ANALYSIS: In Northern Ontario, peril for Liberals, opportunity for Conservatives, NDP – National

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre opens a week of campaigning for votes in Northern Ontario on Monday with a rally in Fort Frances, Ont., in the riding of Thunder Bay—Rainy River, a region that a small-c conservative candidate has not won since 1930.

The incumbent MP for the riding, a Liberal and former emergency room physician Marcus Powlowski, is not surprised at Poilievre’s chutzpah, looking for enough votes in a riding to do what no leader of a conservative party has done in 90 years — namely, win over the voters in this vast riding, which includes the Fort William part of Thunder Bay, Atikokan, Rainy River, and Fort Frances.

“This may be news to you,” Powlowski said with a wry smile during a recent interview, “but the Liberals aren’t exactly riding the crest of popularity at the moment. So I think he thinks everything’s possible.”

Indeed. A Global News analysis of the current state of federal polling trends in Ontario shows that there is a distinct possibility that the Liberals, who currently hold six of northern Ontario’s 10 seats, might be shut out, something that hasn’t happened since the 2011 general election which, coincidentally, was the last time — and the only time — the modern Conservative Party of Canada won a national majority government.

Both Conservatives and New Democrats believe there is an opportunity to pick up seats in the region at the expense of the Liberals.

But in addition to polling headwinds, most incumbent Liberals must also deal with a radically changed electoral map. Instead of 10 ridings for a region that stretches from Muskoka’s cottage country in the south to the Manitoba border in the northwest, there will be just nine.

Terry Sheehan, the incumbent Liberal for the current riding of Sault Ste. Marie, is blaming Conservatives for that drop in the region’s representation as he campaigns this summer for votes in his significantly expanded riding of Sault Ste. Marie—Algoma.  Sheehan’s old riding was mostly just the city of Sault Ste. Marie but now it stretches all the way from the north-of-Lake-Superior community of White River in its northwest corner to Elliot Lake and communities on the north shore of Lake Huron — a day’s drive.

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“The Conservatives wrote a dissenting report supporting one less voice in northern Ontario. Shameful!” Sheehan said in an interview last week from Wawa where he was announcing federal funding for economic development in the region.

Even though Sheehan is the incumbent, the quirk of the riding re-draw has him looking uphill. If the riding of Sault Ste. Marie—Algoma had existed at the time of the 2021 election, it would have elected a Conservative MP. The transposition of votes done by Elections Canada shows 35 per cent in Sheehan’s new riding voted Conservative in 2021; 32 per cent voted Liberal and 26 per cent voted NDP.

Those three-way splits are common in northern Ontario and contribute to its political volatility.

Powlowski is one of just three MPs who has not had a riding change. The others belong to the two Conservatives, Kenora’s Eric Melillo and Parry Sound-Muskoka’s Scott Aitchison. Powlowski is confident he’ll hold in the next general election based on those three-way splits.

“I won by 2,000 votes,” he said. “I was about 2,000 ahead of both the Conservatives and the NDP. And given the rise in popularity of the Conservative Party versus the Liberal Party, I think the math is such that it looks like [Poilievre] has a chance, but I don’t think he has quite as good a chance as he thinks he has.”

On Tuesday, Poilievre’s tour will take him to Wawa in Sheehan’s new riding and then on to Hearst, a Franco-Ontarian community that is currently part of the riding of Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasking but which, at the next general election, will find itself in Kapuskasing—Timmins—Mushkegowuk.

That new Kapuskasing riding is a re-worked and enlarged version of the riding of Timmins—James Bay, which New Democrat Charlie Angus has represented since 2004. Angus, 61, has decided to retire at the end of this Parliament, partly because of the amount of travel and work it will take to connect with all the new communities and voters in what is one of the largest ridings in the entire country. But Angus said, he too, has noticed what Powlowski has: that the Liberals no longer look to be as dominant in the north.

In an interview from his home in Cobalt, Ont., Angus spoke about the “collapse of the Liberals” in his region.

“I’m sensing that a lot of middle ground voters are getting worried because Poilievre hasn’t done the normal thing, which is appeal to the hardcore base and then pivot to the center and present yourself as ready for government,” Angus said. “He doesn’t seem to be interested in that.”

This is not Poilievre’s first tour through northern Ontario. And Angus’s riding is a particular target where the Conservative candidate Gaetan Mallette hopes to win. Angus refers to Poilievre’s rallies in the region as the “rage tour” and concedes they generated significant interest the first two times around but he thinks those kind of rallies are now stale.

“[Voters here] feel that he comes in and treats our region as a stage prop and then throws blame around, throws gasoline on the fire, and then leaves,” Angus said. “[Voters here] want their MP to be reasonable, approachable, friendly and pragmatic.”

Neither of the two Conservative MPs in the region responded to requests for an interview. But Poilievre’s office did issue an e-mail statement on behalf of Aitchison, the incumbent for Parry-Sound Muskoka.

“While Canadians in communities across Northern Ontario suffer, Jagmeet Singh and his radical costly coalition MPs continue to prop up Justin Trudeau and sellout their constituents to protect their own pensions,” the statement said.

“Pierre Poilievre and common sense Conservatives have a message of hope for Canadians that is resonating with those living in Northern Ontario. “

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