OTTAWA—The Toronto Centre byelection campaign is taking on a harsher edge as it heads into its final 10 days, and Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland is the prime target of some of the more pointed attacks.

In the past few days, Freeland’s rivals have been circulating campaign posters that mock her recent arrival in Toronto from the U.S., as well as a 2008 column she wrote, praising former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

New Democratic Party candidate Linda McQuaig acknowledges that “things are heating up” as the Nov. 25 vote approaches, with many of her supporters believing the sharper tone is needed because they believe Freeland and the Liberals are treating the race as a foregone victory.

Toronto Centre has been a Liberal stronghold since the late 1980s, and was last held by former Ontario premier and interim Liberal leader Bob Rae.

Even Rae said on Twitter on Thursday that the NDP was waging a campaign of “class warfare” and “character assassination.”

“Yes, I guess it’s getting more intense,” McQuaig said. “Maybe we’re getting a little bit under their skins . . . I guess they’re doing the classic front-runner thing, stay out of the fray. But that plays into the idea that they’re not considering this riding in play and they’re taking it for granted.”

On Twitter this week, young New Democrats circulated a photo of an ancient mobile phone, with the catch line: “Chrystia Freeland hasn’t lived in Toronto since cell phones looked like this.” It’s an echo of the “just visiting” ad campaign against former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff — a poke at Freeland’s decision to leave her journalism job in New York this summer and run this fall to be the next Liberal MP for Toronto Centre.

Meanwhile, in the past few days, a 2008 column by Freeland has also been making the rounds, with the headline: “Sarah Palin is a true feminist role model.” In the article, Freeland describes the ultra-conservative vice-presidential candidate of that election as “a genuinely self-made woman, who broke into politics without the head start of a powerful husband or father.”

Freeland, in an interview with the Star, says she doesn’t regret writing the article or the sentiments within it.

“My basic point there, which I completely stand by, is that if you are a feminist — and I totally am — and you believe it’s important to have women break glass ceilings in politics and in other walks of life, you can’t be hypocritical about that,” Freeland said.

“There is sometimes an attitude, on the left, that says breaking a glass ceiling by a woman . . . only counts if it’s someone who shares my political views. The point that I made in that piece is that’s hypocritical.”

Freeland does regret that the campaign seems to be headed into negative-attack zone in its final days, and is vowing not to return the volleys.

“The dirty campaigning politics of personal attacks is all about turning off everybody in the middle and energizing your own partisans — that’s all this is about,” said Freeland. “It’s incredibly corrosive to the political process.”

Still, despite the signs of a looming, sharper tone, the first all-candidates debate this week in Toronto Centre was a reasonably polite affair. For one hour Wednesday night, Rogers TV broadcast a question-and-answer session featuring Freeland, McQuaig, Conservative candidate Geoff Pollock and Green candidate John Deverell.

There were some sharp exchanges about overall policies by the parties, but few personal jabs between candidates. McQuaig and Freeland agreed that they disagreed on causes and solutions to income inequality — an issue on which both former journalists have written books — but that was as close as the debate veered toward personal disagreement.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...