With the arrival of September, federal election candidates are ramping up for a big push in the final few weeks of the short campaign.
But without the usual rallies and public events that gather the faithful and heighten excitement, there’s a subdued tone to this race.
“It's so different this time because organizing events is so different than in other campaigns,” said Liberal Pam Damoff, who is looking for a third re-election to the Oakville North-Burlington (ONB) seat she has held since its creation in 2015.
On Wednesday – day 18 of the 36-day campaign – there was no local fanfare when the Liberals finally released their official platform. And while voters have had to wait for weeks to hear what the party would do if re-elected, local candidates insisted the platform wasn’t late in coming.
The party also waited until halfway through the 2019 campaign to release a platform, said Anita Anand, who was elected as Oakville’s Liberal MP in 2019 and has spent the last two years as Minister of Public Services and Procurement.
“Unlike the other platforms, ours is fully costed, and that's a huge difference,” she said. “We want to make sure that Canadians know that we are taking the issue of fiscal responsibility seriously, and we wanted to make sure we did that.”
Tight races
If polls being reported nationally and locally are to be believed, the Liberal bid to turn their two-year-old minority government into a majority government has gone off the rails.
Locally, voters are expressing concerns about jobs, healthcare and Canada’s pandemic recovery, as well as the need for an election, said Hanan Rizkalla, the ONB Conservative candidate.
And while pleased to see poll numbers that suggest voters are connecting with the Conservative platform, Rizkalla said she will stay focused in the coming weeks.
“We keep encouraging the team that whatever polls come every day, we have to keep pushing hard. Our real poll is Sept. 20,” she said.
Outdoor electioneering
Liberal and Conservative candidates in both ridings say they plan to focus on door-knocking for the final few weeks of the campaign, but other candidates are turning to green space to connect with voters.
“I feel like it's a different campaign than 2019 definitely,” said Lenaee Dupuis, NDP candidate for ONB, who has meet-and-greet events planned in Burlington parks over the Labour Day weekend.
“We have no physical office, and there's no canvassing, to make sure we keep our volunteers safe and all Canadians safe because the numbers have been going up significantly.”
She and Oakville NDP candidate Jerome Adamo have held virtual meetings with interested groups and have scheduled joint online town hall meetings between now and election day.
Parks and local trails will also serve as the backdrop for Green party Bruno Sousa’s efforts to connect with ONB voters. He hopes to hike a different local trail every night while conducting virtual chats with residents.
Pandemic restrictions have even forced candidates to get creative with fundraising efforts. Damoff is holding a yoga fundraiser in Isaac Park at 9 am on Saturday morning.
People’s Party of Canada (PPC) candidates JD Meaney (Oakville) and Gilbert Jubinville (ONB) spent Wednesday afternoon connecting with several hundred protesters outside of Burlington’s Joseph Brant Hospital.
Organized by a group known as Canadian Frontline Nurses as part of a national day of protest, the gathering expressed opposition to mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports, said Jubinville, who ran as the PPC candidate in ONB in 2019, earning 1.1 percent of the vote.
Jubinville said he isn’t yet vaccinated and supports nurses and other public sector workers who don’t want to be vaccinated to keep their jobs. He also opposes the vaccine passport, particularly for interprovincial travel.
“The vaccine passport is not going to stop vaccinated or unvaccinated persons from spreading COVID,” he argued. “The passport is meaningless.”
Social media messaging
With fewer ways to connect with groups of voters, candidates have been increasingly turning to Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
Adamo recently posted a Twitter video promoting the NDP’s promise to close tax loopholes and impose a one percent tax wealth tax on people with over $20 million.
The Oakville NDP candidate said voters have been telling him about their financial struggles. “The affordability issue is number one,” he said.
Anand turned to Twitter recently to complain about a high level of vandalism to her election signs. “About 25 percent of my signs have been defaced, damaged or simply disappeared,” she posted.
A recent tweet from Oakville Conservative candidate Kerry Colborne encouraged voters to help paint the town blue and cited a recent Mainstreet poll from iPolitics that found Anand had only a one percent lead over her in the riding.
Anand dismissed the results as “a fairly small poll” and said Liberals have been “hearing extremely positive signals at the doors.”
“I think that voters now have a choice to make between different types of futures that they want for our local government and local economy and our national economy, and part of that involves deciding who you trust to build back better, to see us through the end of this pandemic and to make sure that we are able to support families and a greener economy going forward,” she said.
Canadians go to the polls on Sept. 20.