The big guns are leading Ottawa's election charge
Ottawa-Vanier's Mona Fortier, the incumbent in a Liberal stronghold, has been getting to know the new faces joining the party squad in the National Capital Region.
There was a phone call with Ottawa Centre candidate Yasir Naqvi and breakfast with the newly acclaimed candidate in Pontiac, Sophie Chatel. On Tuesday, the minister of middle-class prosperity did some door-knocking with Kanata-Carleton candidate Jenna Sudds and Liberal challenger Gustave Roy in Carleton. The latter is the only local riding the Grits didn't lock down in the past two federal elections.
As the only area cabinet minister running for re-election, as well as co-chair of the Liberals' national platform committee, Fortier is an obvious candidate to captain Team Liberal in the NCR, even if she's not laying claim to the title herself.
“I'm big on collaboration and team,” she said Wednesday.
While she hopes to continue to be a voice at the cabinet table, postelection, “at this time I'm a voice in the community, as my colleagues are, and we're going to be working together to show that our Liberal platform is the one to choose.”
And, Fortier said, Canadians will see a costed Liberal platform during the campaign that includes Liberal commitments and initiatives already underway, such as $10-a-day child care, as well as new content reflecting the “nonstop” conversations she and her platform committee co-chair have had with people across the country for the past seven months.
One important promise for the capital region, in Fortier's eyes, is the recently announced COVID -19 vaccination requirement for the federal public service, which she said should protect both bureaucrats and the local community.
“I was knocking on doors yesterday in my riding and I got really big thank yous from a lot of public servants who said, `You did the right choice,'” she said.
Why does she think the federal Liberals have been so dominant in Ottawa?
“I really, really think that they remember (Stephen) Harper,” Fortier said, referring to the Conservative prime minister between 2006 and 2015. “And all the austerity that we had before and the fact that, since we've been elected, we've been working hard on supporting businesses, families, workers, finding ways to make sure nobody's left behind.”
She also reasoned that, throughout the pandemic, the Liberals have collaborated with others levels of government to look out for Canadians' health and safety.
In Canada, and in Ottawa- Gatineau, “I believe ... they support our collaborative approach and that we have their backs.”
What would it take for more Conservative candidates to break though in the capital? The Citizen asked Carleton incumbent Pierre Poilievre, the sole local Tory elected to Parliament in 2019.
“Well, it'll be up to people across Ottawa to decide if they want someone who will fight for them and who will protect their paycheque against the growing danger of inflation and debt crisis, or if they just want another Liberal lapdog that will serve the self-interest of the prime minister.”
Those are fighting words from a candidate whose tagline is “fighting for you.”
At present, though, Poilievre is focused mostly on his own campaign rather than those of other Conservative candidates in the region.
“I always have to put my constituents first, and that's why I'm undefeated in six elections,” he said.
Top of mind for Poilievre, the shadow minister for jobs and industry, is reining in government spending and creating an environment for businesses that supports more domestic hiring and production.
For Ottawa, a tech hub, Poilievre pointed to some pledges in the Conservatives' recently released platform: a plan to halve the tax rate on income earned from patents on “innovative products developed here,” and introducing the use of “flow-through” shares for tech companies to incentivize private sector investment.
He's also championing a proposal to make work-from-home a permanent option for as many federal public servants as possible, which he says would save them time and money, cost taxpayers less and reduce traffic, pollution and road-maintenance expenses.
In the core of the city, in a riding that many consider the New Democrats' best shot at a local breakthrough, Ottawa-Centre NDP candidate Angella MacEwen thinks the departure of the riding 's Liberal MP could be bad news for that party.
MacEwen has found climate change to be the No. 1 issue with voters answering the door.
That was also the case in last federal election — MacEwen ran in Ottawa West-Nepean — but she thinks people, especially in Ottawa-Centre, were willing to give Catherine McKenna, then the Liberal environment minister, “the benefit of the doubt because they believed that she was fighting for better.”
Having seen things like current environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson's defence of the Trans Mountain pipeline and sale of oil, MacEwen says, local voters “no longer believe that the Liberals are taking the right approach.”
In 2021, MacEwen has been able to run in her home riding and talk to Ottawa-Centre voters about a platform that pledges actions such as cutting oil and gas subsidies, tax reform and building non-market affordable housing.
And she says she has heard on doorsteps, even from people identifying as Liberals, that their favourite Liberal governments have been those with strong NDP oppositions. They acknowledge, MacEwen said, “that's when we've got the best stuff done.”