Tuesday October 22, 2019
Liberal Anita Vandenbeld held on to her Ottawa West Nepean riding Monday after a campaign that featured a rematch against Conservative challenger Abdul Abdi.
“We have shown that you can run a positive campaign and win,” Vandenbeld told supporters who had gathered at Colonnade Pizza on Carling Avenue to watch results Monday night and listen to upbeat music.
She took a commanding early lead and held on to it. By 10:45, p.m., with 30 of 231 polls reporting, Vandenbeld had 44.7 per cent of the vote, followed by Abdi with 27.8 per cent and NDP candidate Angella MacEwen with 19.3 per cent.
Vandenbeld, who sat on the Standing Committee on the Status of Women and chaired the Special Committee on Pay Equity in the last Parliament, has said she wants to do politics differently.
On Monday, she said the kind of cross party work she has been doing will be important in a minority Parliament.
“I think, minority or majority, as parliamentarians, we should be looking at a good idea and if it is a good idea that comes from another party, not to shoot it down just because we don’t want to give them a win but to be working collaboratively.”
Vandenbeld kept a relatively low profile during her first term compared to some other MPs. She came to attention in 2018, though, when she was criticized by the federal ethics commissioner for making robocalls on behalf of her husband, who was running as a municipal candidate in Ottawa. The commissioner recommended that no sanctions be imposed because her actions reflected an error in judgment made in good faith.
She cited jobs and affordability, particularly childcare, as key issues during the campaign.
Vandenbeld has connected to community members through frequent coffee get togethers in the community, something she said Monday she plans to resume.
“I’m not the kind of parliamentarian who looks for my name in the newspaper, or makes partisan attacks. I work collaboratively with communities,” she told an all candidates meeting during the campaign.
On Monday night, she thanked the other candidates and volunteers from all the campaigns.
“It is not an easy thing to do. I want to thank them for running and for running such good campaigns,” she said. “We know democracy is a verb it is not a noun. It requires participation.”
In 2015 Vandenbeld won the riding with 55 per cent of the vote. Abdi, an Ottawa police officer who took unpaid leaves of absence to run, received 30 per cent of the vote.
By 9:45 p.m., around 50 supporters had arrived at Abdi’s campaign party at the Marconi Centre on Baseline Road, which was decorated with campaign signs and blue-and-white balloons.
Abdi, a veteran police officer who came to Canada as a refugee escaping civil war more than 30 years ago, said during the campaign that focusing on crime was his biggest priority.
The riding, previously held by former Conservative cabinet minister John Baird, was targeted by the Tories as one they believed they could win this time around. Baird held the riding for nearly a decade.
MacEwen, an economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said she was running for the NDP in the riding because of concerns about climate change and inequality.
“I don’t know what things are going to be like for my daughter and her generation growing up in this environment.”
In total, nine candidates ran in the riding comprising neighbourhoods west of the downtown core.
They included Green candidate David Stibbe and candidates from the Peoples Party of Canada, Communist, Marxist Leninist and Christian Heritage parties as well as an independent.
Voting in the riding was marred by problems at nine polling stations, which didn’t open on time because staff weren’t on site.
Among those turned away was Hélène Nadeau, 89, who has voted in every election since she was 21, going back to when Louis St. Laurent was prime minister. She didn’t vote Monday after walking twice to her local polling station at Woodroffe High School and being told there was no deputy returning officer.
Elections Canada officials said anyone in line at 9:30 p.m. when polls closed would be allowed to vote.