Mail-in ballots will determine Mountain riding
Race between Liberal, NDP candidates still too close to call, adding intrigue to a pandemic election that otherwise did little to change Canada’s political map
A surge of pandemic mail-in votes will determine the winner of a tight Hamilton Mountain federal election race that could paint three city ridings Liberal red for the first time since 2006.
The unpopular snap election, widely seen as a Liberal effort to reach majority government, instead yielded another minority for the party — although a final vote tally depends on one million mailin ballots Elections Canada only started counting Tuesday.
Political leaders eyeing Hamilton’s three open seats visited nine times during the 36-day campaign but, in the end, the only riding in the city poised to change hands is Hamilton Mountain, where Liberal Lisa Hepfner held a narrow lead of fewer than 690 votes over the NDP’s Malcolm Allen after election day.
That race remains too close to call until up to 2,604 mail-in ballots are counted sometime between now and Thursday.
The “status quo” election result nationally did not surprise McMaster University political scientist Peter Graefe, who noted pre-election polls showed voters were “unimpressed” with the idea of a snap election during COVID. “In some ways this (vote) was probably a waste of everybody’s time and money,” he said.
Not all ballots have been counted yet, but early numbers available Tuesday suggested voters were too COVID-wary, irritated or uninterested to come out in force.
Preliminary numbers showed national voter turnout around 59 per cent — well
off the 67 per cent result in 2019. In Hamilton, early turnout ranged from a low of 52.6 per cent in Hamilton Centre to a high closer to 65 per cent in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas
(HWAD), although numbers should rise slightly with a final tally.
Even with the Mountain undecided, city voters elected new faces in Liberal Chad Collins (Hamilton East-Stoney Creek) and Conservative Dan Muys (Flamborough-Glanbrook). Incumbents Filomena Tassi (Liberal) and Matthew Green (NDP) easily retained HWAD and Hamilton Centre, respectively.
The eventual winner on Hamilton Mountain won’t do much to change the national result. But Graefe said Hamilton could benefit from the secondstraight Liberal minority — especially if it is propped up by the NDP. He argued the two parties share “common ground” on important local issues like housing affordability, child care and climate change.
The Liberals and New Democrats could agree on building more affordable rental housing, for example — a critical need in Hamilton, where tent encampments are spurring evictions, thousands of individuals are on waiting lists for subsidized units and home ownership and rental costs have skyrocketed.
Party promises on climate change and transit are also “not so different,” he suggested, with general agreement on growing the carbon tax, helping cities adapt to a warming climate and building light rail transit in the city.
Graefe said he always expected a “healthy competition” in Hamilton’s three open races, but added the NDP might have erred in choosing Allen, a veteran Niagara politician who nonetheless did not have a history in the Mountain riding.
Hepfner also lives outside the riding, but is a familiar face on television news.
Collins, a longtime east-end councillor, was a last-minute candidate for the Liberals after incumbent Bob Bratina shocked the party by quitting over his opposition to his own government’s decision to put up $1.7-billion to help resurrect an on-again, off-again LRT in the city.
Collins ran for the party despite his own public opposition to the rapid transit project. He gave credit to NDP competitor Nick Milanovic and Tory Ned Kuruc for putting up a fierce fight in the often-scrappy campaign.
“I didn’t think it would come easy,” he said after his win was confirmed late Monday. “I’ve been through difficult campaigns before and this is certainly near or at the top of the list.”
Muys, a veteran Tory political staffer, retained FlamboroughGlanbrook with a win over Liberal standard-bearer and former mayoral candidate Vito Sgro — who also opposed LRT. The Liberals came close to unseating former Tory MP David Sweet in 2019, and the veteran politician retired following criticism of pandemic comments and travel.
“It’s different to be the public face,” said Muys after the hardfought win, noting he has spent most of his political career working behind the scenes. “I look forward to that.”
The Liberal win keeps two major local funding promises on track in Hamilton: $1.7 billion to match provincial funding for a 14-kilometre LRT through the lower city, as well as $400 million offered to ArcelorMittal Dofasco to phase out coal-fired steelmaking, a major source of local greenhouse gas emissions and lung-busting air pollutants.