Canada election: will anti-Harper

sentiment be enough to bring

progressives to power?
Polling suggests Stephen Harper could lose to Justin Trudeau, but as
Canadians prepare to vote on 19 October, recent election upsets in the
UK and Israel have taught observers to take polls with a grain of salt

The candidates: from left, Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party of Canada; Thomas Tom Mulcair, the New
Democratic Party; and Conservative leader Stephen Harper during a debate in September. Photograph:
Bloomberg/via Getty Images

Nicky Woolf in Ajax andJessica Murphy in Ottawa-Saturday 17 October

2015
Highway 401 runs east, from the Toronto area toward the outer suburb of
Ajax. Along the roadside the trees have turned with the season, to red,
orange and gold.
Greater Toronto covers across an area almost the size of Delaware. It
contains almost a sixth of Canadas population, and a fifth of its
immigrants. Its sprawling suburbs were the site of some of the Conservative
partys biggest victories and the Liberals biggest defeats in Canadas
last general election, when current prime minister Stephen Harper won
outright majority for the Conservatives.
Four years later, these quiet, leafy Toronto neighbourhoods are a key
battleground in the Conservatives fight for political survival.

Canadas 11-week campaign season may pale in comparison with the 18month epic taking place south of the border, but it has been the longest in
modern history: a tight three-way race in which the Conservatives, the New
Democrats, and the Liberals, has at times held poll position. Ahead of
Mondays federal election, fewer than twelve percentage points separate
the parties, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Companys polling
aggregate.
If current polling is to be believed and recent election upsets in the UK
and Israel have taught pundits to take polls with more than a pinch of salt
then Harper will not hold on to government. After languishing in third place
for much of the campaign, the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau - son of former
prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau - seem set to return to power.
The victory will be particularly sweet here in Ajax, where four-term Liberal
MP Mark Holland was routed in 2011 by Chris Alexander, formerly Canadas
ambassador to Afghanistan and now a immigration minister in the
Conservative government.
The centre-left Liberal party had held federal power in Canada for an
extraordinary 69 out of 100 years before losing it to a Conservative minority
government in 2006. Then, they were wiped out in 2011, losing more
ground to the Conservatives in the suburbs and to the left-leaning New
Democratic Party in the city centre part of the so-called orange surge
which also handed the NDP the province of Quebec.
Ajax is a new electoral district - known in Canada as a riding; the old one,
split apart because of changing population, had included the satellite town
of Pickering, which has now been amalgamated into a neighbouring riding.
One of prime minister Stephen Harpers earliest campaign events was here,
right at the beginning of August.

Following what many see as the Conservative governments mishandling of the Syrian refugee crisis,
Alexander has seen his support slip Photograph: Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Alexander had found support amid the 34% of the ridings population who
are immigrants to Canada including a sizeable Afghan diaspora, who
appreciated that Alexander spoke some Arabic and Pashto.
But following what many here see as the Conservative governments
mishandling of the Syrian refugee crisis, Alexander has seen his support slip
especially after it was alleged that his department had denied asylum to
the family of Aylan Kurdi, the three year old Kurdish boy whose death off the
Turkish coast made front pages around the world.
Alexander suspended his campaign to deal with the accusations, and
although Canadian authorities eventually denied that they had ever
received an asylum request from the Kurdi family, the perceptual damage
was done.
Meanwhile, the Harper administrations record on refugees came under
ever-increasing scrutiny: the Conservative government has pledged to take
in 11,300 refugees from Syria, but has so far resettled fewer than 3,000.
Holland is now comfortably ahead in the polls. We have a very diverse and
dynamic riding where a lot of the messages [Alexander] has been pushing
really turned people off, Holland told the Guardian.

Speaking in his Ajax campaign office, Holland accused the Conservative

party of divisive tactics in a campaign which marked a political low-point in
the countrys political history. This is a government that is desperate to
hold on to power, and is willing to throw anything on the table to create a
distraction, he said.
Walking door-to-door in a middle-class suburban street Hollandwas received
with enthusiasm at nearly every house, in an area that Alexander had
carried in 2011. Many households were cooking lunch; the area has a large
Tamil population, and from many doors wafted the smell of spices. Several
who answered the door said that while they had voted Conservative last
time, this time Holland could count on their support.
Ayesha Vahidy moved to Canada with her parents from Pakistan when she
was six, and now lives in Ajax with her son. She described how the
campaign has provoked fierce controversy within the Muslim community,
with arguments spilling into mosques.
Some older Muslims, she said, were natural conservative voters;
instinctively resistant to Liberal policies such as those promoting sex
education in schools. Conservative ads have played to this, suggesting the
Liberals would make pot accessible to children and open supervised drug
injection sites in communities - a hyperbolic re-imagining of Liberal support
for legalized marijuana and drug harm-reduction strategies.
But in June, the Conservatives passed bill C-24; a statute giving the
government to strip citizenship from anyone born outside Canada for
terrorism-related charges. During the campaign, Harper also chose to focus
on the marginal issue of the niqab specifically whether a Muslim woman
can wear the full face covering during her citizenship ceremony which
became a defining issue in the campaign.
He doubled down on that wedge issue by promising to implement a police
tip line for barbaric cultural practices - child or forced marriages, genderbased family violence - if elected. Immigrant communities felt attacked.
Vahidy said that this fearmongering united devout and lay Muslims
against the Conservatives. That was it for me and a lot of other people in
the same boat as me, whove been here since we were little, she said. It

