Liberal star candidate targets NDP territory
AUTO INDUSTRY DOMINATES WINDSOR POLITICS AS PARTIES
VIE FOR LABOUR VOTES
On Wednesday afternoon, NDP candidate Brian Masse met reporters near the front door of the Caesars casino in downtown Windsor, Ont. He was peeved.
That morning, his Liberal opponent Sandra Pupatello came to the casino to announce she’d ensure a re-elected Liberal government would pass single-game sports betting — despite the fact this promise is not in the Liberal platform and despite the fact the Liberals had just defeated a bill to legalize single-game betting in 2016. The cherry on top: that defeated bill had been put forward by none other than NDP MP Brian Masse.
“This is playing politics at the worst level,” Masse said, noting that Canada could have been ahead of the U.S. on this, but is now behind. “There’s a heck of a lot of people still to convince in the Liberal party. And I don’t even believe it’s a part of their platform. So this is desperate politics at best.”
Masse was standing beside Ken Lewenza, a former national president of the Canadian Auto Workers (which has since merged into Unifor). Lewenza had also headed up the local union chapter when it organized the casino workers in 1994.
“The national union has spent a tremendous amount of resources in lobbying the Liberal government on multiple occasions, as recently as four or five months ago, to get on with this particular competitive advantage,” Lewenza told reporters. “(Pupatello) says, ‘I’m going to get it.’ Well, we’ve had cabinet ministers in this community in the last few days, who not once mentioned this as a job initiative, not once committed to this.”
Unifor has argued single-game betting is already widely available through unregulated websites and apps — as well as through organized crime — and would create 150 jobs at Windsor’s casino if legalized. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports betting last year and the major sports leagues have all now come on board.
While Masse and Lewenza were giving that news conference at the front door, Pupatello and her campaign team were on the other side of the building, handing out campaign literature to casino workers on their shift change at the back gate.
“Pupatello confirmed that, should she win the riding of Windsor West, Single Sports Betting will be allowed here in Windsor,” her campaign handout said. “Having a voice at the table, and one with a history in helping to build the gaming industry here, makes a difference.”
This is what campaigning in a union town looks like. If Wednesday was any indication, it’s going to be a fierce fight to the finish line on Oct. 21.
The Liberals entered this election gunning for NDP seats in the Ontario manufacturing centres of Hamilton and Windsor. They’re hoping to take advantage of the NDP’s weak fundraising and polling numbers, and are using their renegotiation of NAFTA as a key issue to draw labour votes — though it’s still unsettled whether the new deal will be ratified by the U.S. Congress.
For 40 years, Windsor West was a Liberal stronghold held by Herb Gray. But starting in 2002, Masse has now won six straight elections here. The NDP won all three Windsor seats in the 2015 election.
To try to change that, the Liberals recruited a star candidate in Pupatello. She represented Windsor provincially for 16 years, serving in senior roles in Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet. In 2013 she nearly became Ontario’s premier, losing a very close leadership race to Kathleen Wynne.
Pupatello’s pitch to voters is that she knows how to work the halls of power in Canada, and can influence government in a way NDP MPs simply can’t. That’s her basis for promising single-game betting, despite the rather significant problem of the Liberal platform not mentioning this.
“When you’re relentless and you know how to get things done, it happens,” she said Wednesday afternoon, canvassing in a neighbourhood in the south end of the city. Talking to voters, she says Windsor needs to have a “strong voice” that can affect decision-making, instead of being represented only by the third party.
She has a lot of opposition to overcome here, and she knows it. “There are hardcore NDP here, that’s for sure,” Pupatello said. “But what’s interesting is we shared the riding for years (provincially and federally). So people have to decide this election, they have to really think about it.”
For all the talk on Wednesday about casino workers, it’s still the auto industry that dominates Windsor politics. Thousands of jobs here depend on the Chrysler and Ford factories and the related supply chain.
Pupatello hammers the NDP for pledging to re-open the renegotiated NAFTA deal to get a better one. “They should know better, you can’t have that kind of uncertainty hanging over the sector,” she said.
But Masse, speaking in an interview later, argues the Liberals aren’t even going to get their deal through.
“The reality is that the current deal is held up in Congress, who said it’s not satisfactory,” Masse said. He said his 12 years as vice-chair of the Canada–U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group means he knows what it takes to get a cross-border deal done.
“The mismanagement of Trudeau is really the problem here,” Masse said. “With him calculating with Trump, he underestimated the resolve of the Democratic Party to fix the labour and environmental and the pharmacare components.”
Wednesday was a busy, chaotic day for Masse. He’d already had to rip up his schedule to attend a funeral for Shelley Harding-Smith, a school trustee who had been Canada’s first black female master electrician and an activist for minority rights. “She was very much a mentor of mine,” Masse said.
But the Pupatello announcement prompted another sudden change, as he jammed a news conference into an agenda that already included a community tree-planting, a Children’s Aid Society forum and a university canvass. A day in the life of a campaign.
At this point, public polling suggests a very close race between the NDP and Liberals for Windsor West. The Conservative candidate is Henry Lau, and Quinn Hunt is running for the Green Party.
Masse said he’s feeling good about it, comparing it to 2011 when the NDP rose under Jack Layton’s leadership.
“We had a later campaign surge where the leader became someone who people got to know better than ever before, and started to connect with on a personal level,” he said. “Now Jagmeet is becoming the favourite guy to have a cup of coffee with. I’m hearing that very much at the doors.”
But Masse’s up against a formidable opponent, someone who’s fought many Windsor election battles before. This is a race where the hustle of the local candidate may well be the deciding factor. “Windsor campaigns are spirited,” Pupatello said with a smile, before heading up to another door.
THIS IS PLAYING POLITICS
AT THE WORST LEVEL.