LONDON WEST: Sprawling suburban seat defies easy labels

There are people in London West who give to the London Food Bank.

There are also people in the riding, a generally well-off district, who use the food bank.

Take that observation from former candidate Al Gretzky, who lives in the riding and made a failed run there in 2006 — the same year the Harper Conservatives won their first minority government — as a Conservative candidate.

While London West is overwhelmingly suburban, home to Oakridge, Byron and Westmount, it also includes Old South — a mixed district, closer to the city centre, that ranges from 19th-century homes to new condo developments, with a more eclectic population makeup.

At the western boundary of the riding is the busy intersection of Oxford and Wonderland roads, arguably the heart of the city and one of its busiest thoroughfares.

Gretzky says the riding has a “huge mix” of demographics, from workers to business owners. “For the most part, the riding is a mix of residential and retail with small pockets of small business.”

The main difference in campaigning here in 2015, as opposed to 2006, can be summed up in one word, says Gretzky: Technology.

“You really construct for yourself the best possible place you can get in the technological world,” he said. “It really makes a massive difference.”

What that means is that traditional, old-school tokens of partisan support — such as the number of lawn signs a candidate has planted — mean little in London West.

“The signs you see out there. I don’t understand the logic,” he said. “Individuals now pay very little attention to those signs.”

Gretzky has run in the last two provincial elections as London West’s Freedom Party candidate.

He did so after losing the federal Tory nomination to Ed Holder — Holder “handed me my head,” he said — who won the seat in 2008. Holder is running again, this time against Liberal Kate Young, a former TV broadcaster, and New Democrat Matthew Rowlinson, a Western University English professor.

The Green Party is fielding London lawyer Dimitri Lascaris.

The Communist and Libertarian parties also have candidates in the race.

Interest in the election in the riding, even in an 11-week cycle that’s the longest modern campaign in Canadian history, has run high, many say.

In an election campaign that’s drawn tepid interest in some ridings, London West packed in a standing-room-only crowd of 275 at a candidates debate last week at a Presbyterian Church.

Gretzky says he views London West as something of a bellwether — it’s not reliably one political colour. Instead, as London West goes, generally so does the nation.



Bellwether London West takes in not only suburban Byron, above, Oakridge and Westmount, but also eclectic Old South. Craig Glover / The London Free Press

dan.brown@sunmedia.ca

LONDON WEST CANDIDATES

X- MP in last Parliament

Conservative: Ed Holder X

Communist: Michael Lewis

Green: Dimitri Lascaris

Liberal: Kate Young

Libertarian: Jacques Y. Boudreau

NDP:Matthew Rowlinson

Last Parliament: Conservative-held

Noteworthy: Home to region’s last Chretien-era Liberal MP, Sue Barnes, defeated in 2008 after 15 years; home to London region’s only federal minister, Ed Holder, minister of state for science and technology.

Different this time: Suburban riding, its boundaries the same federally and provincially, it went NDP in an Ontario byelection in 2014 and stuck with the NDP in the provincial election later last year.

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LONDON NORTH CENTRE: City’s signature race, draws national focus

On election night, all eyes will be on London North Centre — not just here, but across Canada.

The riding has been singled out by political action groups as a key battleground and bellwether, one that will almost certainly reflect the national tide Oct. 19.

Of 10 London-region ridings, nine of which were in the Conservative fold last time, London North Centre proved the toughest for the Tories to wrest away from the Liberals, who held it for years until a relative unknown, Susan Truppe, picked it off in the last election.

Now, the riding is the only one in the region being targeted by Leadnow.ca, a national group dedicated to defeating the Harper government by encouraging strategic voting on the left in its Vote Together drive to reduce vote-splitting by NDP and Liberal candidates.

That split helped Truppe pluck the riding from Liberals in 2011 with 37% of the vote, compared to 34% for Liberal Glen Pearson and 24% for New Democrat German Gutierrez.

Leadnow has so far signed up 856 people in the riding pledging to vote for the candidate with the best shot at defeating Truppe. But that’s still short of her margin of victory in 2011.

Lorna Cairns has been knocking on doors for months as a volunteer for Leadnow. She says it’s a fluid, three-way race in the riding, reflecting the national polls.

“There’s a lot voters out there whose support for a candidate isn’t carved in stone,” said Cairns.

But when they do discuss their choices, most people tend to talk about national leaders — Harper, the NDP’s Tom Mulcair and Liberal Justin Trudeau — not local candidates.

