‘I’m torn, I don’t have a clue’
Candidates go door-stepping in the Maritimes, hoping to win hearts, minds
The federal riding of South Shore-St. Margaret’s stretches south along the rocky coast of Nova Scotia from Halifax to the lobster fishing village of Clarke’s Harbour, taking in such iconic landmarks as Peggy’s Cove and the historic port of Lunenburg.
It’s rolling countryside that has been painted Conservative blue since 1968, with a brief four-year Liberal interregnum in the 1980s.
But after Oct. 19, it is likely that it will no longer be blue — and it’s possible that its fate will be shared by every other Conservative riding in Nova Scotia.
Alex Godbold, an unassuming 42-year-old school teacher, is trying to win the seat for the New Democratic Party. He is in competition with two other rookies, Liberal Bernadette Jordan and former Parliament Hill staffer, Richard Clark, who won the Tory nomination after veteran MP Gerald Keddy decided to step down.
Canvassing on a glorious late summer’s afternoon in this hamlet 30 kilometres south of Halifax, Godbold has discovered he is kicking at a rotten door when it comes to swaying people from Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.
“The Conservative changes to employment insurance are a big deal. Fishermen in Shelburne have to drive 100 km to Liverpool or Bridgewater to get alternative employment and there’s a lot of frustration with that. People feel shortchanged. They’re not seasonal workers by choice,” he said.
Melvin, a Boutiliers Point senior, is repairing a mower in his yard when Godbold shows up and asks if he is thinking of voting NDP.
“Oh probably. I’ve been listening to some of this stuff. Harper there — he’s got to go,” he says.
“I haven’t decided yet, but I’ve ruled out the Conservatives for sure. Anybody can do better than Harper,” says a woman.
The comment is repeated in some variation at every one of the 15 homes Godbold visits in the course of the next hour or so. Not all were NDP voters, but none were Conservative.
Canvassing with candidates to find out what voters are really thinking is an inexact science — by definition, it’s a snapshot of one or two streets, most often chosen to reflect well on the candidate in question.
But after door-knocking with candidates in three Maritime ridings and talking to knowledgeable party insiders, the conclusion is inescapable: Of the 14 seats in the region the Conservatives won in 2011, they are in danger of losing 10.
One MP suggested winning seven out of the 13 the party holds would be a good result. More likely, the Tories will cling to four or five seats in New Brunswick and emerge from Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island with only a seat or two. Or none.
Success for incumbents like Robert Goguen in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe rests almost entirely on their own track record in office. A Corporate Research Associates (CRA) poll this month put the Conservatives at 22-per-cent support in Atlantic Canada, and Stephen Harper’s popularity rating at 17 per cent.
The reasons the brand is largely toxic on the East Coast are many and complex — ranging from employment insurance changes to concerns the region will lose billions when health transfers are effectively cut.
One senior Conservative in the region is seething at what he believes are missed opportunities. “It goes back to the undeniable truth that the people running the campaign have been an unmitigated disaster,” he said. “They wrote us off — full stop. That’s in an election where 10 seats could not only be the difference between majority and minority, but between government and opposition. It was a dumb-ass strategy.”
Any attempt to tailor the message to more traditional Progressive Conservative tastes have been resisted in Ottawa, he added. “It’s going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up.” Herring Cove is an old fishing community, 15 km south of Halifax, that has been incorporated into the regional municipality and the riding of Halifax.
Andy Fillmore, a manager of urban design who is running for the Liberals against the NDP’s Megan Leslie, is working what should be fertile terrain.
He bangs on one door and what sounds like Hellhound, the harbinger of death, erupts from the other side.
“I have a quirky Doberman,” shouts a woman from inside, forcing Fillmore to beat a hasty retreat. “Not an invitation to linger,” he says over his shoulder.
He hears the same story being told to Godbold further south — locals have decided they want the Conservatives gone and are prepared to vote for whichever opposition party can deliver.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I know what I don’t want — I don’t want Harper, so if you can do it,” says one woman.
Some people are clearly being polite when they say they are undecided between red and orange. One older woman who is working in her garden at first says she is “kicking it around,” but later lets slip, “Megan Leslie has been doing a wonderful job.”
The NDP’s deputy leader won by 12,000 votes in 2011 and it would be a huge shock if she lost this time. Fillmore himself admits he has voted for her twice, while the Conservative candidate in Halifax, Afro-Nova Scotian former school board chairman Irvine Carvery, once ran against her for the NDP nomination.
The CRA poll suggests the Liberals have the edge in Atlantic Canada, with the support of four out of 10 decided and leaning voters, against one-third who prefer the NDP. But it’s unlikely those numbers hold true in Halifax.
While many in Herring Cove have decided how to vote, there are others who are genuinely bemused by all the political noise.
