Tory, Liberal in tight race
As its name implies, Kanata-Carleton is a riding with a split personality.
The riding encompasses both Kanata’s citified suburbs and the sprawling rural communities west of them, and the candidate who best bridges those worlds will likely emerge victorious on election night in what has proven to be a neck-andneck race between Conservative Walter Pamic and Liberal Karen McCrimmon.
Polls suggest that only a percentage point or two separates the frontrunners.
The riding is a new one, built largely from what used to be Carleton-Mississippi Mills. That riding had a similar composition, and it regularly sent Tory candidates to Parliament Hill because of a strong conservative base rooted in its small towns and farm communities.
A Statistics Canada profile of the riding highlights some of the general characteristics of that voting bloc. More than half of the riding’s population — 55,830 people — identify themselves as Canadians who have been in the country for at least three generations. These are the kind of voters Conservative Leader Stephen Harper recently referred to as “old stock Canadians.”
Only about one in five of Kanata-Carleton’s residents come from a visible minority. More than half identify their ethnicity as English, Irish or Scottish, and two-thirds call themselves Christians. About 60 per cent of those in the riding have lived there at least five years and the vast majority (90 per cent) own their homes rather than rent them.
No issue has divided rural and urban voters more than gun control. In fact, the last Liberal to represent Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Ian Murray, was defeated by the Canadian Alliance’s Scott Reid 15 years ago as the backlash to the Liberals’ national long-gun registry intensified.
The Liberals have not come close to winning Carleton-Mississippi Mills (formerly Lanark-Carleton) in four subsequent elections.
In Kanata-Carleton this year, McCrimmon has appealed to rural conservatives by stressing her military pedigree. A retired lieutenantcolonel, McCrimmon was the first woman to command a Royal Canadian Air Force squadron; she served in Afghanistan, the Balkans and the first Gulf War.
This has made Kanata-Carleton a tight, two-way race between McCrimmon, who lives in Constance Bay, and Pamic, a smallbusiness owner and longtime Kanata resident who was a relative unknown entering this election.
During one formal debate and another all-candidates meeting, McCrimmon and Pamic clashed over a host of issues: the Conservative government’s treatment of civil servants; the Liberals’ proposed infrastructure program; and electoral reform.
In the Rogers TV debate, McCrimmon said the government’s relationship with its employees has become dangerously frayed under the Conservatives. Pamic attacked the Liberals as a “tax and spend” party that the country can’t afford in a time of economic uncertainty. “Don’t let my friend’s doom and gloom scare you: Canada has done well since the 2008 recession,” he said. “We have the wealthiest middle class, created 1.3 million net new jobs. But the global economy is fragile.”
The rural-urban divide appears less pronounced in this election than in the past, although Kanata voters have frequently raised the issue of transit with canvassing politicians — many want the Phase 2 light rail project extended west beyond Bayshore — while rural voters have expressed concern about the impact of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
Both McCrimmon and Pamic said the primary issue in this election is the economy, but they disagreed about how best to protect and stimulate it. McCrimmon trumpeted the jobs that will result from the Liberal plan to almost double federal spending on infrastructure to $125 billion, while Pamic argued that the best way to bolster the economy is to maintain the Conservative government’s policy of lower taxes and balanced budgets.
It appears McCrimmon has drawn support away from NDP candidate John Hansen, a hightech executive, and Green Party candidate Andrew West, a University of Ottawa’s law school graduate. A recent Mainstreet Research poll suggests the two candidates have a combined level of support of 12 per cent among leaning and decided voters.