The latest Leadnow poll has Truppe tied at 35% with Liberal Peter Fragistakos, a political science professor at King’s University College. Gutierrez, a Fanshawe College professor, trails at 25%.

Those results are fairly close to the latest national polling.

And they should be — given London’s long-standing reputation as a consumer test market.

The Liberals held London North Centre and its predecessor, London East, for 23 years, first under Joe Fontana and then Pearson, until losing it in the last election.

A diverse riding, it ranges from well-to-do suburbs in the north, to Western University and Old North in the centre, to working-class neighbourhoods in the south including the area around the former Kellogg plant, closed last year after more than 100 years.

Cairns said the riding is a cross-section of the city and the nation: “There are little pockets that are so much different than just a few blocks over.”

Redistribution since 2011 has taken Hamilton Road, a diverse working-class area, out of the riding but added a neighbourhood south of the Cherryhill apartments complex

hank.daniszewski@sunmedia.ca



Leadnow.ca’s Lorna Cairns and Ben Corrigan bring their vote-splitting message to voter Morgan Burkett in London North Centre. Derek Ruttan / The London Free Press

LONDON NORTH CENTRE CANDIDATES

X- MP in last Parliament

Conservative: Susan Truppe X

Green: Carol Dyck

Liberal: Peter Fragiskatos

Marxist-Leninist: Marvin Roman

NDP: German Gutierrez

Last Parliament: Conservative-held

Noteworthy: Longtime Liberal bastion, former seat of Joe Fontana and Glen Pearson, picked off by the Harper Conservatives in 2011, five years after they won office.

Different this time: Traditionally London’s signature race, it is again, but with a twist — the only London area riding targeted by a national strategic voting campaign to stop Conservative candidates.

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LONDON-FANSHAWE: NDP turf features clash of former MPPs

Don’t overthink it.

That’s the advice one political insider gives as the key to winning in London-Fanshawe.

Roger Caranci, a former civic politician who made a failed run for the Liberals in the riding in 2011, and an unsuccessful mayoral run last fall, says bread-and-butter issues are uppermost in the minds of the riding’s voters.

“The economy is probably paramount, from what I hear from people,” he said.

“They want to see the economy pick up.”

Caranci, who lives in the riding, describes it as a blue-collar area of the city with islands of middle-class professionals, especially along Commissioners Road.

“I think you would call London-Fanshawe a mainly working-class neighbourhood,” he said.

The riding takes in the city’s eastern flank, including Fanshawe College and London International Airport.

For years, the riding was Liberal turf until Chretien-era MP Pat O’Brien retired and Irene Mathyseen won it for the NDP in 2006, a victory that was both a personal political comeback — she had been an MP in Bob Rae’s one-term Ontario government — and the NDP’s first federal general election win in London.

It’s a riding that’s been hard by the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector in Southwestern Ontario over the last decade.

“The economy seems to be the No. 1 issue,” Caranci said. “I really don’t hear too much else,”

In other words, voters here are like voters across Canada.

“People want to know they’ve got jobs,” he said, plus a little money left over from their pay heques to spend on family.

What that means in terms of campaigning is that retail politics — including getting out and shaking hands — counts for a lot. “I think they know that,” Caranci said of the riding’s candidates.

Mathyssen is facing Liberal challenger Khalil Ramal, an eight-year former Liberal MPP for the riding who was defeated by a New Democrat in 2011. The Conservatives are running Suzanna Dielman and the Greens have fielded Matthew Peloza. Independent Ali Hamadi rounds out the field.

Even with a strong ground game, dislodging Mathyssen could be tough.

She won her third term in Parliament in the last election, the only London candidate elected with a majority — 50.9 per cent of the popular vote. In the past, she’s had a lock on the riding’s working-class voters.

Caranci, who admits he was “rebuked solidly” in London-Fanshawe last time, joked that candidates should take some of what he says with a grain of salt: “Don’t follow my advice, because I lost last time.”

dan.brown@sunmedia.ca



Election signs for candidates in London-Fanshawe riding line Veterans Memorial Parkway in east London. Craig Glover / The London Free Press

LONDON-FANSHAWE CANDIDATES

X- MP in last Parliament

Conservative: Suzanna Dielman

Green: Matthew Peloza

Independent: Ali Hamadi

Liberal: Khalil Ramal

NDP: Irene Mathyssen X

Last Parliament: NDP-held

Noteworthy: The only federal seat the NDP has ever won in London and the broader 10-riding region.

