Toronto Star

PCs hope for victory over former colleague

KANATA-CARLETON

- ALEX BOUTILIER

OTTAWA—Veteran Ottawa city councillor Marianne Wilkinson won’t make any prediction­s about who will take KanataCarl­eton in Thursday’s provincial election.

“I can’t call this one,” said Wilkinson, who has been involved in Kanata politics for decades.

Wilkinson’s hesitance to pick a winner in the riding is understand­able. There are plenty of question marks in the newlyredra­wn riding, which covers parts of the suburban community of Kanata as well as a number of more rural communitie­s.

The riding was created in 2012, largely based on the former riding of Carleton-Mississipp­i Mills. The former riding had been as close to a safe Tory seat as they come in this province, held by the PCs for more than a decade. That changed with Jack MacLaren. After a string of embarrassi­ng gaffes made headlines, MacLaren was booted from the PC caucus by former leader Patrick Brown. MacLaren disputed Brown’s version of events, saying he left of his own volition to join the fledgling Trillium Party.

MacLaren is running under the Trillium banner this time around, creating the potential to split the conservati­ve vote between himself and PC candidate Merrilee Fullerton, a family physician and lifelong Kanata resident. Neither MacLaren nor Fullerton responded to interview requests.

For the NDP, John Hansen is making his third run for elected office. Hansen is an engineer by trade, has worked in Kanata’s high-tech hub and lived in the community for more than 30 years. He said transporta­tion and transit is one of the main issues he has heard while going door-to-door in the riding.

“One thing that resonates with everybody, believe it or not, is bus service. Transporta­tion in general,” said Hansen, who ran for the federal NDP in 2015’s ill-fated campaign.

The area has not been kind to the New Democrats. But Hansen noted that in 2015, the federal Liberals were able to win the local seat from the Conservati­ves. Hansen is hoping for a similar dynamic provincial­ly: progressiv­e voters coalescing behind one party, in this case the NDP, to unseat an unpopular government. Kanata-Beaverbroo­k Community Associatio­n president Neil Thomson said it’s a possibilit­y, but he’s seen a lot of support for the two conservati­ves in the race. Thomson said some conservati­ve-inclined voters have expressed hesitation over putting PC Leader Doug Ford in the premier’s office. Wilkinson, the longtime councillor, agreed.

“I’ve heard people say (to Fullerton) ‘I’d like to vote for you but I can’t with Ford there,’ ” Wilkinson said, adding her best guess is that Kanata-Carleton will be a toss-up between the Liberals and Conservati­ves.

The Green party has tapped lawyer Andrew West to run. He said the No. 1 thing he hears from residents is they’d like to vote Green, but likely won’t.

That urban-rural split Thomson identified is pronounced in Kanata-Carleton. The community of Kanata was home to Ottawa’s once-booming tech sector, and was hit hard when that bubble burst in the early 2000s.

But the riding is also home to communitie­s such as Carp and Dunrobin, smaller communitie­s surrounded by farmland.

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