For first-time campaigners Gustave Roy and Huda Mukbil, local politics is about connection – Ottawa Citizen

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Gustave Roy’s political debut has been a long time coming.

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He grew up steeped in current affairs, with a paper route that made front-page news part of his daily routine, and CBC radio embedded in the soundtrack of his family home.

By high school, he was thinking about running for political office someday. “It’s … a bit of a calling,” he explained, entirely earnest, between driveways in the Stittsville neighbourhood where he was knocking on doors, introducing himself to Carleton voters as their local Liberal candidate.

Despite his longstanding desire to jump into the political arena, Roy, 47, said he wanted to wait until he had the experience and background to be successful.

He had a worldly upbringing, from Sherbrooke, Que., to Rwanda in east-central Africa, where he saw his father, a mechanical engineering professor, training Rwandese students and his stay-at-home mom volunteering in local schools.

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His own career progressed in the private sector, in finance and the pharmaceutical industry. Roy is the youngest of six children, all of whom have been successful, he said, and giving back is a strong family value.

“So I just feel that it’s time for me to sort of pay it forward,” Roy said of his decision to run.

“And a lot of those decisions and the reasons that I was successful were really because of the decisions that my parents took, early on in life. So I want to do the same and I want to have an impact. And it’s a bit of an opportunity for legacy as well.”

Ideally, he explained, that would entail being part of government, representing the riding, and supporting the building of a brighter future.

“We need to attack climate change. It’s mission critical. So I want to be on that team, that made a difference,” he said. “That found the right policies and that put the right strategies in place. That balanced … economic growth and also protected our environment, and be recognized for that.”

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Roy is one of two newcomers to federal politics this newspaper accompanied for interview while canvassing in their ridings. The intent was to profile a first-time candidate from each of the big three parties, but none of the six local Conservatives who fit the bill were made available to participate.

‘We need those voices’

A pivotal moment in Huda Mukbil’s path to politics was an inquiry, from a university professor, about the languages she spoke.

Born in Ethiopia, her family fled civil war in that country when Mukbil was four. They lived in Cairo, then immigrated to Montreal and moved to Ottawa in 1991, the same year they got citizenship. Mukbil went to Ridgemont High School in Ottawa South, the riding she’s now running to represent as an NDP member of Parliament.

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Mukbil studied law at Carleton University, and had thoughts of becoming a police officer or a lawyer. But the professor who learned about her ability to communicate in English, French, Arabic and Harari, an Ethiopian dialect, suggested national security as a career option.

She spent nearly 16 years at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and while it was a “great career,” Mukbil has spoken publicly about her struggle for equity at an institution she found lacking in both, culminating in a since-settled lawsuit against CSIS with several other employees, alleging harassment and discrimination.

This fight has been a repeated theme in Mukbil’s life, with an expanding scope — from collaboration with an NDP shadow minister on national security reforms, to work with a group representing Black federal public servants now suing the Canadian government over alleged systemic racism.

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Mukbil said she started thinking deeply about the presence and responsibilities given to Black women in politics. She looked at the Status of Women committee, and didn’t see them represented. She spoke to Celina Caesar-Chavannes, a Black Liberal MP who left caucus and elected office, disillusioned. Mukbil also makes mention of Indigenous women, such as Nunavut MP Mumilaaq Qaqqaq and Vancouver-Granville’s Jody Wilson-Raybould, who’ve just recently walked away from the House of Commons.

“So women… and especially racialized women, are finding it difficult in these places of power. And that’s problematic,” said Mukbil. “We need that representation. We need those voices.”

Now, she’s trying to add her own.

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Growing momentum in Carleton

Roy started moving on his political aspiration two elections ago, reaching out to local MPs and gathering information from the Liberal party about what it would take to run.

Finding a riding without a Liberal incumbent narrowed the field in the local area (of the 13 Ottawa-Gatineau ridings, all but one elected Liberals in 2019 and nine of the 12 are running again). Other practicalities were considered in his talks with the party, such as distance — Roy lives in Gloucester — and political infrastructure at the riding level. Carleton’s Liberal riding association is well-organized and committed, said Roy, with lots of volunteers, and years of work put into building their local presence.

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“And I really felt that the momentum was also growing in Carleton, for the Liberals. So for me, it was just the perfect place to advocate for my values.”

Roy, who bested competitors to secure the Liberal nomination, sees the riding as a place where he can make a difference.

As a longtime follower of politics, he was already familiar with Carleton Conservative incumbent Pierre Poilievre, who is probably the best-known Tory in local politics. A powerful but polarizing figure, with a commanding ground game and social media presence, Poilievre has been a member of Parliament in the area since 2004.

“I think the riding of Carleton deserves somebody who’s maybe a little bit more positive, that’s more collaborative. And that’s what I intend to bring to the table,” Roy said.

