Door-knocking and pavement pounding is at the top of the agenda for many Vancouver Island candidates this week with the official launch of the federal election.
But strategies may be different from previous campaigns, as candidates weigh how to get their messages out without fatiguing voters over the course of 78 days, instead of the typical 37, en route to the Oct. 19 election.
“It will be interesting to see what their calculations are and how they pace it over the first week, or first four weeks,” said University of Victoria political scientist Michael Prince. “I think it will be about deciding how to pace the campaigns without annoying people too much.”
The first federal leaders’ debate is scheduled for Thursday.
All but three candidates representing the main federal parties on Vancouver Island are in place for the longest election campaign in modern Canadian history.
After Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the election Sunday morning, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May kicked off her party’s national campaign at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney. “We are buoyant and we are ready and we are happy to take on this challenge,” she said.
The prime minister said the early election call is about ensuring all parties, many already campaigning, are doing so by the rules.
May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, said the early election call will cost Canadians tens of millions of dollars more because tax dollars subsidize election campaigns. “We will be bludgeoned in our own homes by attack ads … and for every single attack ad, we are paying half … I say to Stephen Harper, shame on you for doing that,” May said.
Victoria NDP MP Murray Rankin was in Cook Street Village campaigning Sunday morning, shortly after the election call. “I don’t know that the longest campaign in modern history is what Canadians want but it’s what Stephen Harper is giving us,” Rankin said. “Nevertheless, we are ready to go. Our campaign office is open. I’ve been door knocking all summer and hearing voters have a strong desire for change and the NDP is poised to deliver that like never before.”
With the redrawing of federal riding boundaries, there will be 30 additional ridings in the House of Commons, for a total of 338. B.C. has six additional seats, Ontario 15, Alberta six and Quebec three.
On Vancouver Island, there is one additional riding for a total of seven. Only the ridings of Victoria and Saanich-Gulf Islands are unchanged.
Twenty-five of 28 candidates representing the main parties in seven Island ridings are in place with three nominees yet to be picked in Saanich-Gulf Islands and Cowichan-Malahat-Langford.
Liberal candidate Tim Kane, co-founder of Delta Media Inc., an Ottawa-based communications firm, was acclaimed in February in Saanich-Gulf Islands but neither the Conservatives nor the NDP have yet nominated a candidate to go up against May in the riding.
The NDP has a nomination race scheduled for Aug. 22 that will include candidates Teale N. Phelps Bondaroff, a debate coach and teacher at Glenlyon Norfolk School, and Central Saanich Coun. Alicia Cormier.
Candidates seeking the Conservative nomination have not yet been announced.
Kane said he’s been knocking on doors and campaigning since he was acclaimed and is undaunted by May, who beat out five-term Conservative MP Gary Lunn in 2011 by more than 10 percentage points.
“I’m not going up against Elizabeth May, I’m going up against Stephen Harper and I think most Canadians know it’s time for a change,” Kane said.
A hot federal election race is expected in the newly created federal riding of Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke.
Randall Garrison was the MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca but that riding is no more. The riding, not greatly altered, is now called Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke. It includes about 113,000 people in Esquimalt, Colwood, Metchosin, View Royal, Sooke and parts of Saanich.
Given its history, it’s not surprising all four main parties think they have a shot at a riding which has swung between Reform, Liberal and NDP.
Garrison won the Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca riding for the NDP with 40.9 per cent of the vote in 2011, just a few hundred votes ahead of Conservative Troy DeSouza with 40.2 per cent. And the Conservative candidate lost by only 68 votes in 2008.
Shari Lukens, a former Colwood councillor, is buoyed by that history. She’s hoping to reclaim the Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke riding held by Reform and then Canadian Alliance from 1993 to 2004.
David Merner, a lawyer with the B.C. Ministry of Justice and former president of the B.C. arm of the Liberal Party of Canada, is the Liberal candidate. The Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca riding went Liberal in 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Photographer Frances Litman is representing the Green party.
In the Victoria riding, the Greens figure they have a star candidate in former CBC radio host Jo-Ann Roberts to go up against incumbent Murray Rankin, a lawyer.
The NDP has held the Victoria riding since 2006 but the Greens see hope in the fact that when Rankin won his seat in 2012, he did so with 37.1 per cent of the vote, just 2.8 percentage points ahead of the Green candidate.
Rankin said he has signed up for five all-candidates debates so far and will likely do a dozen before the race is over. He’s confident in the NDP’s momentum. “It’s going to be a dynamic, exciting and historic election,” Rankin said. “I’m excited about all the people I’m running against. … We are ready to go.”
Victoria Liberal candidate Cheryl Thomas, a business consultant who teaches at the University of Victoria’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, hopes to take back the riding held by Liberal MP David Anderson from 1993 to 2006.
The Conservative candidate in Victoria, John Rizzuti, is a retired school principal who says he has been knocking on doors for weeks. He bears the weight of knowing the last Progressive Conservative won the riding more than 30 years ago.
Despite being a fiscal conservative, Rizzuti said he’s supportive of Harper’s decision to call the election early, which is expected to make it one of the costliest to taxpayers.
Elections are a worthwhile thing to spend money on, if it means more time to make an informed decision, he said.
“This is one of the most important things we do as citizens. A vote is very important and looking at issues is important,” he said.
Elsewhere on the Island, there are four newly drawn federal ridings: Cowichan-Malahat-Langford; Nanaimo-Ladysmith; Courtenay-Alberni; and North Island-Powell River.
Eyes will be on Conservative John Duncan, MP for Vancouver Island North, to see if he can win in a new riding. He’s one of the original Reform MPs elected in 1993, the same year Stephen Harper was elected as an MP. After the federal boundaries changed, Duncan opted to run in Courtenay-Alberni.
The Conservatives have yet to pick a candidate to run in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford.
The nominees include: Martin Barker, a chiropractor and recent Duncan councillor; Melissa Hailey, a former councillor in both North Cowichan and Sidney; Jeremy Smyth, a special education teacher and assistant at Duncan Christian School; and John Koury, a former North Cowichan councillor.
A nomination date has not been announced.
