The Battle for Quadra — Page 2

Duck and Cover

Sauder School of Business law prof Deborah Meredith hewed close to Tory policy in her selective appearances. Absent from many public events, she also ignored a Friends of CBC questionnaire regarding the public broadcaster. Criticism fell on deaf ears, though, as she made clear at the one all-candidates meeting she did attend: “My 26 years as an educator have given me good communication skills and a very thick skin.” Hers were the only lawn signs not in both Chinese characters and English, yet wooing the so-called ethnic vote was a cornerstone of her strategy, and an effective one: blue support increased from Stephen Rogers’s 29 percent in 2006 to 35.5 percent this year, within striking distance of the win.

“The party may be able to declare victory of a sort, without an actual win at the ballot box,” opined Greg Lyle, managing director of Innovative Research Group, in a pre-results piece for the Globe and Mail. “If the Conservatives can move their vote past 30 percent, on the strength of their appeal to the Chinese community, that will bode well in a general election in other ridings with higher proportions of ethnic voters.” And

in a second story: “The Tories are not expected to win, but if they can come a closer second, they send a signal that they are poised to win in places like Richmond and the North Shore.”

Meredith’s strategy nearly worked. And the Tories served notice to the Grits that the immigrant vote—long a pillar of Liberal support—can no longer be taken for granted.

What’s Left?

My first glimpse of Rebecca Coad came on my front porch. With her pert smile and clipboard, she was surely selling Girl Guide cookies or on a bottle drive for her band’s trip to Europe. Nope: she wanted our support for the NDP.

“I lost patience waiting for action on the issues that really matter to me,” Coad was fond of saying during stump speeches. “I began to ask myself, ‘What if?’ We have some of the most relaxed environmental standards in the industrialized world. So, ‘What if we had a government that was pressed to take action?’ ” With her earnest vigour and hypnotic cadences, she brought to mind the strains of Barack Obama’s “Yes. We. Can.”

“Everyone in this room knows that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are moving full speed ahead with their right-wing agenda,” she said at one all-candidates meeting. “And the Liberals? They were elected by the Canadian people to be the Opposition, but we’ve seen the Liberals abstain on every single confidence vote in the last session of Parliament, letting Stephen Harper do whatever he wants.

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