The Candidate Page 11
This had not been my experience of Mulcair at all, I said—noting, as I did so, the uncomfortable first of having to apologize for my party leader. What impressed me, in fact, was just how keen Mulcair was not to alienate, and to bring all parties to the table: he’d discussed the prospect of biannual meetings with the provinces—congresses that Harper had effectively eliminated—and was promising to take not just the premiers but also mayors, NGOs and even critics to the Paris Summit of the United Nations Climate Change Conference scheduled for October.
“What about taxes?” asked Nichole. “Is the NDP planning to raise taxes?”
“Yes,” I said. “We’ll be cutting stock option tax loopholes and asking corporations to pay more.”
“If you do that you’ll drive corporations out of town. Toronto will lose jobs. It’s already so hard.”
Here was the familiar coercion of big business, a constant in politics, that I’d anticipated having to combat at the door.
“What keeps corporations in place,” I said, “are cities where income inequality does not create an insuperable divide, and it’s incumbent upon corporations to understand it’s in their own best interests that people living right next to the one percent are not wracked with envy or a bitter sense of unjust desert. For the sake of community, we need to make cities liveable—for everybody. Look, I walked the riding just south of St. Clair and west of Spadina yesterday, and was stunned to discover a full-on gated community. I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea Toronto had a single one—”
“There’s Wychwood.”
“That’s different, it’s historic. This had a manned barrier checking the cars that went through. I felt like I was in a government embassy compound, or a gated community in L.A. Is that what you want?”
Nichole suggested we take a walk through Rathnelly. We crossed Avenue Road and turned left just north of the railway bridge, where she showed me the CP tracks that were a source of tremendous local concern. Residents were worried, with cause, that a train wreck could devastate the area through fire or the release of toxic chemicals, an anxiety heightened by the train derailment disaster that, two years before, had demolished the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic and taken forty-seven lives.
“All politics is derived from principle,” I said, “and the first one is that government exists to take care of those that can’t take care of themselves. The second is that government is there to act as a hedge against big business—to speak for communities that may not be heard otherwise. This is not a comment against business but simply a recognition that when corporations overreach, ordinary people need a hand. You believe that too. It’s why you’re asking for help in the face of Canadian Pacific bringing all their toxic materials through.”
Nichole smiled, her manner as unrevealing as it was serene, and took me along the street that was home, introducing me to a few passers-by and homeowners as we passed. You could feel the city emptying out for the weekend. Alain, home from work, joined us and spoke of an open letter sent by a league of investors’ groups, controlling trillions, to the G7 ministers of finance in advance of the UN Climate Change Conference, urging support of the “ambitious agreement” to limit global temperature increase to 2°C. It was an interesting document—and the fact of its origin in the financial sector was encouraging. I’d been developing the notion of a “moral moments” pitch at the door and this demonstration of environmental concern by an accomplished investor was playing into it. This was certainly not the bullish world of uncompromising advocates of the oil patch at all costs.
We arrived at the family house. The city had erected temporary fencing to protect the tree in the front yard.
“We’ll have to have our meet and greet somewhere else,” said Nichole. “We’re having renovations done.”
I wondered if my heavy-handed defense of the NDP had prompted a change of mind.
“The fence is orange,” I said. “I figure that’s a good omen.”
—
August 8, and the first of the election debates is being broadcast online. Mulcair appears a little stiff, but who, in the unnatural forum of a television debate, would not be? Elizabeth May, that’s who. She is the star, tolerating none of Harper’s obfuscations and appearing terrifically on top of her material.
I say to Doug, “Wouldn’t it be something if right now, live before the country, Mulcair said, ‘We need your intelligence, Elizabeth. I don’t care what colour you wear, come on over. Be our minister of the environment.’ ”
“Will never happen.”
“But it’s a thought.”
—
The national campaign is heating up and in Toronto—St. Paul’s, the fledgling team is feeling buoyant. Trudeau has pledged to build the Canadian economy “from the heart” and is being ridiculed in newspapers and on social media by pundits wondering what this could possibly mean. The Liberal Party leader and his top advisor, Gerald Butts, are scrambling to explain on Twitter that by “heart,” the leader meant the “middle class.” There are chortles all around as B., a fashion magnate, calls. Trudeau had visited his Toronto factory earlier in the year and he wants to know what the NDP’s position on marijuana is.
“Justin’s gonna legalize it,” says B.
“We’re planning to decriminalize it. That’s not quite the same thing, but a necessary first step.”
“I really like his plan. But Noah, I love what you’re doing, so I’m going to give you three thousand and my wife—well, she’s giving two, but that’s five grand all in all and should do you well, no?”
“That’s amazing, B., thank you.”
“We’re doing it ourselves—not in the name of the company. It’s got to be anonymous, okay?”
I thank him profusely, make excuses about a bad line and say I’ll call back. I know B. to be easily distracted and there is not much point in talking about maximum donations, or explaining that companies aren’t allowed to give and large donations are, by law, not anonymous, as he is driving. Time for that later.
“That’s fantastic,” I say very sincerely. “That’s really great.”