was like: this is my country. My son was born here. How dare you.
Harper turned to anti-immigrant campaigning because his usual message of
sound economic stewardship would no longer fly. Canada returned to
recession in 2015s first quarter, the only G7 economy to do so. Karen
McCrimmon, a retired air force lieutenant-colonel and former Liberal
leadership candidate who is running for the Kanata-Carleton riding outside
Ottawa, told the Guardian that the economic narrative became weak for
her Conservative opponent.
I drive down the main street here where my campaign office is; maybe its
a kilometre, McCrimmon told the Guardian. On that one strip, theres 25
vacant commercial properties. People dont have to look very far to see the
evidence that their economic plan isnt working. The Conservatives won by
nearly 28 percentage points here in 2011, but the latest polls give
McCrimmon a lead of 50-39 indicating a truly stupendous vote swing in
the order of 41 points, though this may in part be linked to the fact that the
Conservative incumbent is not standing again.
A draconian counter-terrorism bill, C-51, also inspired opposition to Harper.
But Trudeaus Liberals, who also voted for the bill - though with
amendments - were also caught in the controversy. Vahidy, a life-long
Liberal supporter and energetic party activist, actually switched and
became a card-carrying member of the left-wing New Democrat Party. I
was so angry, she said.
That tide of anger helped carry the NDP and their leader Tom Mulcair to an
early lead in the polls when the campaign began in earnest at the
beginning of August.

Thomas Mulcair greets supporters at a campaign event in Alma, Quebec,

Canada, on Thursday. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters
But it was not to last. After languishing in third place for much of the
summer, the Liberal party climbed steadily, according to the Canadian
Broadcasting Companys polling aggregate. This projects the Liberals
winning with 130 seats a win, but still not the majority of 170 required to
form a majority government.
The NDP, whose national support has slipped from a high of almost 40% in
August to around 24% now, lost the support of people like Vahidy. She
realised, she said, that Trudeau had supported C51 in order to add
amendments to it, which struck her on second glance as shrewd. They have
also promised to change the bill once in power.
Canada is a country with an overwhelming progressive majority that has
been kept from government because the left is split into two parties, while
the right is united. In 2008, the NDP and the Liberals reached a coalition
accord with the help of the seperatist Bloc Quebecois; but it was
controversial and unpopular, and fell apart.
This may not be the case in 2015. In the platform, we have a commitment
to working with other federalist, non-Conservative parties, to end the

Conservative government, a senior NDP campaign source told the

Guardian. That clearly means that [Mulcair] wants to reach out and work
with other parties.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives turned to ever-more desperate measures. At
a campaign stop Thursday in Trois Rivieres, Quebec a town about 85 miles
northeast of Montreal Harper brought out what the Liberals are deriding
as a game show gimmick. It was a show-and-tell tactic the Conservative
leader had started to deploy at rallies earlier in the week, around the same
time national polls began definitively indicating that Trudeau, had gained a
lead, especially in seat-rich Ontario.
Harper would call up supporters in this case it was Paul and Miriam Greth
and had them toss cash on the table as he ran through the benefits and
tax breaks he warned the Greth family would lose under a Liberal
government.
Thats another 600 bucks down the drain, he said, his words accompanied
by the loud Ka-ching sound of a cash register. That is what Liberal change
means, more money for the government, less money for you.
In the dying days of the campaign, Harper has focused his attention on
Trudeau directly. Friends, he told party faithful, I understand the
temptation for change is strong, but do you want to bet the future of your
family on change?
It was not the first time Harper has conceded that his government is looking
a little tired after nearly a decade in power. An ad released mid-campaign
admitted: Stephen Harper isnt perfect.
Jason Lietaer, president of Enterprise Canada and a Conservative strategist
not working on the current campaign, predicts the Conservatives will
continue to push the ballot question of stability (them) versus risk (the
surging Liberals) until October 19. They will continue to be focused on one
thing and one thing only the personal consequences to the family budget
of a Justin Trudeau victory.

Harper has never been a widely beloved politician last election he won a
majority with just over 39% of the popular vote and Lietaer admitted it
might be an uphill battle to convince even core Conservative voters to
support a fourth Harper mandate.
Youve been around for 10 years, theres a fresh new face whos run a
decent campaign and the question is, do you have one more go at it? he
said.
Posted by Thavam