HAGARSVILLE, Ont. – Larry Powell, a grains, oilseeds and cow-calf operator, has almost grown accustomed to being represented in Parliament by a Liberal.
For the past 16 years, Bob Speller has turned a once-Tory bastion into a Liberal fiefdom with four consecutive wins in the Haldimand-Norfolk riding in southwestern Ontario.
“He’s been a good MP. He’s listened to us. He works hard,” said Powell in a May 26 interview on his 1,000 acre farm. “It’s good that he’s agriculture minister now, though I don’t expect that will mean extra goodies for us.”
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Still, Powell figures neither Speller nor any other Ontario Liberal should become complacent in election 2004.
“I don’t think there’s a safe seat anywhere,” he said.
In a way, that could be the slogan for the election campaign throughout Ontario, and particularly rural Ontario.
For the past three elections, the Liberals have won national government on the strength of three unprecedented near-sweeps of Ontario’s 103 seats.
This time, a rejuvenated and united Conservative party dreams of making Ontario inroads. Nowhere are the dreams stronger than in rural Ontario where voters traditionally have been conservative, where federal gun registration remains an irritant and where people wonder what is happening to their tax dollars once they get dispatched to Ottawa.
In many of those ridings in the past, the combined Progressive Conservative and Reform-Alliance vote exceeded the Liberal tally.
“People are very, very angry with the Paul Martin Liberals,” said Dave Tilson, for 12 years a Progressive Conservative provincial MPP and now the Conservative party candidate in the Dufferin-Caledon riding northwest of Toronto.
“There is a quiet volatility out there. I really think people want a change. They don’t trust the Liberals. They think they’re liars.”
Incumbent Liberal MP Murray Calder has heard the stirrings.
“This will definitely be my toughest fight,” said Calder.
“This time in this riding, voters are going to look at the alternatives and kick the tires. I think I have a good record as a constituency MP.”
The question for all those conservative rural Ontario Liberals who painted the once-blue countryside a Liberal red is simple: Is a good 10-year record of hard work for local causes enough to stop voters from returning to their conservative roots?
“I’m getting very good response,” said Lambton-Middlesex MP Rose-Marie Ur, who is using her campaign in this farming riding southwest of London to insist prime minister Martin is not involved in the sponsorship waste-of-tax-dollars uproar, and that the Conservatives cannot be trusted to support farmers.
Her opponent, former dairy farmer and supply management supporter Bev Shipley, has an answer.
“This is a new party with a new policy that takes the best from both former parties and I have no problem proudly proclaiming our support of supply management,” he said.
“It is a good policy that works. The real issue is that these Liberals have been in power for 11 years while all these scandals were brewing and while agriculture fell into its worst crisis ever. What have they done?”
Ontario Liberals have one other major cross to bear. In mid-May, Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty broke an election promise by presenting a budget that sharply raised taxes to pay for health care.
Liberal polled popularity dropped and on the doorsteps, voters are angry.
“That’s provincial and I’m federal,” Calder explained to an angry voter in a Bolton, Ont., supermarket May 27. “And McGuinty was trying to deal with a deficit mess left by the Conservatives.”
Poll-addicted Liberals will be watching the next few weeks to see if that answer is working.
