Article content continued

“With winds like that, you can’t even leave the house. You can’t open a car door or it will get ripped off.”

Doucet approached Green leader Elizabeth May and offered to run for the party. She accepted right away, he said.

Doucet won four Ottawa municipal elections, representing Capital Ward from 1997 to 2010. He ran unsuccessful bids for mayor in 2010 and 2018.

Doucet cited climate changes in a politically damaging video he posted online during the 2018 mayoralty campaign, where he used the devastation of the 2018 Ottawa tornado as a backdrop for an attack on incumbent mayor Jim Watson. He was criticized for exploiting the disaster for political purposes and soon took the video down from YouTube.

In a 2018 Ottawa Citizen profile, he conceded the video had been a mistake.

Liberal incumbent Rodger Cuzner has held Cape Breton-Canso since it was formed in 2004, taking nearly 75 per cent of the votes in 2015. Cuzner announced in April that he would not seek re-election. The Liberals have held the region, and its former riding, Bras d’Or-Cape Breton, since 2000. It went NDP in 1997.

Doucet concedes the Greens face “a big mountain to climb” in the region.

“At the same time, I think people are beginning to understand that the old parties aren’t working. Sending either the Conservatives or the Liberals won’t change anything. We’ll just keep going in a circle with one party undoing what the other party did every four years. It’s a recipe for going nowhere.”

The septegenarian said he loved campaigning and was still “ridiculously healthy and still as passionate as ever.”

“I cannot sit this one out.”

bcrawford@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/getBAC

ALSO IN THE NEWS

Egan: Trucks are the new family ride. What’s happened to us?

Ottawa flights cancelled as Dorian marches towards East Coast

Seven arrested in sweep of illegal cannabis operation in capital region