Four Prime Ministers have led the country since Conservative candidates Scott Reid and Cheryl Gallant were first elected to Parliament in 2000.
They are the longest-serving Conservatives in Parliament, having dodged several controversies along the way, while the national political wave has flipped from Liberal to Conservative to Liberal again during their time in charge of their local districts.
Entire political parties have come and gone during their tenure.
In fact, both Reid, running in Lanark-Frontenac (previously Lanark-Kingston) and Gallant, who is representing Algonquin-Renfrew-Pembroke (formerly known as Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke) were originally elected under the Canadian Alliance banner.
In 2003, the Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservatives, forming the current Conservative Party, a movement that had Reid’s fingerprints all over it.
With the Conservatives, Reid and Gallant have since won again in the 2004, 2006, 2011, 2015, 2019 and 2021 campaigns.
In 2021, Reid won with 48.9 per cent of the vote, well ahead of Liberal candidate Michelle Foxton, who was favoured by 26.4 per cent of voters in the riding.
The Frontenac-Lanark district includes Carleton Place, Smiths Falls, Perth and Sharbot Lake, but after the boundaries were redrawn following the 2021 election, it no longer includes the northern regions of Kingston.
Highway 7 serves as the dividing line between the Lanark-Frontenac and Algonquin-Renfrew-Pembroke ridings.
The latter district includes Arnprior, Petawawa, Mississippi Mills, Madawaska Valley, Bonnechere and Laurentian Mills, where, in 2021, Gallant won her riding for the eighth consecutive time. She earned the trust of 49.5 per cent of voters, with the NDP’s Jodie Primeau receiving 21 per cent and Liberal Cyndi Mills being the choice of 19.4 per cent.
Mills, president of the Upper Valley Chamber of Commerce, is once again running for Liberals. Eileen Jones-Whyte is running for the NDP.
So, what’s the magic formula for withstanding broader national political change – including the wave of Justin Trudeaumania that arrived in 2015 – for a quarter century?
The story in Lanark-Frontenac
Reid was born in Hull and entered the political scene after working with Giant Tiger, the store chain founded by his father.
A researcher for Reform leader Preston Manning in the late 1990’s, Reid leaped into politics himself after that party morphed into the Canadian Alliance, winning a tight race over Liberal incumbent Ian Murray in a tight race in 2000.
Reid was then instrumental in the merger of the Alliance into the Conservative Party, all the while recognized as being a notable critic of Canada’s official bilingualism policy.
After riding realignments and renaming, he won in the Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox-Addington riding in 2004. Following a third victory in 2006, he became deputy government house leader for Stephen Harper.
An intriguing part of Reid’s connection with his constituents is that he polls them directly on potentially divisive issues and votes accordingly in the House of Commons.
Occasionally, that has put him at odds with portions of the Conservative party.
In 2012, after canvassing opinions in the riding, he voted against a private member’s bill aimed at reopening the abortion debate.
Five years later, he was the only Conservative MP to vote in favour of the bill legalizing cannabis in Canada, basing his decision on the fact that 55 per cent of those in his riding were in favour of the move.
The Citizen reached out to Reid to discuss that approach, but did not hear back from his constituency office.
“This is the same manner in which I have dealt with bills of a profoundly moral nature, including the Civil Marriage Act (i.e. same sex marriage) in 2005, two bills on medical assistance in dying and the Cannabis Act in 2017,” Reid said in a press release explaining his rationale for his conversion therapy vote in Parliament.
In the current election, Foxton, a Kingston lawyer and former South Frontenac councillor, will again be running for the Liberals against Reid. Danielle Rae is the NDP candidate
Both Foxton and Rae say that the Conservatives have become complacent.
On a local level, Foxton says large parts of the riding, including areas near Kingston, have been overlooked by Reid and if she wins, she plans to have a pair of constituency offices to answer the concerns of everyone.
On a bigger picture scale, Foxton says she is interested in working with everyone, offering hope and new ideas. She says the Liberals have shown support for the riding in the past decade, investing $22 million into infrastructure projects.
“I don’t want to pit people against each other,” Foxton said. “With the threat coming from the United States, I want to see how we can support each other. We’re not looking to blame somebody.”
Rae, meanwhile, says many people in the riding are not engaged in the election because they believe a Reid victory is a foregone conclusion. Even if the NDP doesn’t win the riding, she wants to “plant a seed for future campaigns.”
“They’re not expecting a serious challenge,” Rae said.
Rae, who has degrees from the University of Ottawa and McGill and is working two jobs, is living the housing crisis herself. She has moved back to her Packenham roots because of the high cost of living in Ottawa, but says housing costs are also a major issue outside of the big city.
“It concerns me deeply,” she said.
Algonquin-Renfrew-Pembroke
Gallant first claimed victory in 2000 over Liberal Hec Clouthier, whose endorsement of gun control was unpopular in the district.
Gallant’s overriding message of protecting rural and individual rights, along with campaigning for additional funding for the Canadian Forces Base in Petawawa and Chalk River labs, has struck a winning chord with her audience.
Voters have also looked past a string of missteps and colourful comments that have often caused problems for the party on a national stage.
In 2002, Gallant made several anti-gay statements in the House of Commons. In 2004, she compared the beheading of an American man working in Iraq with abortion. In 2011, she compared then Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, tweeting “no carbon tax, Igaffi.”
Six years later, she was the lone MP – of any political stripe – to vote against support for the Paris Agreement.
Over the years, Gallant has also earned a reputation for avoiding the media. The Citizen has reached out to Gallant’s Pembroke constituency office for comment, but the messages haven’t been returned.
Liberal candidate Cyndi Mills, who owns and publishes the Canadian Military Family Magazine, says the region needs an injection of fresh ideas and an economic boost, and that the district has been left behind the growth in the rest of the country.
The Mills campaign also believes momentum is on their side and that it has become a legitimate two-horse race between Mills and Gallant. While 38,000 of 91,000 eligible voters didn’t bother going to the polls in 2021, the Liberals hope this time around a larger turnout could sway the race towards Mills.
“A lot of people are fed up,” said Meredith Caplan Jamieson, Mills’ campaign manager. “We have a lot more people coming out to support us, we have a lot more volunteers and we also believe that a lot of people are responding to (Liberal leader) Mark Carney.
Jones-Whyte, a long-time public school teacher and passionate community advocate, also ran for the NDP in the riding in 2019.
The story in Prescott-Russell-Cumberland
In stark contrast to what’s happening in the western reaches beyond Ottawa, there is no one seeking re-election in Prescott-Russell-Cumberland.
Whatever happens here, a new face will take over in Ontario’s only riding with a majority francophone population.
Liberal Francis Drouin, who captured the riding in 2015, 2019 and 2021, has opted to leave politics.
Last September, he stepped away from the Standing Committee on Official Languages after swearing at a pair of witnesses during a committee meeting.
The new Liberal candidate is Giovanna Mingarelli, a tech entrepreneur who was raised in Rockland and served on the Clarence-Rockland Chamber of Commerce.
The Conservatives are countering with Julie Seguin, a former staffer for Pierre Lemieux, who held the riding before Drouin’s first victory in 2015. Seguin was a Hawkesbury town councillor.
The riding, renamed from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, is bordered on the north by the Ottawa River and runs east to the Quebec border. It includes Casselman, The Nation, Alfred and Plantagenet and Clarence-Rockland and has gained some territory from both the Carleton and Orleans since the 2021 election.
Kwarren@postmedia.com