Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives are on a roll in Ontario that could finally allow Mr. Harper to crack the Liberal bastion that has eluded him since he first led his party into a federal general election in 2004—the city of Toronto.
With 24 concentrated ridings, it is the last area of Ontario left for the Conservatives to make enough headway that, combined with other gains, could tip Mr. Harper into a majority in the election widely expected to take place early in 2011.
Pollster Nik Nanos pointed out to The Hill Times that his firm's latest numbers give the Conservatives 42 per cent of support from decided voters in the seat-rich province, nearly a third of the House of Commons. The Liberals registered at only 35 per cent, a 20 to 30 percentage point drop from the heydays of prime minister Jean Chrétien.
"We know that when the Conservatives are in majority territory, usually they are winning seats that they held in the Mulroney era, which means picking up seats in Toronto," Mr. Nanos said.
Prominent Progressive Conservatives who represented Toronto ridings in the 1980s under Brian Mulroney's government included former finance minister Michael Wilson, former secretary of state for foreign affairs and human resources minister Barbara McDougall, former House of Commons Speaker John Bosley and former Indian affairs minister Davie Crombie.
Signs of Conservative inroads in Canada's largest cities began with the unexpected landslide of votes that swept Rob Ford into the mayor's chair in October. Mr. Ford won, with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's (Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.) support and the support of a network of Conservative organizers, swept aside Liberal-backed candidate George Smitherman.
In the aftermath of that victory, plus new Conservative MP Julian Fantino's victory in the riding of Vaughan, sitting atop Toronto to the North, more than half-a-dozen Liberal-held ridings in Toronto, as well as the Greater Toronto Area ridings surrounding it, have been identified, in political on-the-ground slang, as being "at play."
Those ridings include Ajax-Pickering immediately to the east of Toronto and now held by Liberal MP Mark Holland, a young and eloquent thorn in the side of the Conservative government since he first won election in 2004, Brampton-Springdale, held by Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, who won by only 773 votes in the 2008 election and has never quite recovered from the controversy over relations with a domestic employee in her household, Don Valley West, held by gay MP Rob Oliphant, who also won narrowly and Mississauga South, held by 17-year Liberal veteran Paul Szabo.
Mr. Szabo told The Hill Times the Conservatives have already targeted him. The choice of the Conservative candidate running against Szabo is significant, primarily because of her link to Mr. Flaherty, the most powerful Harper Cabinet minister in the region as Mr. Harper's political minister responsible for the Greater Toronto Area.
Stella Ambler, employed by the government as Mr. Flaherty's director of regional affairs for the last year-and-a-half, ran unsuccessfully against Liberal MP Gurbax Malhi in the GTA riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton in 2008. Ms. Ambler, though she lost, reduced Mr. Malhi's share of the votes to 45 per cent.
Mr. Szabo said he recognizes that the Conservatives are set to mount a full out offensive in Toronto this election, but says he has been "targeted" for the past two elections.
Mr. Szabo said he believes Mr. Harper and the Conservatives want him ousted because of the role he played as chair of the House of Commons Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee in several Conservative controversies, including Mr. Harper's relations with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney during a scandal over Mr. Mulroney's acceptance of cash payments from German arms-dealer and lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.
"This particular Member of Parliament who has been here for 17 years has been under their skin for a number of reasons and activities," Mr. Szabo told The Hill Times. "They're not happy with me when I get on their heels."
Mr. Szabo, who won in 2008 with a margin of only 4.6 per cent of the vote, said the fact he has been on the Conservative side of social and religious-based issues in Parliament has given him no free pass as far as the Conservatives are concerned in their drive for Metro Toronto seats.
"We're talking about seats," he said. "It's all mathematics right now."
Mr. Nanos cautioned, however, there is one thing that could stand between Mr. Harper and his long-sought majority government if an election is held in the spring: bank interest rates. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney and Prime Minister Harper have both expressed caution about the high level of personal debt in Canada, most of which is in the form of residential mortgages.
"The sleeper issue for 2011 could be interest rates," said Mr. Nanos. "Interest rates touch day to day lives of Canadians, and if there's a perception that interest rates are unnecessarily being increased, even though the economy is not strong, that could be a vulnerability for government."
tnaumetz@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
Source: The Hill Times
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