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Finn Long, a jack-of-all-trades on the Roy campaign, said people think of Carleton as a pretty Conservative riding. “But there are more progressive voters than there are Conservative voters.”

In 2019, Poilievre took 46.3 per cent of the vote in Carleton, to Liberal candidate Chris Rodgers’s 38.2, while 9.3 per cent voted NDP, 4.9 per cent Green, and 1.1 per cent for the People’s Party.  And the riding is changing, Roy said, with new developments and new families. As for the fact that he doesn’t live there, Roy said it hasn’t been an issue thus far.

Something he raises on every doorstep is his belief that the economy and environment go hand in hand — a Liberal talking point, but one he thinks is important to share, a year and a half into the pandemic’s upending of society.

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“People want to know … what our future’s going to look like.”

What this vision would mean for Carleton is the extension of light rail transit, and taking a climate-friendly approach to needed infrastructure, such as electric buses or a new net-zero community centre, Roy said. Rolling out affordable child care is also at the top of Roy’s priority list (the Liberals have pledged $10-a-day child care within five years if re-elected).

In the lead-up to his nomination, Roy got a crash course in local priorities from the Liberal membership in Carleton. Beyond infrastructure, these also included supports for small businesses, for minority communities in the riding, employment and community organizations.

Roy sees his experience collaborating in the private sector as transferable to this new job, where he says he’d like to work with the city and his provincial counterpart to bring more investment into the riding. He also wants to be accessible to his constituents, and sees listening as fundamental to the role of a MP.

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“Every conversation is meaningful to me and I take it all in,” he said while door-knocking. At night, Roy said, he thinks over the dialogue he’s had with people throughout the day.

“And that does influence the way I think, and my position.”

Diversity in Ottawa South

It looked like Mukbil was going to have to face off against Morgan Gay, the Ottawa South NDP candidate in the last federal election, for the 2021 nomination.

Gay took 16 per cent of the Ottawa South vote in 2019, behind Conservative candidate Eli Tannis’s 24.5 per cent, and Liberal incumbent David McGuinty’s 52.3 per cent. Both men are running again, with McGuinty aiming for his sixth consecutive re-election.

The two aspiring NDP candidates met up, and “And right away he was like, ‘You know what, Ottawa South is a really diverse community. I think you’re going to do really well representing us. And so I’m going to step aside,’” Mukbil said of her conversation with Gay.

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In a post about his decision and his support for Mukbil, Gay referenced her credentials and experience, a goal of the riding association (of which he’s president) to better reflect the diversity of its community, and the need “for much greater efforts at allyship” in Canada.

It was “amazing,” said Mukbil. “That’s the party. And I’m very proud to be standing with them.”

Mukbil lives outside the riding’s boundaries with her husband and four children, in Findlay Creek. But Ottawa South has been her home in the past and she’s there all the time, Mukbil said; her parents and the mosque she attends are in the riding.

Her candidacy may prove to be a strategically savvy move for the NDP in Ottawa South, a diverse electoral district with a significant number of Arabic-speaking voters.

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Mukbil, whose family background is Arab, from Yemen, as well as east African, said she feels her roots allow her to bring together different communities in the riding.

“That connection and that ability to communicate in all of these languages is helping to get more people to support us, and to … be involved in politics and to see themselves reflected in the system. I think that’s a really important and powerful thing.”

On one doorstep, she spoke at length with an Arabic-speaking resident who wasn’t himself a citizen yet, but had family members in the riding who could vote. He called one of them, and passed his phone to Mukbil to introduce herself.

At a Syrian community event, Mukbil said she learned that people who had fled the war and claimed refugee status in a nearby country, then arrived in Canada and became citizens, were being turned away from those countries when they tried to return to visit family who remained. One man missed the chance to see his mother before she died.

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“Heartbreaking, really,” said Mukbil, moved to tears while recounting this. As an MP, she said she hopes to be able to tackle such concerns. She also envisions having an Arabic-speaking staff member in her office, so people can access service in the language.

Affordable housing issues such as the redevelopment of Heron Gate, reform of the Employment Equity Act and the stripping of charitable status from Muslim organizations, which which a civil rights group said the CRA has unfairly targeted for audits, have all been on Mukbil’s radar.

And then there are the hallmark NDP platform pledges, such as pharmacare, dental coverage, and lowering cell phone and internet bills. Initiatives like these would be tremendously helpful for people with low incomes, Mukbil saiod. The median household income in Ottawa South is $71,314, compared to $86,451 in the city at large.

Mukbil’s husband Ali Elbeddini is a pharmacist — and a dedicated member of her campaign team — who said he sees customers come in who can’t afford medication. He does what he can, but some products don’t have lower-cost substitutes.

“We need a candidate that understands those challenges, and works with people to find solutions for it.”

Elbeddini contrasted that with politicians who show up during an election, put in a few minutes at the mosque, or synagogue, or church, and then disappear. Talk alone isn’t enough, he said. “We need to see actions.”