In Gatineau, promise of bridge only goes so far
It’s not often that a statement about humility turns into such a smackdown.
Françoise Boivin, the New Democrats’ incumbent in Gatineau riding, was speaking at a candidates’ debate on a Gatineau radio station, 104.7 FM. She began simply enough:
“I feel humble about the honour that people gave me in 2011,” she began. And then she added the kicker: “when they gave me the biggest majority in Quebec.”
The Orange Wave of 2011 reached its crest in Gatineau. Boivin won 31,894 votes, or 62.13 per cent of the vote, and unseated two-time incumbent Richard Nadeau of the Bloc Québécois. And today some polls are giving her 47 per cent of the decided vote, though surveys of individual ridings can be shaky because they have small sample sizes.
So, how do you attack someone who drew that kind of support last time? Boivin said in an interview that she sees the Liberals as her most serious opposition. And Liberal strategy is to offer Gatineau people a faster way to drive to Ontario: a bridge across the Ottawa River at Kettle Island.
Liberal candidate Steve MacKinnon is in his second campaign.
“Two years ago the NCC published a report that couldn’t be any clearer on the need for a bridge,” MacKinnon said during a recent candidates’ debate. “What disappoints me is that since then we’ve moved backward.”
“We need a champion for the bridge,” he said at the debate. “If you have ambition for Gatineau, if you have the ambition for a new interprovincial bridge, I’m the only choice to make.”
The NCC report is gathering dust, he says. And he accuses Boivin of inaction: Of the hundreds of times she rose to speak in the House, “not one was about the riding’s most important issue,” he said.
The Bloc’s Philippe Boily says public transit is the answer. “The goal isn’t to have a bridge, but to reduce traffic,” he said. But he says the federal government has given “not a penny” to Gatineau’s Rapibus.
Boily has said repeatedly during the campaign that he wants to “take Gatineau out of the shadow of Ottawa,” which unfairly dominates the federal job market and the overall economy.
Conservative Luc Angers — who does interviews and debates, unlike many Conservatives — says bluntly that Gatineau’s municipal council, where he spent two terms, doesn’t want the bridge. The Conservatives have money in the budget to support this kind of infrastructure, he said — but only where the local municipality wants it. He says Gatineau prefers to develop more public transit running east and west across the city.
Boivin says the bridge isn’t forgotten, but rather it has been delayed by the necessary steps such as environmental studies. And more than that, “two out of the five partners (Ottawa and Ontario) have pulled back unilaterally from the agreement they had made,” she said.
So with the three other parties lined up in an anti-bridge stance, and with Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger opposing the bridge from his own riding of Ottawa-Vanier, MacKinnon is the only one making a bridge a big promise.
Boivin is running clearly on her record. She made only one promise last time, she said: “To bring proven leadership and proven presence in the riding. I think I’ve delivered the goods.”
Two other candidates in the race are Guy Dostaler, of the Green party, and Guy J. Bellavance, an Independent.
Thomas Collombat, a political scientist at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, thinks Boivin has the individual support to win even if the NDP loses support nationally.
“Mr. MacKinnon is attacking largely on local issues,” including support for public service jobs, he said. And the Liberals’ promise to spend heavily may give them a local edge over the NDP among those who hope for government jobs.
He says Angers, though wellknown, is saddled with representing a party that wants to cut public service jobs. And Boily, he says, doesn’t have the status of the Bloc’s former MP, Richard Nadeau.
That makes MacKinnon “the only option” with a chance of upsetting the NDP, he says.
So, a bridge. Will it work for the Liberals?
“The bridge doesn’t come up in conversation much,” Collombat said. “People talk about the Rapibus, they talk about its extension to the west, they talk about the hockey arena (to replace the aging Robert Guertin Arena, in Hull-Aylmer riding), about the development of downtown,” but less about a bridge.
There’s another plus for the Liberals: The Trudeau promise of spending on infrastructure seems tailor-made for Gatineau, with its growth outstripping its transportation system.