Entries from November 2005 ↓

Somebody brought a TV to the campaign office, and first we watched a local TV news clip on our campaign in Halton, then the fall of the government. Outside, Patric, Charlie and Keith were doing battle in the rain with a big banner that was resisting getting nailed to the front of the building. In the back lot, Doug was loading arterial signs into the trunk of his car.

I took my truck over to the lumber yard and brought back a mess of six-foot wooden stakes that had been sharpened into fearsome points on one end. Then, as the MPs on the little TV screen clapped and hugged and did strange things for people potentially facing electoral mayhem, the sign crews set off.

Main intersections tonight, into the northern areas tomorrow, and the riding pretty well covered within a day and a half. It is a giant area, and the job of the sign guys will be never-ending until the day of the vote. I am told that in the last campaign here a lot of Conservative signs met a premature death – something I am obviously hoping the other side will rise above this time. Yeah, right.

In any case, we are finally off and running. Martin’s speech tonight was warlike and accusatory, certainly setting the scene for what will be a vicious fight on the part of the Liberals. Harper took a less hostile tone – which he must do – mentioning the Liberal’s scandalous sins, but also talking about a positive future to come.

As I wrote here below, this is a message so vital to our campaign. We are for the future, and not just against the past. We stand for constructive change, not change merely for the sake of it. It is not worth winning the riding, or the government, if you have to lie to get there – because sooner or later, the lie will be found out.

Campaigns are tough and relentless. They tempt you to say things to get attention, or to wound your opponents. They play themselves out in absolute colours – black and white. They are often the enemies of both compromise and common sense.

I am at the beginning of it now. I have neither met nor spoken to my chief opponent, and perhaps will not until a minute or two before we take part in a debate. While I have criticized the way he has done his job as an MP, being so incredibly partisan and remote from the community, it is not my place to put him down as a person. Anybody who stands for a job like this, or goes through this political process has my respect.

It will be a hard campaign. Not hard enough, I hope, to threaten the civility and decency that are the cornerstones of Canadian democracy.

Non-confidence day. For the first time in a century, a sitting government will be brought down not on a budget matter or another pivotal piece of legislation, but simply because a majority of members in the House of Commons say they have lost faith in the guys running the place. I am sure that every MP tonight at 6:30 will rise in his or her place, and then remember that vote for the rest of their lives.

I have memories like that. Christmas Eve, for example, when the Canada-US free trade bill came up for a final vote, after an entire election campaign had been fought on the issue. We were there sometime around 10 pm, in the Commons, waiting for the hugely unusual vote to take place – dozens and dozens of young, rookie members like me on both sides about to ratify the most far-reaching treaty in the country’s history, and one which had torn the nation apart during the campaign.

I decided to be a bit bold, seized the hefty piece of legislation – C-1 – from the top of my desk in the back row of the House moments before the vote and went down to where the prime minister sits in the front row. I crouched beside Brian Mulroney, and whispered, “Would you sign and date this for me?”

He looked at me piercingly over his half-glasses, and I didn’t know what to expect from the man who was about to stand in front of the cameras, the media, Parliament and the entire country and acknowledge the greatest achievement of his life. Did the guy even know me, a frosty inhabitant of the northern benches above him?

“Of course, Garth,” he said, and signed the document with a personal salutation to me and the date. It now hangs in my office – a memory of one of my first days in Parliament, and a moment that did, in fact, change Canada. In the next eight years, because of that vote, the country’s trade actually increased more than 140%. Today every political party supports free trade.

So, here we are on the eve of another national moment. Tomorrow we’ll have an election after the historic ballot tonight. The Liberals and Conservatives will be jockeying for positioning and spinning their messages. I just got a copy of a Liberal fund-raising letter which calls Stephen Harper, “angry and gloomy” – and which I am sure pretty much sums up how Martin will be casting the Conservative leader.

So, the hope of our campaign in Halton is that Harper and his media team stress not just the reasons Liberals have to go, but – more importantly – why Conservatives should be given a chance. Do we have a vision and an agenda? Are we more in tune with average voters? Will be provide better, more responsive government? Can we be trusted to spend more wisely, manage more competently and deal with the issues a majority of people feel are essential? Is there a reason to vote for Conservatives, and not just against Liberals?

