Entries from August 2005 ↓

It’s been a weekend of contrasts. I was canvassing Saturday afternoon for a few hours in Burlington, and it started out in frustration. I made my way to the designated poll, parked, got my materials ready and set out – only to find that the whole neighbourhood consisted of low-rise condo buildings that I couldn’t get into. And I sure tried.

So I headed south to finish off a poll I’d started a couple of weeks earlier, in an area of upscale homes and more condos – bungalow-style and designed for older people who have downsized from more lavish digs. Things went very well here, and I was truly surprised at the amount of face and name recognition that happened on the doorstep. But these streets are unique – no kids, no dogs, no traffic, just quiet. I was the only person walking. In fact, the only person outside. Truly, this is a car society, since it is physically impossible to walk the dozens of blocks even to the nearest convenience store.

But I guess this is what the folks living here want. The bungalow condos are just a couple of years old, exquisitely landscaped and groomed, all with three car garages and intricate stone walkways. I rang one bell, and the door opened about half an inch. I could see nothing inside but a dark vertical strip, and heard a voice asking me the nature of my visit.

I spoke to the crack, ”It’s Garth Turner. I’ve come to introduce myself as the Conservative candidate here in this neck of the woods.” The woman’s voice told me to wait a minute, then the door opened onto a darkened room, and I could make out the figure of a man lying prone on a reclining chair with a blanket over him. The woman was beside me now, in her sixties, I figured, and she said her husband was resting, but wanted to meet me.

I went over and sat beside him, and he extended a gnarled hand for me to shake. Turns out he is afflicted with serious arthritis, and this home was selected carefully for its maintenance-free exterior, main floor master bedroom and, yes, the quiet. They are supporters, and the few minutes of hospitality were enjoyable and appreciated. He made a point of telling me he once developed, owned and managed the largest poultry operation in the country – six farms with nine million birds. Now he was in that chair. It made me feel guilty for complaining to Dorothy how my feet felt after three hours of door-knocking. Every year, month, day of health is a blessing.

Sunday was a tough one. In north Oakville, the heat was relentless, soaring past thirty degrees, and the streets I’d chosen were almost devoid of any shade – no trees other than bushes. Lawns here are brown stubble, burned to the roots by a summer of intense drought and withering sunshine. It took only twenty minutes or so to start feeling the sweat tricking down the small of my back.

Knocking on doors on a day like this is no fun, especially when huge numbers of people are not home. I was also in an area with a high concentration of people who did not speak English, or were not from cultural backgrounds that allowed opening the front door to a stranger. I went blocks and blocks without meeting anyone – just leaving my literature in the mailbox or sticking it in the door. The temperature continued to rise, and the streets were empty. I heard music coming from around the corner, and a Slurpee truck emerged, grinding down the pavement. No children rushed from these empty homes, and the driver looked bored, hot and desperate.

Finally I canvassed a crescent of two dozen impressive-looking homes – obviously an infill project just a year or two old, with serious architecture. As it turned out, this was the unfriendliest street I have encountered yet this campaign. No, it was not populated with rabid Liberals, just mean people. Some refused to answer the door, just standing there looking at me through the sidelights. Others sent children to shake their heads at me through the glass. One guy yelled at me to get the hell off his driveway. Only one resident opened the door, was friendly and even turned out to be a Conservative. From him I learned these homes had been built on a piece of land owned by a retired Ford worker one street over.

One of the homes – a smaller one – is currently for sale, listed at $1,095,000. So, the Ford guy probably pocketed six million dollars for his big back yard, where a bunch of mostly-miserable people now live. I’m glad they found each other.

I came home and told my wife I had a crappy afternoon. She reminded me that I don’t need to do this. No election has been called. There’s no evidence my opponents are knocking on doors. It’s hot, she said. Nobody expects candidates on their doorstep. And she thinks I’m going to win anyway.

Of course I’ll win. After going to a few thousand homes, I know that. So long as the national campaign does not come off the rails and the national media doesn’t go more postal on us, there is no doubt of the outcome in Halton. But, I cannot control what the leader says or what the campaign gurus decide or what lies and innuendos the Liberals throw at us.

So, I will carry on with what I can control. One door at a time. One street, mean or otherwise – until I have walked every step there is to take.

So, the day was perfect. Little humidity, azure sky, warm wind, no bugs. Here I was at the Royal Botanical Gardens, in Burlington, just south of the Halton boundary, for one of those now-famous Stephen Harper summer barbeque events.

Of course, being politics, this was a command performance. It was important to be here with other candidates. Show support and respect for the leader. I was proud of the way Esther, Patric, Charlie, Paul, Keith and the other Halton volunteers pounded in signs, manned the booth, handed out literature, talked their candidate up and looked like they knew how to campaign – which they sure as hell do. The machine is well-oiled, well-stoked, motivated, ready to roll.

Not much media, though, and I wondered who’d been in charge of that. One reporter tried very hard to get me on tape questioning Harper’s ability to woo and smooze voters, asking if anyone had been thinking about challenging him before the next election. It was typical media tactics and it made me think of a comment Brian Mulroney said one day. The Tories were about to bring in the GST. The country was in media chaos. Protests were everywhere. The polls were a disaster.

Mulroney stood erect and impeccable at the podium in the caucus room. Outside, just beyond the double doors that sound-roofed the room, a phalanx of media waited, convinced some MPs would buckle under all the pressure, walk up to the forest of microphones, criticize their besieged leader and open the floodgates of party dissention. Just what any good reporter would want, of course. Blood.

