How are the races in 3 key Liberal Ottawa seats?
Party has long reigns in Orléans, Ottawa South and Ottawa-Vanier
As Stephen Blais puts it, the Liberal Party of Ontario has "survived" in recent years thanks in part to its strong showing in Ottawa.
When Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford called Thursday's snap election, the Ontario Liberals held only nine seats — not enough for official party status.
But having four Ottawa MPPs at Queen's Park, including Blais for Orléans, helped keep the provincial Liberals in the conversation.
"It is kind of the home base of our support. Obviously how we do in Ottawa is going to set the tone for how we might do across the rest of the province," Blais said last week.
"We're not taking anything for granted."
"They're important seats," echoed fellow Liberal candidate John Fraser.
"I feel very good about our chances of holding those four seats and gaining a couple more here in Ottawa."
In addition to four seats in Greater Toronto, one in Kingston, and Ottawa South and Orléans, the provincial Liberals also held Kanata-Carleton and Ottawa-Vanier when the legislature was dissolved last month.
Highway 174 comments resurrected
Ottawa-Vanier has remained staunchly Liberal since the early 1970s, though one Liberal MPP for the area did briefly turn Independent in the early 2000s.
Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie made a stop in Ottawa-Vanier on Monday. Lucille Collard is in search of her third win.
In Orléans, which the Liberals have held since 2003, Blais is seeking his third term after last winning in 2022 with about 46 per cent of the vote.
He says the number of people who don't have a family physician — an estimated 14,000 residents in Orléans, by his estimate — "scares a lot of people" and that health care is the top issue he's hearing about.
Blais's campaign office is only steps away from that of his PC opponent Stéphan Plourde. The latter is located in a former Pizza Hut that Plourde's team calls "The PC Hut."
The two camps don't lunch together but try to keep things friendly, according to Blais. "We all are taking time away from our families," he said.
Things have gotten spicy, though.
Plourde's campaign has put up signs along Highway 174 criticizing Blais for comments he made as an Ottawa city councillor more than a decade ago. "Honk to oppose Blais' 174 toll plan," the signs read at 16 locations.
Back in 2013, Blais proposed tolling drivers from outside the city who used the 174. He also wanted to see the highway uploaded to the province, as did other councillors.
Plourde referenced the highway in his interview with CBC Ottawa last week, saying that Blais "wants to put, has mused about putting tolls on the 174 as a revenue generation strategy."
Blais's office said via email that Plourde's campaign is "blatantly lying" and that Blais is not currently advocating for tolls on the highway but maintains the province should take over responsibility for the roadway.
"For seven years Doug Ford's Conservatives have done nothing to improve Highway 174 or reduce commute times for Orléans residents," according to the statement.
Housing, mental health supports
Matthew Sévigny, the NDP candidate in Orléans, said housing is a big issue he's hearing about and pointed to his own recent experience when CBC spoke to him last Tuesday.
"Just this week the heat went out in my apartment and I had to stay in a hotel overnight," he said.
Sévigny also brought up the highway, but in a different way.
"We're having the LRT extended out to Orléans, but it's in the middle of a highway and there's little to no affordable housing around it. It remains inaccessible to a lot of folks."
Green Party candidate Michelle Petersen cited both "the housing crisis" and "the health crisis" as top issues.
"I'm a registered psychotherapist, so I also think about the mental health crisis that we're facing, whether it's the opioid crisis or even youth who are requesting services and mental health and facing really long waits," she said.
In Ottawa South, Liberal Fraser is seeking his fifth term after last winning the riding in 2022 with about 45 per cent of ballots. The party has held the seat since the late 1980s.
Apart from having an election at this time, Fraser too cited health care as a main porch topic.
"You could fill the Canadian Tire Centre" with people in the riding who don't have a family doctor "and still have 2,000 people standing outside," he said.
Some people aren't sure if the current election is a provincial or federal one, Fraser added.
"They like to talk about federal. I mean, this town is a very federal town."
Janet Mark Wallace, a self-described "super-campaigner" who accompanied local Green candidate Nira Dookeran during a round of doorknocking last Tuesday, said part of her job is simply reminding people an election is on and that it's worthy of their attention.
"Provincial means health care and education," Mark Wallace said, but "what's grabbing the headlines, of course, is what's going on with our relationship with the U.S., as well as the federal Liberal leadership race and possibly a federal election coming up shortly."
"I'm not feeling that paralysis or anxiety or even mild worry because the antidote to all of that is to just get out and do something," Dookeran said.
"People say, oh, it must be hard to, you know, to campaign in the snow. I am loving every minute of this."
Morgan Gay, the NDP candidate for Ottawa South, did not mince words during his own doorknocking tour last week.
"Everybody understands that our health-care system's a shambles, that our education system is in real trouble, is underfunded," he told CBC. "People have difficulty finding a place to live because housing is so expensive."
Gay acknowledged the Liberals have held Ottawa South for "a very, very, very long time" but added that he placed second when running against Fraser in 2022.
"We're optimistic, we're hopeful we can win this time," he said.
The campaign team for Jan Gao, the PC candidate in Ottawa South, declined an interview.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Radio-Canada's Benjamin Vachet