Different this time: Race features a battle between two former MPPs — Irene Mathyssen, a Rae-era New Democrat who’s held the federal seat since 2006, and defeated former Liberal MPP Khalil Ramal, who held the provincial seat from 2003-11.

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ELGIN-MIDDLESEX-LONDON: Factory ghosts haunt hard-hit riding

The geographical shape of the riding suggests a sports fan’s raised pointer finger declaring, ‘We’re No. 1.’

But residents’ collective experience about the economic shape of the riding reflects a more difficult record than anyone might like.

This election marks the first since the closing of one of the riding’s major economic engines, Ford’s sprawling sedan plant, which was closed in 2011, two years after Sterling Trucks Corp. shut down its assembly plant in nearby St. Thomas.

“It’s a riding that’s still reeling from the effects of Ford and Sterling (closing) and all those residual plants that feed into them,” said Steve Peters, a long-time former civic and provincial politician who now operates a political consulting business in St. Thomas.

“There have been some rebounds, but it’s certainly not of the high wages that those other plants were.”

This time around, it’s one of a few ridings in Southwestern Ontario in which the last MP — here, Conservative Joe Preston — dcided not to run for re-election, leaving the race more in play than it might otherwise have been.

Even so, the region is peppered with signs for Conservative candidate Karen Vecchio, who was Preston’s executive assistant and who is at least as well known as Liberal contender Lori Baldwin-Sands, a former St. Thomas city councillor.

Fred Sinclair, a long-time union leader who worked at Lear Seating until it, too, closed down, is running for the New Democrats and legal writer Bronagh Morgan is running for the Greens. Machinist Michael Hopkins is the Christian Heritage Party candidate and student Lou Bernardi is part of the tongue-in-cheek Rhinoceros party.

Boundary changes have left the riding butting up against Huron-Perth near St. Marys, encompassing St. Thomas and a smaller chunk of London than before, and enfolding all of Elgin County from Rodney to Port Burwell.

Rural issues in a riding with many farms and several food-processing businesses include supply-management and trade policies.

But Peters believes the main battleground is in the city. “You win St. Thomas, you win the riding,” he said.

He said economic resurgence is more than just a single-riding issue. “We need a strategy in Southwestern Ontario, not just in Elgin-Middlesex-London.”

A committed Liberal, he nonetheless said the main challenge for any party will be persuading voters to go to the polls. And he’s so passionate that the only sign at his own home is one that says, “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.”

“I think one thing that troubles me enormously, regardless of party affinity, is the decreasing voter turnout.” Peters said.

debora.vanbrenk@sunmedia.ca



A St. Thomas property owned by former MPP Steve Peters offers some sage advice to Elgin-Middlesex-London voters. Derek Ruttan / The London Free Press

ELGIN-MIDDLESEX-LONDON CANDIDATES

X- MP in last Parliament

Christian Heritage: Michael Hopkins

Conservative: Karen Louise Vecchio

Green: Bronagh Morgan

Liberal: Lori Baldwin-Sands

NDP: Fred Sinclair

Rhinoceros Party: Lou Bernardi

Last Parliament: Conservative-held

Noteworthy: The region’s Ground Zero for industrial job losses since the 2008 recession, it takes in southwest London, Thorndale, St. Thomas and Elgin County — an area that bled thousands of factory jobs, capped by the 2011 closing of Ford’s St. Thomas Assembly Plant after 44 years.

Different this time: Area’s only open race, with no veteran running, since Conservative MP Joe Preston retired.

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VOTER INFORMATION



Can I vote before the Oct. 19 election?

Yes. By mail, if completed by Oct. 13; anytime before Oct. 19 at Elections Canada offices and in four days of advance polls, Oct. 9, 10, 11 and 12. For details, go to Elections Canada’s website, elections.ca,or phone toll-free 1-800-463-6868.

How can I check if I’m registered to vote?

New this time, you can check online and update your information if, for example, your address has changed. Go to elections.ca

Are voter registration cards still being used?

Yes. But new this time, the mailed-out card is no longer proof of your identification — only that you’re registered to vote.

What will I need to prove my ID?

You need to establish both your identification and address. Many common forms of ID contain both, sometimes — for example, with an Ontario driver’s licence — with a photograph as well. Elections Canada will accept your driver’s licence, provincial or territorial ID card or any other government card with your photo, name and current address. If you don’t have those, there are many other options — spelled out on the Elections Canada website — to prove your ID and address when you vote.