts to expand the party beyond its social-conservative base heartening. “We all know there had to be a generational shift, a population shift in terms of who supported the Progressive Conservative party, and I’m so glad to see it,” she said.
I can only speak for me, and what I bring in Ottawa South. I can promise you I’m there on accountability.