If there isn’t, we don’t deserve to win. But – trust me – that is not going to happen. We are the hope and the future. We have a plan and a pledge. I have walked the streets of this riding, talked with thousands and thousands of people, spent time in their homes, on their driveways, listening to their hopes and frustrations.

At the end of the day, it’s pretty simple. People don’t want hand-outs and subsidies, but a level playing field for everyone. Fairness in taxes, honesty in government, a good chance for everyone to get ahead. Leadership is about getting obstacles out of the way, not building them. It’s about letting people feel hopeful and optimistic, because they are your partners, not your inferiors. It’s time folks here had an MP that existed not just in householders in their mailbox, but in person at their doorstep. Always there for them.

I have learned these things by experience. Now, it’s time.

Big canvass day. I met the volunteers at eleven outside a big box grocery store, and we handed out walk lists for the surrounding streets. Susan was a new face today, and it was great to see her peel off in her minivan headed for 140 unknown doors. I think it was an adventure for her – and for me, a big help. After door-knocking for months, I suddenly have a deadline, and there are a daunting number of streets yet to trek.

Daryl was there too, much to my surprise. He’s a cop, and he emailed me at 2 am saying he had been held back at the station, and didn’t know if he could make it to the canvass on time. As it turned out, he was involved in a serious, middle-of-the-night drug overdose case that threatened the life of a young woman and which kept him there until close to dawn.

But, come eleven, there he was, dressed in his civvies, and sporting two Garth Turner buttons. He tackled his canvass area with enthusiasm, and did that characteristic cop thing when he turned in his sheets to me – each one was signed and dated. Just in case they’re needed for evidence, I guess.

So, the day was fine. The snow ended as we set out and the temperature was just below freezing. The first semi-serious snowfall of the season meant a lot of people were outside, shoveling, playing with their kids and dogs, and the mood on the streets was upbeat and hopeful. This area is quite new – no houses here at all five years ago, and now there are acres of them, along with schools, parks, a big old age home, churches, those ubiquitous big box retail complexes and six-lane arterial roads.

Most of today’s streets contained semis and townhomes, which meant we could cover a lot of addresses in a short time, getting through more than 400 of them by late afternoon. My houses were mixed – fewer people here recognized me, but the reception everywhere was cordial and interested. No avowed Liberals. No NDP. No doors slammed in my face. Not a single complaint about an election over the Christmas holidays. And, definitely, a much higher level of awareness that a vote is imminent.

I was invited in more today. Maybe it was the snow on the bottom four inches of my jeans that made me look worse than I felt. But I took the brief hospitality, and the warmth, with thanks. The highlight of my day was a woman who ushered me into her small foyer, listened to me intently in her house-cleaning clothes, beamed and stuck out her hand poker-straight for me to shake. “You are the first one I have ever met,” she said. ”And I am honoured.”

Of course, she meant she was honoured to have a politician in her house. Truly. That, I thought, sure flies in the face of the conventional media wisdom of the past few weeks, which is that fed-up voters would toss supplicant campaigners out on their asses in the nearest snowbank. And then I thought about not feeling worthy, since today I was only a local candidate walking door-to-door through one of 270 polls in one of 308 ridings, hoping to be elected in January. Once again, it would never occur to the national media reporters to write about this kind of activity, on this kind of an afternoon, in this woman’s home. That’s not news. Stephen Harper calling Paul Martin a bad name is news. Martin threatening to sue Harper is news. The mainstream media, hey, they’ve got this all figured out.

But here she was, honoured. And that made me feel honourable. And that made my day.

So, I press on. Another big canvass day tomorrow. Campaign volunteer rally tomorrow night. Campaign office staff starts this coming week. Phones, computers, high-speed get installed. Last of the signs arrived today. Lawn sign requests have started. Every day something new gets nailed onto the campaign, just as the phone calls from Ottawa increase.

Seems the boys in the war room there are worried about me. Obviously doing something right.