This business is very personal
Ex-MP who stood up to PM hopes to steal N.S. riding from a friend.
From the epicentre of pipeline politics in British Columbia to one last clash between old buddies in Nova Scotia, Star columnist Tim Harper travelled the country to find the regional battles that will shape the nation on Election Day. His last stop: Cumberland-Colchester. AMHERST, N.S.— Liberal Bill Casey says he’s not running against his longtime friend Conservative Scott Armstrong.
Instead, he says, he’s running against what Stephen Harper is doing to this country.
Armstrong says Casey has disappointed him. He says he finds the situation “awkward,” and thinks his old buddy is running a vendetta against the Conservative leader.
This is the Armstrong who, along with his wife, Tammy Stewart, are good friends with Casey and his wife, Rosemary; the Armstrong who three times was Casey’s campaign manager; who was in the room 27 years ago when Casey was first elected. Yes, the Casey who benefited from the hard campaign work of Armstrong’s mother and father.
Oh, yeah, awkward would be a good word.
But for fans of politics as soap opera, those who relish intriguing rivalries or a contest that highlights personal drama, it doesn’t get any better this October than the sprawling Nova Scotia riding of Cumberland-Colchester.
The riding, which runs north of Halifax to the New Brunswick border and is bounded by the Bay of Fundy and the Northumberland Strait, is the one Maritime riding that grabs national attention and visits from federal leaders in a region that feels like an afterthought in campaign 2015.
Armstrong is the only Conservative incumbent standing for re-election in Nova Scotia and a Casey win would be a huge steal for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.
Cumberland-Colchester has been reliably Conservative, dating to the 1957 election of Robert Coates, who became a Brian Mulroney cabinet minister. Casey was first elected here as a Progressive Conservative in1988 before he was finally booted from caucus by Harper, then denied the 2008 party nomination (and exiled to a Commons seat beside Trudeau) after voting against the 2007 budget because it prevented Atlantic Canada from fully realizing offshore oil and gas revenues.
So, he returned as an independent (with local Conservative backing) in 2008 and won with an incredible 69 per cent of the vote, before stepping down the next year, handing the seat to his longtime friend, now electoral rival, Armstrong.
Only once, during the 1993 Jean Chrétien sweep, has Cumberland-Colchester gone Liberal.
Now, Casey, at 70, is back for another run, this time as a Liberal.
A floor-crossing by the region’s best-known Conservative?
It’s a much smaller jump from being elected as a Joe Clark Progressive Conservative to Trudeau’s Liberals than going from the Clark Progressive Conservatives to the Harper Conservatives, Casey maintains.
Wendy Robinson, the mayor of Stewiacke, a town in the riding, is making her second bid for a federal seat here as the NDP candidate — and there is NDP strength here, but it takes a back seat to theatre of Casey vs. Armstrong. The Greens have put forth Jason Blanch.
Casey’s campaign, whether one thinks it is pro-Trudeau or anti-Harper, has turned the Cumberland-Colchester contest into a referendum on Harper’s accountability.
You don’t hear much criticism of Armstrong on the streets of Truro or Amherst, but you do hear unhappiness with Harper and that will play to Casey’s strength.
Armstrong is telling voters that he is a potential regional minister with the departure of Peter MacKay. Harper has already been in the riding to boost him, and the Conservative leader’s wife, Laureen, has made a separate visit on his behalf.
“Hundreds and hundreds of volunteers working for me have worked for Bill . . . this riding has been Conservative since virtually Confederation. Many, many people are very upset that Bill has chosen to do this,” he said.
Casey is no “principled rebel,” Armstrong says. He is a man who voted the Conservative line almost uniformly through his political career, who is campaigning against his old party out of spite.
Armstrong maintains he is able to get time with Harper, to raise concerns and spoke to him about local issues just this past spring.
Casey says anyone in the caucus who raises concerns about anything with Harper is deemed “offside.”
“If you ask a question, you’re offside,” he said. “If you make a recommendation, you’re offside.”
Before he was turfed for voting against the budget, Casey says, Harp- er warned him of serious consequences if he was offside again.
“‘Again?’ I thought,” Casey said. “I never knew I was ever offside in the first place.”
Casey maintains Harper has taken the independence from parliamentarians, squashed the free media and taken the people out of government services. You can’t find a real person to deal with your problems if you are a pensioner battling the Canada Revenue Agency or a veteran seeking your benefits, he says.
The Conservative leader thinks in terms of “debits and credits,” not the effect on people of his decisions, Casey says. He got to know Trudeau, a man half his age who “comes from a different planet,” when he was exiled to become his seatmate. Trudeau is approachable, while Harper never was, Casey maintains.
Despite two heart attacks and three cancer operations, Casey is itching for one more electoral fight.
“The older I get, the more left I go. But I’ve always been centre-left. I’ve always been me.”
Armstrong acts like he no longer recognizes his old buddy. This Maritime grudge match will be one of the first ones settled on election night and it could put Harper in a foul mood.