Ottawa Centre riding a rematch of 2018 provincial election

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Ottawa Centre’s election race is party to some familiar faces.

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It’s a re-match of the 2018 provincial election, which saw then Liberal MPP Yasir Naqvi ousted by the NDP’s Joel Harden in a heated campaign.

But much has changed in the riding over the past seven years. After a pandemic, a return-to-office mandate affecting thousands of public servants who live in the riding, and a surprising comeback in the polls for the Liberals, what’s the vibe between these two familiar candidates this time around?

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The Ottawa Citizen invited both candidates for a friendly round-table interview, but Naqvi’s team declined, with communications director Chantalle Aubertin taking issue with what she called “your desired pre-UFC fight format.”

It doesn’t sound like these two seasoned politicians meet up for a beer after a long day of campaigning.

In separate interviews, both candidates said they respect each other, with Naqvi noting their offices have worked closely in recent years, with him as MP and Harden as MPP, and it’s “always polite, always cordial,” he said.

“It’s important for democracy that good people step up and run for public office,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s about personalities, it’s not about two or three people, it’s about the people in Ottawa Centre from diverse backgrounds, working hard to build their lives. Our job is to make sure we are their voice, and doing the hard work on their behalf, and that’s what my focus has always been — not who is running against me.”

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Naqvi said voters are looking for a leader who will “stand up for our community, for Canada,” and to make sure the country remains politically and economically independent in the face of tariffs and threats of annexation from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Harden said voters in Ottawa Centre don’t look favourably upon candidates who attack their opponents or run nasty campaigns.

“I think that’s basically table stakes in Ottawa Centre,” he said. “Folks do not like the cruelty, the humiliate-your-opponent approach.”

He said his philosophy boils down to being tough on issues, but fair to people.

“We do not need someone getting elected to the seat to hold water for the prime minister or be a yes person,” he said. “We need someone elected to the seat that’s prepared to go to bat for us, like Ed Broadbent and Paul Dewar did.”

Broadbent and Dewar, two NDP heavyweights, held the riding back-to-back for more than a decade before Justin Trudeau’s red wave swept the country in 2015. The Liberals have held the seat federally since then. First, Catherine McKenna was the riding’s MP. She was the minister of environment and climate change from 2015 to 2019, and minister of infrastructure and communities from 2019 until 2021, when she decided to leave politics.

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Naqvi was then elected in the federal riding in 2021 and after Harden unseated him from Queen’s Park.

Naqvi had represented the riding in the provincial legislature since 2007 and was an international trade lawyer before that. Harden was a community organizer, university lecturer and researcher before running for elected office.

In the 2018 provincial election, Harden won with 46 per cent of the vote to Naqvi’s 33 per cent.

But the circumstances are different this year. National polling shows that the political map has changed drastically in just a few months after Trudeau resigned, Mark Carney won the Liberal leadership and Trump started threatening Canada’s sovereignty. As of April 2, polling website 338Canada had labeled Ottawa Centre as a “safe” Liberal riding.

While Ottawa Centre isn’t a battleground between the Liberals and Conservatives (the riding last sent a Tory to Parliament in 1978), it could provide insights into whether progressives will be voting strategically to keep Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre out of power. Polls show the NDP could cling to just a handful seats across the country, but it remains to be seen if Ottawa Centre will be among them on April 28.

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