“I love your friends,” says Janet.
—
The next day, a cheque arrives from Nova Scotia for $1,500—that’s a $2,000 tally for the day, what with the cheque for $500 that was pushed through my door in the morning.
“I’ll never vote NDP,” says the donor when I call to say thanks, “but we need people like you in Parliament.”
—
A spritely, balding fella in a red T-shirt, a successful fifty-something entrepreneur, bounds into the campaign office. He introduces himself as Tom.
He says: “I’ve been a lifelong Conservative. I want to write you a cheque—and I want the biggest sign you have.”
Tom, hopping about with excitement, fills out a cheque for a grand and then asks if he can take an iPhone picture of me holding it up to my chest.
“Wow,” he says. “This’ll really piss off my Facebook friends.”
CHAPTER THREE
Elizabeth, volunteer organizer:
Canvassing is a strange beast. It puts a person in the unusual circumstance of approaching someone at home—where people are most comfortable but also, the encounter being so personal, they feel most vulnerable too. A politician is a bit like a door-to-door salesman, and this local aspect of an election is essential because the news cycle is dominated by the interparty air war. On the ground you have to come off as likeable, trustworthy and inspire respect. You have to show you’re engaged with the community and familiar with it. A common complaint in politics is that politicians only come around when they’re looking for votes; when you need them, they’re nowhere to be found. So showing face after you’ve chosen to run is the single most important thing a candidate does. Because then you become real, you’re more than just a name on paper. If you’re seen, if you’re known, if you’re liked, you’ve probably gained a vote. Canvassing is important to the election process—but it’s not that easy. Noah’s head w
as in the big game—making big moves, being heard beyond our little corner of Toronto and helping the NDP’s run beyond the borders of a nigh-unwinnable riding. Having the drive, ambition and know-how to get the big projects done can make a great political candidate. It doesn’t necessarily translate into being a candidate who wins elections.
—
The brochures have arrived. I like that the office phone number is my name, 647-348-NOAH. The volunteers and staff at the office are getting to know each other. The atmosphere is good.
“This election, there’s a clear choice for change,” says the first leaflet I am to hand out. It has a photograph of smiling Tom Mulcair at a rally on the front and my strange, doctored happy self (not used to that) on the back. The Conservatives are “wrong for Canada.” Trudeau isn’t “up to the job.” Mulcair offers “experienced, principled leadership” and “our best chance for defeating Stephen Harper.” A graph displays the first- and second-place tallies of the three major parties back in 2011: 166 Conservative MPs elected, 65 ridings where they came second; 103 and 121 for the NDP; and 34 and 76 for the Liberals—a distant third. The inference—one that will be relied upon heavily in the NDP’s campaign—is that in a plethora of races our party placed, not showed, and just a little push will convert close calls into wins and a majority.
Bennett is my target and I have no issue saying she’s past ready—eighteen years is too long for any MP to be in office, surely. Sarah’s worried. She thinks I’m not cut out for this. But I’m an old radio hand and I like talking to people. I promise myself I’ll be gracious at the door—not be negative, do my best to be charming.
—
—
Outing number one: Poll 143.
Elizabeth accompanies Young Ethan and me out on our first canvass. Liz, born in Calgary and raised in Ottawa, is in her late twenties, naturally ebullient and, well, pleasantly ruthless. She has been working as a personal support worker (or “PSW”) since her graduation from the University of Toronto in linguistics and gender studies, and when I ask how one thing led to the other she responds in a simple, matter-of-fact way that her younger brother has Down syndrome. Vigilant as a hawk, her routine is to watch relentlessly for moments in which I may have convinced myself that a bit of reflection in a corner of the office serves us better than knocking on doors. Liz knows better and, standing in plain view, makes of herself a physical reminder impossible to ignore, that I am not doing what is expected of a candidate. And if that is not enough—if I continue to take notes or send messages or speak on the telephone—she’ll take one of the 190 green folders kept in accordion boxes at her desk, one for each of the electoral district’s polling stations, and thrust it at me with gleeful relish.
The folders contain a street map and corresponding lists with the names of registered voters living in each household and the party preferences they’d stated in the last election marked alongside. It is the canvasser’s duty to update this data by affirming voters’ intentions and discovering potentially new supporters not on the lists. The canvasser marks a 1, 2, 3 or 4, denoting whether or not the voter is (1) a certain supporter; (2) uncertain but quite likely to vote the party’s way; (3) undecided; and (4) opposed or without the right to cast a ballot. If the voter is in the first category, then it is the canvasser’s job to encourage the resident to take a lawn or a window sign, volunteer some hours or donate. If the person is a 2, or even a 3, some attempt is made to affirm or convert. The 4s, considered a waste of time, are left to themselves. On “E-Day”—the day of the election—the contact information of the top two categories is vital to the efforts of volunteers seeking to “get out the vote”—offering telephone reminders and rides, if need be, to those who might have forgotten about or be physically incapable of visiting the polls.
