Home to Parliament Hill and the nation’s capital, it’s no surprise that Ottawa has its fair share of unique ridings. This year, strategists are watching three ridings in particular as both major party leaders seek Ottawa seats and two familiar faces battling it out for another.
Ottawa Centre
Turning first to the city’s downtown core, Liberal Yasir Naqvi is seeking re-election for Ottawa Centre, a seat he has held since 2021. Prior to that, he represented the riding in the provincial legislature after succeeding in 2007 in his first bid, then winning re-election in both 2011 and 2014. In 2018, he sought a fourth mandate but came in second behind NDP candidate Joel Harden.
Now, Naqvi will be facing a familiar foe in Harden, who has made the jump to Parliament Hill and is running as the federal NDP candidate for Ottawa Centre.
Jeff Rutledge, vice-president of McMillan Vantage and Conservative strategist, said he’s watching Ottawa Centre with interest and that the race will be a “curious” one as Naqvi and Harden hash it out.
“I think that they are both trading independently on their names, detached from their party, and they have both straddled…The provincial-federal line,” he told iPolitics. “I think that that helps them to have a much more robust profile.
“And as progressive candidates — although I would say that Mr. Harden leans quite a bit further left than Mr. Naqvi —- I think it’ll be fairly competitive,” he added.
Harden won the provincial vote in 2018 with 46.1 per cent of the vote, and his popularity in the riding makes Ottawa Centre “the most interesting” local riding for Marci Surkes, managing director of Compass Rose and former executive director of policy and cabinet affairs in the Prime Minister’s Office.
“[Ottawa Centre] is one where it is never necessarily a seat that can be taken for granted for the Liberals,” Surkes told iPolitics. “The NDP has deep core organization, and we’ve already seen [Jagmeet] Singh supporting Mr. Harden.
“Mr. Harden is a very colourful candidate, he’s a very high profile candidate, and he has very well-articulated what may be considered really to the left of the New Democratic Party stream,” she continued. “And so that sort of profile will play and garner a lot of attention for the New Democrats there.”
She said that while she expects Naqvi will be successful in holding on to his seat, the Liberals will have to “work hard to keep it.” Polling from 388 Canada shows Naqvi leading in the riding, but the latest results showed a downward trend for the Liberals.
That said, despite the NDP’s decline in the latest polls on a national level, Harden is still a popular member of the Ottawa Centre community, and Surkes said this is one seat “where a local candidate could potentially make a difference.”
Nepean
Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced he will be seeking the seat in Nepean, a riding previously occupied by Chandra Arya, who held the seat from 2015 until he — very recently — was ousted by the Liberal Party last month.
On March 22, Arya said his nomination to run for the party again in his Ottawa riding had been revoked, almost two months after the party also told Arya it would not accept him as a candidate for the leadership.
National campaign director Andrew Bevan informed Arya in a letter just days before the election was called.
Arya had already been nominated, but the letter said new information obtained by the party’s “green light committee” led the campaign co-chair to recommend that his “status as a candidate” be revoked.
Soon after, Carney announced he would be taking over as the Liberal candidate for the riding. He’ll be facing off against Conservative Barbara Bal.
Notably, Carney lives in Rockcliffe, and his perceived distance from Ottawa’s west end could be a weakness to his campaign. During a speech outside Rideau Hall on Mar. 23, he mistakenly said Bells Corners, a community in the Kanata riding, was part of Nepean.
“Not only has he only presented as the candidate for that riding in the last week, but he needs to get up to speed fairly quickly in terms of local politics and local riding considerations,” said Surkes.
Liberal strategist John O’Leary said Carney’s choice to run here could indicate that he didn’t want to “push out” an incumbent, but rather run for an “open seat”, and rely on the surrounding Liberal incumbents.
He also said that the time of voters being deterred by an “out-of-town” candidate are likely over.
Rutledge doesn’t agree.
“There have been some rough stumbles at the beginning, and not knowing necessarily what was in his riding and what was not in his riding rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and signalled what can be one of the greatest criticisms of parachute candidates — which is they don’t know the people and they don’t know the issue,” he said.
“Particularly for a riding like the one that Mr. Carney is running in … I think he is struggling to connect with both the new members of the riding and those older, more traditional voters who are trying to understand how a parachute candidate can connect with them.”
To Rutledge, the race in Nepean might be more competitive than Carney has let on. Currently, 388 Canada is showing Nepean as a “safe” seat for the Liberals, with the Conservatives 19 percentage points behind Carney.
The riding is also in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s backyard.
Carleton
Pierre Poilievre first won the Carleton seat in 2004 from Liberal incumbent David Pratt, and has held it since. Now Carney is at his doorstep, as Surkes said.
“We have a side-by-side, head-to-head competition in the west end of Ottawa that I think few political observers saw coming, in terms of both of the major party leaders vying for the role of Prime Minister actually abutting one another in their local races,” she said. “And naturally in those ridings, there is very considerable overlap in terms of the issues, in terms of the organizers, in terms of the community concerns.
“So both Mr. Carney and Mr. Poilievre, although not squaring off, are swimming in the same pool.”
According to 388 Canada, the popular vote has trended considerably downwards since Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister, and continued the downward trend when Carney was elected Liberal leader.
On Jan. 5, the Conservatives had a comfortable 65 per cent of the popular vote, 388 Canada said, with the Liberals trailing behind with 15 per cent. On April 4, there had been a drastic change, with the Conservatives dropping to 50 per cent and the Liberals only 10 percentage points behind.
Rutledge said Poilievre’s extensive experience in the riding and continued support for public servants, many of whom are residents of Carleton, will work in his favour, and that reports of bad polling are just attempts to distract from Carney’s “fumbles” in Nepean.
So while the odds still appear to be in Poilievre’s favour, the polls for his riding are not as confident in his victory as they have been in the past. It is no longer considered a “safe” seat for Poilievre, 388 Canada, and while he is still leading, it’s not by as large a margin as we’ve seen before.
“I would anticipate Mr. Poilievre being successful in his riding,” said Surkes. “That said, if their internal polls and external polling continue to demonstrate a Conservative slide, Mr. Poilievre may have to focus more on his riding than he might otherwise have had to, and that will be a consideration for their national tour.”
