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Ottawa doesn’t have anything like the 905 area code and its swath of bedroom communities around Toronto that have paved the way to power for conservative parties at the federal and provincial level, but Orléans might be, culturally and demographically, its closest approximation.
Once considered unassailable Liberal territory, Orléans fell to the Conservatives in 2006 and they have held it ever since. Most of the credit for the Tories’ new hegemony in the suburban riding goes not to the incumbent candidate, low-profile former city councillor Royal Galipeau, but the shrewd political marketing of party and its policies pitched to young middle-class families so abundant in booming Orléans.
For the Conservatives to stay in power after this election, they must retain seats like Orléans.
Notably, on the day the campaign kicked off in August, Conservative leader Stephen Harper made his first stop in the riding, visiting a local bakery with Galipeau at his side.
But as voters go the polls Monday, the Conservative grip on suburban Canada appears to be loosening and Orléans figures to be the seat in the National Capital Region most likely to slip from the Tories’ grasp.
A poll conducted for the Citizen in late September showed Liberal candidate Andrew Leslie ahead, with support of 40 per cent of respondents to Galipeau’s 33 per cent and 19 per cent backing rookie New Democrats Nancy Tremblay.
Leslie, of course, is something of ringer. The retired Canadian Forces lieutenant-general was recruited by leader Justin Trudeau and placed on Trudeau’s foreign affairs advisory panel. At one all-candidates debate, Tremblay argued that she would be a better representative of the riding as an MP than Leslie, who would be certain to take a senior cabinet minister post, as two of his grandfathers had done.
Though anointed, Leslie faced a fight for the Liberal nomination, which was bitterly contested by the party’s unsuccessful candidate in 2011, lawyer David Bertschi, who is currently suing Trudeau and his aides over the decision to disqualify him from the nomination race.
The campaign for Orléans since then has been a mostly civil affair and low-temperature contest.
In a community where the agonizing commute to downtown dominates dinner-party conversation, all the candidates are on-side with continued federal government financial support for the second phase of the light-rail system that bring trains to Place d’Orléans shopping centre. They all also back the idea, in principle, of federal money to eventually extend the rail line further east to Trim Road.
There were minor squabbles about which candidate lives where – both Galipeau and Leslie reside outside the riding – and some debate about what the federal government could to help Orléans develop economically.
Leslie promises that a Liberal government would consider moving a federal department, “a big one,” to Orléans. Tremblay wants a multi-department government hub that will allow public servants to telecommute and stay off Highway 174. Galipeau touts the benefits already delivered of the new Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) headquarters on Ogilvie Road, outside the riding but on its doorstep.
The delta between the candidates’ positions on local issues is sufficiently small that Orléans will likely be swung by larger themes and the parties’ national campaigns.
Leslie may gain advantage from the high number of public servants in the riding, whose the disaffection the Conservatives made a desperate bid to temper on the last weekend of the campaign by running a full-page ad in this newspaper that tried to gloss the government’s relations with its employees.
Consider the effort an attempt by the Conservatives to save the furniture in their seats of Orléans, Nepean, Ottawa West-Nepean, and Kanata-Carleton.
And while Galipeau accrues advantage from his three-term incumbency, Leslie could get a boost from local application of efforts by progressives to encourage strategic voting – backing the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservatives.
An advocacy group, the Ottawa Action Network, promoted the riding as one that could be won back from the Tories if anti-Conservative vote gelled behind one party. They’ve been door-knocking and handing out literature in Orléans throughout the campaign.
On Sunday, group spokesman Roger Clark said it looked the efforts had worked.
“People really have begun to understand why strategic voting is important in this election,” he said.
While he says he has seen a hardening of support on both the Conservative and opposition sides, it appears the national trend to replace the Tories will at least find traction in Orléans..
“In our view, the Liberal candidate is certainly the likely winner,” he said.
Related
gmcgregor@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
Once considered unassailable Liberal territory, Orléans fell to the Conservatives in 2006 and they have held it ever since. Most of the credit for the Tories’ new hegemony in the suburban riding goes not to the incumbent candidate, low-profile former city councillor Royal Galipeau, but the shrewd political marketing of party and its policies pitched to young middle-class families so abundant in booming Orléans.
For the Conservatives to stay in power after this election, they must retain seats like Orléans.
Notably, on the day the campaign kicked off in August, Conservative leader Stephen Harper made his first stop in the riding, visiting a local bakery with Galipeau at his side.
But as voters go the polls Monday, the Conservative grip on suburban Canada appears to be loosening and Orléans figures to be the seat in the National Capital Region most likely to slip from the Tories’ grasp.
A poll conducted for the Citizen in late September showed Liberal candidate Andrew Leslie ahead, with support of 40 per cent of respondents to Galipeau’s 33 per cent and 19 per cent backing rookie New Democrats Nancy Tremblay.
Leslie, of course, is something of ringer. The retired Canadian Forces lieutenant-general was recruited by leader Justin Trudeau and placed on Trudeau’s foreign affairs advisory panel. At one all-candidates debate, Tremblay argued that she would be a better representative of the riding as an MP than Leslie, who would be certain to take a senior cabinet minister post, as two of his grandfathers had done.
Though anointed, Leslie faced a fight for the Liberal nomination, which was bitterly contested by the party’s unsuccessful candidate in 2011, lawyer David Bertschi, who is currently suing Trudeau and his aides over the decision to disqualify him from the nomination race.
The campaign for Orléans since then has been a mostly civil affair and low-temperature contest.
In a community where the agonizing commute to downtown dominates dinner-party conversation, all the candidates are on-side with continued federal government financial support for the second phase of the light-rail system that bring trains to Place d’Orléans shopping centre. They all also back the idea, in principle, of federal money to eventually extend the rail line further east to Trim Road.
There were minor squabbles about which candidate lives where – both Galipeau and Leslie reside outside the riding – and some debate about what the federal government could to help Orléans develop economically.
Leslie promises that a Liberal government would consider moving a federal department, “a big one,” to Orléans. Tremblay wants a multi-department government hub that will allow public servants to telecommute and stay off Highway 174. Galipeau touts the benefits already delivered of the new Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) headquarters on Ogilvie Road, outside the riding but on its doorstep.
The delta between the candidates’ positions on local issues is sufficiently small that Orléans will likely be swung by larger themes and the parties’ national campaigns.
Leslie may gain advantage from the high number of public servants in the riding, whose the disaffection the Conservatives made a desperate bid to temper on the last weekend of the campaign by running a full-page ad in this newspaper that tried to gloss the government’s relations with its employees.
Consider the effort an attempt by the Conservatives to save the furniture in their seats of Orléans, Nepean, Ottawa West-Nepean, and Kanata-Carleton.
And while Galipeau accrues advantage from his three-term incumbency, Leslie could get a boost from local application of efforts by progressives to encourage strategic voting – backing the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservatives.
An advocacy group, the Ottawa Action Network, promoted the riding as one that could be won back from the Tories if anti-Conservative vote gelled behind one party. They’ve been door-knocking and handing out literature in Orléans throughout the campaign.
On Sunday, group spokesman Roger Clark said it looked the efforts had worked.
“People really have begun to understand why strategic voting is important in this election,” he said.
While he says he has seen a hardening of support on both the Conservative and opposition sides, it appears the national trend to replace the Tories will at least find traction in Orléans..
“In our view, the Liberal candidate is certainly the likely winner,” he said.
Related
gmcgregor@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
