McKenna kicks off election bid under spectre of threat
Ottawa Centre incumbent Catherine McKenna, the city’s senior Liberal MP and one of the highest-profile ministers in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, kicked off her re-election bid Sunday with a boisterous party for supporters at her Wellington Street campaign headquarters.
But the cheering and boosterism couldn’t quite dispel the news first reported by The Canadian Press that McKenna had been assigned a security detail after a recent encounter outside a movie theatre. McKenna and her children were walking when a man in a car pulled up beside them, rolled down his window and yelled “F--- you, Climate Barbie.”
McKenna said she had endured insults and misogyny almost from the beginning of her political career, but this one seemed personal.
“It’s people saying things when I’m out on the streets with my family,” McKenna told reporters after her campaign kickoff speech.
“It’s happened in a number of different cities. It just made me realize that we do have to call these things out. I don’t want to dwell on it, but people have to realize what’s going on and that we’re better than this,” she said, her voice cracking.
“We’re Canada. We’re Canadians. The divisions we see, the polarization that has been fostered by some parties — yes, some parties like Maxime Bernier’s, but I would say there are other folks out there doing that too — it’s not Canada. That’s not the country I believe in. It’s not the country I grew up in.”
McKenna said the decision to add a security detail had been the RCMP’s, and she wouldn’t discuss any details. There was no obvious sign of added security at Sunday’s event.
Sheila Copps, who spent 20 years in the House of Commons, was among a bevy of prominent Liberals at McKenna’s kickoff, including Ottawa West-Nepean MP Anita Vandenbeld, Hull-Aylmer MP Greg Fergus and former Ottawa Centre MPP Yasr Naqvi. Copps said she, too, had endured abuse during her years in Parliament.
“I’ve had rocks thrown through my window. Back in ’82, when I introduced legislation on gay rights, it was vicious. …
“With the internet, it’s so much easier to spread hate that I think there’s a special responsibility for political people to behave better.”
McKenna won the Ottawa Centre riding in 2015 by 3,000 votes over three-term New Democrat Paul Dewar, who died in February of brain cancer.
This time, McKenna’s NDP challenger will be Emilie Taman, a former federal prosecutor who ran a strong campaign in 2015 in the Liberal stronghold of Ottawa-Vanier. Also registered as candidates in Ottawa Centre are Carol Clemenhagen for the Conservatives, Angela Keller-Herzog for the Greens and Merylee Sevilla for the People’s Party of Canada. The election is Oct. 21. bcrawford@postmedia.com Twitter.com/getBAC