British people’s poet Billy Bragg didn’t know much about Canada when he burst onto the music scene in the punk-powered 1980s. But he knew enough to make fun of Toronto as he played his way across the country, concert by concert.

“How many Torontonians does it take to change a light bulb?” was a staple element of his between-song banter at shows in places like Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton, where resentment of central Canada was easily awakened.

“It only takes one,” Bragg explained with a grin. “All they have to do is climb the ladder, hold the bulb and let the world revolve around it.”

The skewering of Toronto pretensions got belly laughs then from The Rest of Canada. So just imagine how it will play out next month if our sprawling, straining megalopolis takes hold of the federal election and decides, pretty much by itself, whether or not to give Justin Trudeau a second chance.

Now twice as populous and transformatively more diverse than it was 35 years ago, the GTA stands as the unignorable prize of Canadian politics, as evidenced by the sheer scramble of the campaigns to converge on southern Ontario moments after the election writs were issued for the Oct. 21 vote.

It is, now more than ever, Two Torontos they are courting — the one with money to burn and, crucially, the Toronto that is clinging by its fingernails to its place on the city’s slippery economic ladder — with many losing their grip, day after day.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, after a whistle stop Wednesday in Trois Rivières, landed by private jet and marched straight to the hustings of the 905 area code, where much of his political fate hovers. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh motored straight to the rust-belt of London before steering onward to Brampton aboard his shiny orange campaign bus. Green Leader Elizabeth May touched down first on Vancouver Island, far and away the most verdant terrain for a Green wave of seats in the next Parliament. But a day later, she was here in Toronto, sounding the science-based siren for climate action.

Trudeau if a no-show on Thursday night’s Macleans/Citytv leaders debate (and roasted for it by May, who couldn’t resist a phantom-handshake with the Liberal leader’s empty podium), has already been a frequent flyer to the city. The Star has quietly tracked his travels since April, watching Trudeau work the GTA at fundraiser after fundraiser throughout these woebegone months of the drip-drip-drip SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal — most recently two weeks ago at the Fairmont Royal York, where a cross-section of Toronto Black community leaders gathered at $1,500 a pop.

The notion of Two Torontos was offered last spring by Ryerson University political scientist Wayne Petrozzi as a way of explaining Premier Doug Ford’s curious and seemingly furious relationship with the city. In a series of disruptions, including Ford’s bull-in-China-shop rush to downsize city council by half, said Petrozzi, “he’s bashing one Toronto to the advantage of the other Toronto.

“Yes this city has enjoyed most of the job growth in the last decade or so – but it hasn’t been enjoyed equally and a significant number of people have gone into reverse,” Petrozzi told The Star.

“People in more traditional jobs — manufacturing, for example — have been getting it in the neck. Service workers, clerical jobs. All of which have been undermined, if not eliminated, deskilled to the point where the work is precarious. That’s Doug Ford’s Toronto base.”

Or at least it used to be. But now Ford’s base could well prove to be Trudeau’s saving grace, as sober second thoughts over the chaotic Ford era spill over into southern Ontario’s view of their choices federally. Or perhaps just as easily, it could be all ears for Scheer’s personalized core message: “It’s time for you to get ahead.”

Polls — and fair warning, take these early indications with the requisite grain of salt — suggest the sprawling cluster of 59 seats stretching all the way to the city of Hamilton is at this point tilting toward Trudeau. But much of that trove remains in play, with voter attention not yet galvanizing into intention, let alone enthusiasm. The 905, the suburban blanket of 30 seats that enwraps Toronto on three sides, seems thus far unenthused by its choices. For now, it seems A Confederacy of Meh.

“Our polling shows a tight race across the country, with the Liberals and Conservatives more or less tied, nationally — but of course much of the Conservative support is tied up in Alberta and elsewhere in the West,” said Earl Washburn, senior analyst with EKOS Research.

“And that’s why the GTA is so important for the Liberals, because our latest polling shows very similar numbers to the final result in the 2015 election, when they won almost all of the suburban seats around Toronto with 49 per cent support in the region. And that would give them almost a majority government right there.”

Washburn sees the Ford factor as “the biggest reason why the Conservatives are not doing as well in Ontario, especially the GTA.” He also notes that polling firms have a harder time teasing data out of some communities within Toronto’s diverse mosaic — he cites the large Chinese population in Markham as one example — suggesting the possibility of election-day surprises.

