Confederation Line opening overshadows campaign launches

The official launch of your electoral campaign would be a big deal to anyone, especially if the national leader of your party was on hand to give you a boost. Too bad about that new train.

Emilie Taman, running for the New Democrats in Ottawa Centre against Liberal Catherine McKenna, laughed when I asked her why on earth she’d picked the day of the LRT launch in Ottawa to kick-start her campaign, a day when local media were focused on rails, not politics.

“That wasn’t a strategic choice,” she conceded. “It was the day that worked for everyone.”

“Everyone,” in this context, meant NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. He had time around

4 p.m. Saturday, and that was that. A similar compete-with-the-LRT-for-media situation befell Conservative candidate Justina McCaffrey over in Kanata-Carleton when Andrew Scheer dropped by for an event. (That got derailed by questions about McCaffrey’s past association with the now-radioactive Faith Goldy, prompting her to jump in a car and speed away from questions. So maybe she didn’t mind LRT headlines overshadowing things.)

By comparison, the Taman event was smooth as a shiny new light-rail train ride. When Singh’s bus pulled up on Somerset Street in Chinatown, it disgorged a handful of slightly bedraggled reporters looking forward to a 24-hour break from campaign food. Not much was going to happen in Ottawa Centre on Saturday, other than the party leader dancing to the campaign theme song like he probably does at each stop.

She’d picked a day (to launch her campaign) when local media were focused on rails, not politics.

Ottawa Centre, in the last election, saw the highest voter turnout in the country, at 82 per cent. It is home to a lot of well-educated, engaged residents, many of whom work in government or, sometimes annoyingly, the news business. The electorate there, Taman says, “can see right through spin.”

So far, her Liberal opponent has gotten most of the ink. But if it bothers her, Taman doesn’t let it show. “The NDP has deep roots in this riding,” she says, “so we have lots of people who are interested in what we’re saying.” Running against McKenna, who is, of course, also environment minister, is “a big opportunity for me because climate change is overwhelmingly the top issue for voters in this riding. I’m hearing from many of them that they share my view that the current government has not done nearly enough.”

An issue she says she didn’t expect to hear about is electoral reform. “It comes up dozens of times every day,” from people telling her their vote in 2015 hinged on that Liberal promise. “When people were trying to be strategic last time between a hugely unpopular prime minister and a very popular local MP (the late NDP politician Paul Dewar, who lost to McKenna by 3,000 votes), what put many people over the edge to lend their vote to the Liberals was the promise of electoral reform.”

Taman has lived in the riding, which includes Parliament Hill, the Glebe and Westboro, for 13 years with her husband and three children. The daughter of former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, she’s a lawyer who spent some time prosecuting “a small, little-known company called SNC-Lavalin.” She was part of Joel Harden’s provincial campaign last year (he defeated Liberal minister Yasir Naqvi) and chaired the municipal campaign for Shawn Ménard, who defeated David Chernushenko in Capital Ward last year.

Her priorities for Ottawa Centre include big investments in public transit, “moving toward free public transit,” which she says resonates with local voters. On the housing crisis, “I see the LeBreton Flats development as a really important opportunity for a federal partnership and the construction of a vibrant mixed-income community.” People are frustrated with what she calls the proliferation of luxury condos, “many of which are essentially investment properties or Airbnbs.”

Harden, on hand to support Taman on Saturday, said the trick to defeat a Liberal cabinet minister is to “just keep working hard. She’s been knocking on doors since February. You’ve got to think about it like it’s an endurance project.” Brigitte Pellerin is an Ottawa writer.