“I’m torn. I don’t have a clue. I don’t pay too much attention — I have three kids and two dogs,” says one harassed woman, as she tries to restrain one hound while counselling her five-year-old son not to run over the local Liberal candidate on his bike.
Fillmore sees this as an opportunity.
“NDP support is dogmatic and reflexive, not studied. My job is to provoke some reflection,” he says.
Policy has not played a major part in the campaign so far, it seems. Much of the initial movement in support was an anti-Harper reflex.
But as policy trickles out, Liberals like Fillmore believe they have the advantage. One of the big issues on Atlantic Canada doorsteps is the outmigration of young people.
One woman is clearly distraught when she talks about her son already planning to move away when he graduates from university because of lack of work opportunities. Fillmore suggests the Liberal party’s $60-billion infrastructure plan would be “transformative” for the regional economy and create jobs for graduates like her son.
The Liberal “wraparound” strategy is intended to outflank the NDP on social policy and the Tories on middle-class taxes, financed by dipping into modest budget deficits. It’s not yet apparent that voters have bought in to the idea.
Fillmore expresses frustration that he is standing outside a burning building with a bucket of water, while the homeowner dithers on whether to take the bucket.
Of course, in this riding, all parties are extending pails — the debate is merely about the amount of water in them.
At an all-candidates’ forum, attended by Fillmore, Leslie and Carvery, as well as Green Party candidate Thomas Trappenberg (and all the candidates for neighbouring DartmouthCole Harbour, where the NDP’s Robert Chisholm is in a tough fight with Liberal Darren Fisher), the focus was almost exclusively on spending, rather than generating investment.
Even the Conservative candidate’s pitch centred on Ottawa’s role in securing the naval shipbuilding contract for the city’s Irving Shipyard, creating 15,000 jobs.
“We did that without a sitting member. Imagine what we could do if we had a sitting member,” Carvery said.
But what the Conservatives do and say in Halifax is irrelevant. This is a two-way fight, and it was instructive that Leslie made a virtue of the NDP’s new “balanced” approach when she summed up her party’s position.
The Liberals are promising “flashy spending sprees that will turn into austerity,” she said.
The NDP has a more cautious plan. “It might not be sexy but it’s good governance.” If this general election is taking place in a few regional silos, so it follows that the regions have their own micro-battles.
Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe represents one of Atlantic Canada’s few truly three-way contests, where Conservative Robert Goguen is facing stiff competition from Liberal Ginette Petipas Taylor, a victim services coordinator for the Mounties, and New Democrat Luc LeBlanc, an economic historian at the University of Moncton.
Goguen has been campaigning on his own record as someone who has “delivered” for the city, touting the new $107-million Moncton sports and entertainment centre that will soon dominate Main Street as reason enough to stick with the Tories. He says he has brought in $114,000 every day he has been in office and the city now has 6,500 more jobs than it did when he was elected.
The CRA poll suggests the Conservatives are doing much better in New Brunswick than elsewhere in the region — with more than double the amount of support they have in Newfoundland & Labrador.
Goguen gets a good reception at a modest seniors’ condo development in Riverview when he urges an elderly couple to “keep the momentum going in Moncton.” They ask him about concerns the other parties might end income-splitting. “It’s been the most wonderful thing for us,” says the wife.
Goguen is deliberately vague in response.
“The Liberals are talking about killing income-splitting. I don’t know what they are going to do, as far as pensionsplitting,” he says (for the record, they are keeping it).
Goguen won by 2,000 votes in 2011, an upset in a riding that was Liberal for the previous 23 years under Claudette Bradshaw.
One reason he triumphed was that the NDP vote doubled from its 2008 showing. LeBlanc is confident this trajectory is set to continue, and the NDP is conducting a well-funded, vis- ible campaign that highlights Conservative EI changes and the exodus of young people. He said he is seeing traditional Progressive Conservatives gravitating to the NDP because they consider them to be offering a more balanced economic approach than the Liberals. Back on the South Shore, Bernadette Jordan, a former hospital fundraiser and the Liberal candidate, is waiting at the White Sails Bakery on Peggy’s Cove Road. She says the riding has been Tory for all but four of the last 50 years, but it’s now “between the NDP and me.”
If clear blue water emerges between the two, it could turn into a flood. As one South Shore voter told Godbold, “This election is about anybody but Harper. As long as you’re close, you’ll get my vote.”
There is some resistance to Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, particularly from older men. Two seniors on Boutiliers Point independently referred to him as “The guy who’s not ready.”
But the race for South Shore is still too close to call.
Jordan says she was at an elementary school where one student approached her and said her dad had to go out west to work. “She asked me, ‘ Can you do something to make sure my dad doesn’t have to go west?’ ”
Voters across the region aren’t yet persuaded about who has the most convincing economic plan to halt out-migration. But huge swaths of Atlantic Canada seem set that whatever the question, the answer is not Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.