“Comparing this election to 2015 and previous elections, the increasing diversity of Toronto could well play a part in swinging some of these ridings away from the Liberals. Within some communities there are fewer cultural reasons to respond to polling and it’s harder to get an accurate handle on voter intention. And that’s why we might well end up with a few surprises on election day.”

As for the Two Torontos factor, Washburn said the fallout of the city’s inequality is being felt on the ground in Ottawa, where “we have a lot of refugees from Toronto settling in and actually driving up rent prices. Until now Ottawa has always been a lot more affordable than Toronto.”

Ryerson’s Petrozzi argues those anxieties run deeper and further beyond the Two Torontos — up and down Highway 401, west almost to London and east, beyond Durham Region.

“If that dynamic of heightened economic uncertainty and inequality is most acute in Toronto, there’s a similar dynamic playing out along the 401 beltway, with so many people feel insecure. Yes they’re holding jobs and yes they’re making their bills. And so yes, now that the writ is dropped all four party leaders are going to spend a lot of time up and down this beltway,” he said.

The irony — Toronto as a safe haven for international refugees, yet simultaneously losing a portion of its fast-expanding population least able to cope with spiralling costs — is not lost on some who’ve already bailed out of the city.

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Everyone apart from the wealthiest of Torontonians knows at least someone who has made the move. In my own circle of friends, the most recent example is Elizabeth Bricknell, a 30-year resident of Toronto who three years ago was among those stepping up to help collect and sort clothing for incoming refugees from Syria.

Now Bricknell herself has exited the city. Six weeks ago she pulled up stakes and relocated to London, Ont., drawn by both affordability and a Baccalaureate school placement for her teenage son.

“Everyone who didn’t have the money or foresight to buy a house in time is being driven out at a head-spinning rate. Few can afford the $2,000-plus/month rent,” said Bricknell.

“If there was an ad on, say, Kijiji, for a reasonably priced apartment there would be 1,000-plus views within two hours. I saw one ad from a guy renting out his garage — I mean, your regular, untouched, roll-up-the-door garage without insulation or windows — for $800/month. No internet, he wrote, but he’d run space heaters in with an extension cord. I hope someone reported it but I feel uncomfortably certain that someone snapped it up.”

But where does the economically anxious Toronto park its vote? There’s little daylight between the superficial slogans of the Liberals and Conservatives — “Choose Forward” versus “It’s Time For You To Get Ahead,” which both aim directly at economic unease.

But during Thursday’s debate, Singh carved out his place in the argument, taking aim at both front-runners and laying out his party’s plan to answer the housing crisis with the construction of 500,000 affordable housing units nationwide in the next decade. Singh also took pains to link Scheer to Ontario’s Ford government, saying, “(Mr. Scheer) would certainly cut taxes for the wealthy — and he would cut services for families.”

Petrozzi said “the one wild card” as parties scramble to appeal to pocketbook anxieties in the GTA and beyond is “the apparent — and I want to emphasize apparent — importance of climate issues to voters.

“In one sense, we’ve been-there-done-that. This is hardly the first election in which climate change has been identified as a top-tier issue. And we know that in the past the fact that you may say it’s important does not necessarily translate into you actually going out and voting accordingly,” he said.

“But this time around I think the Greens have a shot with climate-aware voters, especially millennials but it might be more widespread than that. I think the difference now is it is beginning to sink into the minds of more and more Canadians that this isn’t just some issue being batted around by our political leaders. This goes beyond us, from the record ice melts in Greenland to the record number of heat days in the far north.

“This may be the election where it finally breaks. And if it does break that way, we’re definitely looking at a minority government.”

But any such outcome, as always, “comes down to voter turnout,” said Shachi Kurl, Executive Director of the Angus Reid Institute.

“Low voter turnout equals advantage Scheer and the Conservatives. Higher turnout equals advantage Trudeau. The CPC has less room to grow, the Liberals are putting more daylight between themselves and the NDP and Greens, which bodes well for them,” Kurl told The Star.

“But many on the left of centre are younger voters who may not feel as compelled to come out and vote in 2019 as they did in 2015. This applies to any swing region (like the suburban GTA). Turnout means everything where the scramble for votes isn’t just about winning voters over, but also exhorting them to come out and actually vote.”

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