And Mulroney said: “If you want to be a media hero, just walk out those doors right now, go down the hall and do it. I guarantee you’ll be on the front page of every newspaper tomorrow and the lead item on the CBC tonight. Go ahead. I’ll still be here. But if you want to be a hero for Canada, then you will stand by me.” He stared into the eyes of everyone in that room. Anyone who harboured the remotest thought of mutiny felt it evaporate under his gaze. Leadership.

Being a media hero is easy, fun and has instant rewards, I thought. Belinda Stronach. Carolyn Parrish. Scott Brison. Getting on the front page of the Globe and Mail and the National Post is a breeze. Just say what they want.

Of course, I told the reporter Harper is our leader. We have only one leader at a time. The leader leads – it’s his job. A candidate’s highest job is to get elected. Unhappy, the scribe wandered away, looking for other prey.

Yes, and Harper spoke well. The crowd ate it up. Afterwards, a long line of people formed to meet him, shake his hand. He flipped burgers for the photographers, smiled into hundreds of faces, answered every question, while looking comfortable and relaxed – unlike a man who had done early morning live radio in Toronto, visited the CNE for a photo op and done a dozen other things most people never will in a lifetime, let alone a day. The price of leadership.

And I was talking to a number of other candidates from the region. There’s a lot of talent there – good people from a variety of backgrounds who want to be members of Parliament. When I asked about their campaigns, some said they were getting ready to launch them next month. The summer had been spent thinking about designing signs, writing brochures, meeting with the riding association and planning fund-raising events.

All of these guys, like me, face incumbent MPs. The Liberals have all these resources at their disposal, and they shamelessly use their householders and postage frank and free long distance and mailers for completely partisan purposes. Paul Martin and his cabinet ministers jet around the country doing political events on taxpayer funds. As the election draws nearer, they will pour assets into any riding where a Conservative looks like a threat. This will turn into a war. And in war, there are no rules. No days off. No downtime. No summer.

It’s Saturday morning now. Dorothy is in the kitchen stapling Voter’s Guides for this afternoon. What can I say?

Here’s a break: The local paper has agreed to carry an original column, so long as I do not use it for political purposes. That’s a fair deal. I’ll take any chance to speak directly to the people.

First column:

Chances are, if you live in Halton, you’re a real estate junkie. Now, there is nothing particularly wrong with this, but it’s a habit that’s definitely getting more expensive. We are in the midst of a housing boom that has run longer and deeper than any boom before.

For some people, it is a windfall. There are streets in Milton, for example, where folks bought new tract houses twenty years ago for less than a hundred thousand dollars that are now changing hands for half a million. In north Burlington and Oakville, there are enclaves where it takes seven figures to move in. We are rapidly getting to the point where, for some people, their houses are making more money a year than they are.

But the boom also means lots of young families are mortgaging themselves to the gills to afford the homes that builders like Mattamy or Greenpark are putting up across Halton. Lots are getting smaller as land costs spiral out of sight. Builders complain about the length of time it takes to get approvals and the looming impact of the Greenbelt legislation. Many homeowners, on the other hand, tell me the pace of development is getting overwhelming and that Milton or Palermo or Brookville don’t feel like small places anymore.

And everyone, clearly, has a stake in the answer to this question: Will the boom last? Will the real estate market stay strong, or flame out the way it did when the last boom ended 16 years ago? The answer sure matters a lot if you have just taken possession of a house in Hawthorne Village with 5% down and 95% financing. It matters as well if you have most of your net worth tied up in real estate in Oakville, and are trying to figure out when to sell. It sure matters if you are in the process of developing a new 500-unit subdivision off Highway 25, with millions on the line.

To help answer that, remember where this boom came from. While real estate had been strong for a couple of years prior, the events of Nine Eleven had a lot to do with making a house the investment of choice. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, financial markets wobbled and recession threatened. Billions of dollars were pulled out of stocks and mutual funds, especially in the wake of the Nortel and dot-com meltdowns. Suddenly real estate looked a lot more secure than the stock market, and buckets of money went into housing.

At the same time, unsettling events all around us helped engender a cocooning effect. People wanted to spend money on renovations and home theatres rather than overseas travel. And then there was the collapse in interest rates, started in earnest when the U.S. Fed chopped rates to try and revive the American economy after Nine Eleven.

This ended up giving us the cheapest mortgages in a generation – a situation made even sweeter for borrowers by intense competition among the big banks. Suddenly we had below-prime mortgages, no-money-down mortgages, mortgages for self-employed people and interest-only mortgages. Ironically, as house prices took off, real estate became more affordable, as the price of money fell.

It was a perfect storm for real estate. Today it has resulted in the highest average house price in Canadian history, the greatest amount of mortgage debt ever, and house values which are going up at five times the rate of inflation. Drive down any street in Halton, and you can see it. In fact, every month we have families moving into rows and rows of houses where corn and pasture sat just a year ago.

But, can it last? Will house prices go up forever? What impact, if any, will the mortgage rate hike set for next month have? Are we destined to return to a boom-and-bust cycle, or is real estate in Halton a solid, long-term investment you can count on? Should you stay with a cheap, variable-rate mortgage, or is now the time to lock in?

The answers, in next week’s paper.