On this first outing, our primary aim is to meet the Elections Canada requirement of gathering signatures of two hundred riding residents approving of a candidate’s decision to run. The signature is an indication not of approval of the party but of the democratic act, and is necessary for candidates to have their names on the ballot. The sunny day is also a training opportunity in the best of circumstances. It is August. The days are long and languorous, and people at the door are generally content to pass the time in conversation. Some were even excited to do so, the election belonging to some distant time months away and the harvest of tomato plants and vines in the garden their most pressing concern. If common wisdom held that the longer campaign favoured the Conservatives and their well-oiled machine (I had not even started before I heard of a bus carrying fifty Conservative interns, each with iPads, put up in hotels to work the cause of a neighbouring riding), it is also the case that in Toronto—St. Paul’s, the extra five weeks means my team has more time to get up to speed and organized. Canadians are so unaccustomed to longer campaigns that they are also indisposed to them, and a lot of the politicians’ and pundits’ talk (and my early speeches at the door) touch on the waste of a Conservative measure squandering an estimated extra seventy-three million dollars on an election that might as easily have been decided in the normal thirty-seven days.
The standard canvassing method is for a pair of volunteers to work ahead of the candidate, knocking on doors of adjacent dwellings on one side of the street in leapfrogging fashion. The candidate stays back on the sidewalk, pretending at a distance to make a call on the cell or some such. When a door is opened, and intuition says there is an opportunity to engage, the candidate moves forward.
“Oh, look, here’s the candidate! Would you like to speak to him now?”
—
The days will be unbelievably long but they are also pleasantly so. We’d started knocking on doors at three, and, four hours later, there was still plenty of light. It was balmy, the sky a fiery slapdash of reds and oranges. Poll 143 was a working-class part of the riding above Rogers and east of Dufferin, and—exceptionally, I would learn—not yet a territory lost to the city of Toronto’s rapid gentrification. Here, as the writer John Lorinc pointed out to me in an ambling walk we took in the riding west of Wychwood, houses stay with immigrant families that have worked hard just to gain a foothold, before they are passed on to children of the next generation likely sharing the home already. Contractors’ materials were in the driveways of several, and come seven we’d see their owners walking home in construction site gear covered in dust and paint. The first person to engage me is an octogenarian grandmother resting in a lawn chair on her narrow concrete porch, the rest of the family not yet home. She wants the catalpa tree in her neighbour’s front yard taken down—it takes away all the light, she says—and I tell her in Italian (she speaks no English) that her complaint is a city matter but I’d pass it on. Not my jurisdiction, but it feels better to say this than to enter into a complicated and unfruitful discussion about municipal, provincial and federal tiers of government—and I am enjoying the chat.
The first-time canvasser notices a couple of things right away. Many front doors have neither bells nor knockers, not ones that function anyway, because fixtures like these belong to the wealthy and the secure—to people confident that opening the front door will not lead to a confrontation with police, a utility rep or a landlord demanding overdue rent. As if to prove the point, a couple of houses have collection agency notices posted above lock boxes. At others, perhaps with bells, a curtain might be drawn for a look outside, but folk are reluctant to answer the stranger using the front door rather than the back (as relatives and friends would)—at least not until working members of the family are home. And there are the refuseniks, plenty of them, residents abstaining from signing the Elections Canada form, even when I explain that their signature is in no way a vote for the party and—a rational fear—that they’d not be receiving robocalls from the NDP or anyone else as a consequence. Against better sense (I need the signatures), I am sympathetic. I am even impressed at this exercising of the freedom not to cooperate that, furthermore, strikes me as an early indication of just how many Canadia
ns feel powerless and marginalized in a system that, says their own long experience, is excluding them. Saying no is for a significant, alienated and relatively powerless few a last way to be heard.
And, on such days, the first-timer notices the trees: apple trees, cherry trees, fig trees, peach trees, pear trees, plum trees—others I did not recognize. Purely ornamental trees such as I’d been considering to replace the useless Manitoba maple that had fallen across the back alley of my home during a winter ice storm were just that: ornamental—and useless. The better sense of the mostly Italian and Portuguese families that settled this part of Toronto, decades before, speaks out in the flourishing cornucopia of their gorgeously blooming, but also bounteous, front and back yards.
“Thirty seconds a door is the idea,” says Liz. “Sometimes you’ll need a minute because you’re new to the riding and introducing yourself.”
This is not a target I am easily meeting and, taking too long, I don’t have to look behind me at Liz waiting on the sidewalk to feel her admonishment burning into my back. Even I can feel the cumbersome, protracted nature of August’s “elevator pitch” as I hold the candidate’s card with my smiling mug up to screen doors or others held slightly ajar. But there is time, plenty of it. This is going to be fun.
—
Things I said at the door:
“Hi, I’m Noah Richler, your candidate for the NDP.”
“Okay.”
“I’m new at this—”
Laugh. Extend a hand.
“So thanks for speaking to me, I wanted to explain why it is that a guy like me, a writer until now, has taken a different tack in his fifties and is running for Parliament.”
Get them on board. Make your inexperience a virtue.
“You see, I don’t want a prime minister that hates people.”