Ottawa residents witness start of campaign at Rideau Hall

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Before Touhami Benguedda and his young family immigrated to Canada from Algeria 15 months ago, he says he wasn’t up to speed on the state of Canadian politics.

“I knew nothing about it,” said Benguedda, a personal support worker. “We came to Canada because it is a safe place for immigrants and there is education, and there are a lot of job opportunities.”

Fast forward to Sunday, when Benguedda, his wife, Faiza Belatrous, and their two daughters — nine-year-old Kamila and five-year-old Nour — made a morning trek from their Gloucester home to the stately grounds of Rideau Hall.

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They wanted to be part of the scene, to see Liberal Leader Mark Carney and to hear what he had to say while officially announcing a federal election for April 28 and outlining his vision for nation building and countering U.S. tariff and annexation threats.

They were joined by three dozen others behind the most modest of security barriers: a cable stretching across a pathway. Three police officers stood between them and Carney, who was speaking in front of the media, the length of an NHL rink away.

The sun was shining, but there was a slight chill in the -4 C air.

It was very much a Canadian scene, with no shoving or battling for position. Except, maybe, for their children, who were gently pushing each other on what remained of a small snow pile.

“We are here because we are interested in the news and in the government of Canada,” said Benguedda, who has enrolled his kids in a French school. “This moment is a big thing in the history of Canada, a big day. We watch the CBC news and listen to the CBC on the radio.”

“It’s a big change,” said Belatrous.

As relative newcomers to Canada, they are still ineligible to vote, but they aren’t disappointed.

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“No, that’s OK,” Benguedda said. “It’s the rule. After we stay for three years, we can vote.”

Standing a few feet away, coffee cup in hand, stood Andrew Williams. A builder, he regularly strolls through the grounds.

“I was walking over here thinking, there is not many people that really have the opportunity to show up for this kind of thing,” said Williams, who arrived around 11 a.m., 90 minutes before Carney started talking. “I mean, nobody is going to fly across the country to stand here for an hour in the cold, but yeah, if you’ve got the opportunity, you should take it. I’m only wearing one pair of long johns today.”

Williams says being at Rideau Hall allowed him to have a “sense of civic engagement” at what he believes is a vital moment for the country.

“I have always thought of politics as being important in general, and the circumstances being what they are, it feels like there’s a little more of heightened importance. Just being present for it.”

Williams says he’s not a fan of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s “attitude and politics” but he also wants more answers about what happened in the Nepean riding where Carney will run in the election.

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“I’m also looking forward to hearing more about this Chandra Arya thing,” referring to the Nepean Liberal MP who had represented the riding since 2015, but was disqualified by the party on March 20, just a few days before the election campaign began.

Another local resident, Peter Henshaw, says he needed to be here because of the concerns he has for the future of the country.

He came away impressed with what Carney had to say.

“I regard him as one of the great nation builders, the sort we haven’t seen in generations,” he said. “It’s just his idea of building up Canada, his understanding of how the economy should be built. I just see it as fundamentally different from anything we have seen, in some respects, since the 1970s.”

Not everyone in the crowd shared the same politics.

Jonathan Villeneuve, proudly sporting a black baseball cap with a white maple leaf on the front, says he was on site to “do my own reporting,” and wasn’t impressed by Carney’s message.

“I hope his opponents challenge him accurately on his role in this because he has been intimately involved in the (Trudeau) government,” said Villeneuve. “He likes to frame himself as an outsider and the change candidate, but he was Trudeau’s financial adviser — outside of the (Prime Minister’s Office) — for five of the last 10 years, so how can you be more connected than that? That’s not a change candidate.”

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What also struck Villeneuve was how calm the environment was, even with people sharing different views.

“There is just this little (belt) here and nobody stepped around it, which is to say that Canadians are inherent rule followers. This is a good thing, a neutral thing. In the U.S., you would never see this,” he said. “You would see a wall or a fence. So this is special about Canada, but we are losing it slowly.”

Villeneuve spoke a little too soon.

Local resident Leonard Poole arrived on the scene so early, he simply walked by the unguarded barrier and spent the next two hours hanging out in the media area.

“I wanted to bear witness to what’s going on, really,” he said. “I knew this was a very important election. That’s really why I’m here. This is a monumental election that is going to make a difference for generations.”

It’s essentially the same feeling that everyone in the crowd brought to the day.

kwarren@postmedia.com

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