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But doing so won’t be easy. With dozens of the 50 plus Toronto and GTA seats up for grabs, all three parties have targeted the region as likely the most important in the country. So while the focus now may be on Nigel Wright’s testimony in the Duffy trial, come October, Conservative, Liberal and New Democrat insiders all believe, victory will rest far more on who can best micro-target the myriad demographics in this city and its surrounding suburbs than on who knew about what cheque when.

For the Conservatives, it’s a matter of holding on to what they’ve got, while the Liberals hope to regain what they lost. The NDP, meanwhile, believes it can break through where the party never has before, stealing seats not just in Toronto proper, but in the deep suburbs, too.

On that day in Ajax, two weeks ago, while Alexander was enjoying the Harper rally, Mark Holland was out knocking on doors. The former MP was first elected as a municipal councillor in Pickering, east of Toronto, when he was only 22. He won the old riding of Ajax-Pickering three times federally, beginning in 2004, before falling to Alexander in 2011. That riding has since been dissolved and Alexander and Holland are now facing off for a second time in the new riding of Ajax.

Holland is blunt about what went wrong for his party four years ago. “On the national scene, people didn’t connect with our campaign, obviously,” he said. “It was a calamitous situation for the Liberals.” Locally, though, he thinks he did okay. “We were able to hold our vote,” he said. “We went from 21,700 to 21,600” votes.