Move into Parliament

Liberal Andrew Leslie lives in Rockcliffe but considers running for MP in Ottawa-Orléans

Retired general Andrew Leslie is looking for an Ottawa riding in which to run and is leaning toward Ottawa-Orléans.

Retired general Andrew Leslie is looking for an Ottawa riding in which to run for Parliament and is leaning toward Ottawa-Orléans.

Leslie, who was chief of the land staff and then chief of transformation for the Canadian Forces, left the military in 2011 to become a private consultant and signed up as an adviser to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau last September. Besides being a decorated soldier who led troops in Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, Leslie is the grandson of Liberal politician Brooke Claxton, who was federal minister of health and of defence in the 1940s and ’50s.

It’s not a secret that he’ll likely run in the next federal election but he hasn’t said where.

“I’m trying to figure out the best fit,” he said Friday. “Ottawa-Orléans is certainly the most attractive that I’ve seen.”

It’s a complicated, growing riding with a large francophone population and a major military presence of Canadian Forces members who mainly commute downtown, he said.

Conservative MP Royal Galipeau has won the riding three times — ending a long, long period of Liberal dominance — but has never run away with it. He’s never been seen as cabinet material, and has lately suffered a bout with skin cancer and has been in hospital with broken ribs and elevated calcium levels in his blood.

The other obvious possibility for Leslie is in west Ottawa, where a new riding is being carved out of the existing Ottawa West-Nepean and Nepean-Carleton, focused mostly on Barrhaven but extending north past Hunt Club Road. Tory stalwarts John Baird and Pierre Poilievre, who represent the two ridings there now, will leave the third one uncovered.

Baird is said to favour the new central-Nepean riding, though, and Poilievre the newly drawn Nepean-Carleton. (He recently moved his constituency office from Greenbank and Hunt Club, in the new central Nepean riding, to Manotick, in the new Nepean-Carleton.) That would leave Ottawa West-Nepean open.

Nevertheless, Leslie’s favoured riding is in the east. Leslie lives in Rockcliffe, which isn’t in Ottawa- Orléans, and the Liberal party is understood to have organizer Jean Hébert working on an effort to “draft” him into the east-end riding, showing there’s plenty of demand for him there.

“I think he’d make a great candidate for the Liberal party,” said Innes councillor and Liberal Rainer Bloess, who confirmed he’s been approached by Hébert touting Leslie’s name.

“He’d help the local association galvanize.”

The fact the former general would be running outside his home riding isn’t a help to his candidacy, Bloess said, but it’s hardly the first time anybody’s done it.

Another complication is David Bertschi — the Liberal candidate in Ottawa-Orléans in 2011 and a leadership candidate against Trudeau early this year — who fully intends to run again.

“I was looking the other day at Justin’s platform and how he’s committed to an open nomination process,” Bertschi said.

“My intention, quite frankly, given the hard work I did both before, during and after the election, is to run again.”

He said he’s been a party activist at all levels, increased the party’s share of the vote in a bad election for Liberals everywhere and intends to continue that fight.

“I’ve never met Andy, I’ve never seen him at any events in Ottawa-Orléans, but I look forward to it and to working with him for the good of the party,” Bertschi said pointedly.

Wherever he runs, Leslie said he expects a fair and open nomination fight.