Canadians wondering where the Conservative government thinks the 2015 federal election will be won or lost need only to look at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s travels in the last six months.
Harper has hit the road for more than 40 events since the fall parliamentary sitting started in September, with roughly 70 per cent of those stops in Ontario and about half in the Greater Toronto Area alone.
Many of the government’s major economic and tough-on-crime announcements, including family tax cuts and the new anti-terrorism bill, happened in the so-called 905 belt of seats around Toronto.
Another big focus for the prime minister in the countdown to the scheduled Oct. 19, 2015, election has been the ridings in and around Quebec City — where polls indicate the Conservatives have been gaining ground. Harper has also spent significant time in southwestern Ontario and B.C.
“The places that they’ve been, it’s almost like you could draw an election strategy on a map and they’re going exactly where they should be going,” said pollster Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs.
“The places that are going to decide the election in the next campaign are the 905 and the Lower Mainland of B.C.”
A review of Harper’s travels in this time shows he has made no announcements in Saskatchewan, where the government holds all but one seat, or any of the four Atlantic Provinces, where the Conservatives are well back in the polls to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and could lose seats to the Grits.
In the past six months, Harper has been in Toronto for at least six public events and in GTA ridings for at least 14 others, including three each in Mississauga and Brampton, two in Markham, and stops in Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Aurora, Whitby, Oshawa and Scarborough. (The Prime Minister’s Office lists events as having occurred in Scarborough, although it’s part of Toronto.)
The Conservatives currently hold 71 of Ontario’s 106 seats, but 30 new seats are being added in the next federal election. Fifteen of those are in Ontario, with the majority in the GTA. Another six seats will be added in true-blue Conservative Alberta, and six more are coming to B.C., where the Tories also have strong support. Three new seats will be added in Quebec.
“The GTA, by far, would have the largest concentration of seats in play,” said Tom Flanagan, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary and Harper’s campaign manager during the 2004 federal election.
The Conservatives were able to capture a majority government last election thanks to seats they picked up in the GTA, but many of those seats “could not be considered safe,” he said.
The prime minister has also stopped in a number of southern Ontario communities where the Conservatives hold several ridings, including London, Grimsby, Mount Hope and St. Catharines.
He has made seven stops in Quebec in the last six months, including four in and around Quebec City, where the Tories are looking to pick up seats. He also travelled to Sept-Iles, Victoriaville and the Montreal riding of Mount Royal, areas where the Conservatives feel like they have a good shot at plucking a few more seats. The Conservatives currently hold five of Quebec’s 75 seats.
On the West Coast, Harper continues to focus his efforts on the suburbs of Vancouver. He made announcements and attended events in Delta, Richmond and Surrey, B.C. The Conservatives hold 21 of B.C.’s 36 seats, but with a half dozen new seats being added, they hope to gain ground in the province.
Asked about Harper’s large focus on the GTA, Quebec and the Lower Mainland, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that he travelled to every province and territory in Canada last year to make a variety of announcements on jobs, personal finances, security and the economy.
Flanagan, meanwhile, said the Conservative party historically considers seats in play if they won or lost them by less than 10 per cent in the last campaign. The swing voters for the Tories are mainly suburban families, he said.
“You commit resources to marginal areas that either you hold but could lose or you don’t hold but hope to win,” said Flanagan, who also served as the Conservative party’s director of rapid response for the 2006 campaign.
The prime minister has saved some of his government’s biggest announcements for the GTA ridings in play.
He used a stop in Richmond Hill in late January to unveil the government’s new anti-terrorism legislation, and then used an event last week in Scarborough to announce the Conservatives’ plans to introduce legislation that will prohibit parole for the “most heinous criminals.”
Last fall, Harper used an event at a community centre in Vaughan, Ont., just north of Toronto, to announce a bundle of family tax cuts (income-splitting for couples with children and enhancement of the Universal Child Care Benefit) that are estimated to save families (but cost the treasury) $4.6 billion in 2015-16.
The tax cuts and tough-on-crime measures play extremely well in the 905 area, where the top priorities for voters are the economy, smaller government and safe communities, Bricker said.
Atlantic Canada is “really tough” for the Conservatives right now, with the party trailing by a large margin in some polls to the Liberals, although Bricker cautions that incumbency matters “way more” in the four Atlantic provinces than around the GTA.
The Conservatives currently hold eight of 10 seats in New Brunswick, four seats in Nova Scotia, one in Prince Edward Island and none in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“He is spending his time where he’s competitive and there’s new seats,” Bricker said. “You don’t want to spend any time in the places you know you’re not going to win.”
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