Conservative campaign operatives are accusing the Liberal Party of running a “racist” campaign in the recent Oxford federal byelection, claiming slogans that highlighted winning Tory candidate Arpan Khanna’s past ties to Brampton, Ont. are an example of dog-whistle politics.
In a letter posted on LinkedIn, Hamish Marshall, a long-time Conservative strategist and pollster who ran the party’s 2019 federal election campaign, said the Oxford race was “the most disgusting, overtly racist campaign I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ve been around politics for almost 30 years and yet the blatant hypocrisy of the Liberal Party of Canada still manages to shock me,” he said, adding that Monday’s closely fought byelection race was also the “nastiest” one he’s ever witnessed.
Khanna, an Indo-Canadian, is a relatively new resident of Woodstock, Ont. who previously ran for the federal Conservatives in Brampton in 2019.
Marshall and others are pointing to signs that dotted the riding in the lead-up to Monday’s vote as evidence of racism.
One sign spotted in the riding bore the slogan, “Dave is from Woodstock not Brampton,” a reference to Liberal candidate David Hilderley’s ties to the region as a former schoolteacher and real estate agent.
Other banners, which were attached to Hilderley’s lawn signs, urged people to “vote local.”
Another slogan used by Hilderley’s team was, “From Oxford, for Oxford.”
In his campaign literature, Khanna touted his education at the University of Western Ontario in neighbouring London to bolster his local credentials.
His tenuous ties to the region prompted claims that Khanna was a “parachute candidate,” an outsider hand-picked by party leaders to run in a safe Conservative seat.
A sign saying ‘Dave is from Woodstock, not Brampton’ stands next to a Liberal election sign during the Oxford federal byelection. Conservative MP-elect Arpan Khanna previously ran for the party in Brampton, Ont. in 2019. (Supplied by Hamish Marshall)
Marshall said Khanna, who won by a smaller margin than the last Conservative candidate in the 2021 federal election, is “the hardest working politician I know” and that drive secured him a victory despite the allegedly racially tinged messages he faced in the riding.
Jenni Byrne, a senior adviser to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, said Marshall’s racism claims were a “precise analysis” of what went on in Oxford.
Sarah Fischer, director of communications for the Conservative Party, said in a statement to CBC News that Marshall’s description of the Liberal strategy as “disgusting” and “racist” is “unfortunately accurate.”
“To say that there were undertones of racism exhibited by the Liberal campaign would be painting the picture with too light of a brushstroke. It was overt and intentional. The signs, comments, ads and literature insinuating that the Conservative candidate was ‘not one of us’ were disgraceful. It brought Liberal campaigning to a new low that would likely shock many Liberal Party supporters,” Fischer said.
“We are very proud of Arpan Khanna for the strong and respectable campaign he ran, despite the horrendous prejudice he had to deal with.”
Liberal candidate David Hilderley’s team used the slogan ‘From Oxford, for Oxford’ in some of their campaign material. (David Hilderley/Facebook)
Brampton, a suburb of Toronto, is home to a large South Asian community. More than 50 per cent of the city’s residents trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent.
Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, Hilderley, who was in Ottawa after his byelection loss for a Liberal caucus meeting Wednesday, called the racism claims “baloney.”
“We actually ran a very, very good campaign. We had a very strong, super strong team. We had so much support from MPs close by,” Hilderley said.
“It’s pretty good when you can bring up the best results in the last 30 years for the Liberals. I’m thrilled we accomplished so much in Oxford County.”
Liberal candidate David Hilderley calls Tory claims of a racist campaign ‘baloney’
Asked by reporters about his campaign, Hilderley denied the claims and said he ran a ‘very strong’ campaign.
The Liberals, meanwhile, claim Poilievre’s hard-right brand of politics is what alienated some traditional Conservative voters and nearly tipped the long-time Tory seat into the Liberal win column.
“Indeed, that claim is baloney,” Azam Ishmael, national director of the Liberal Party of Canada, told CBC News when asked about Conservative racism claims.
“Pierre Poilievre parachuted his long-time friend into a riding that he thought would easily secure him a job in his caucus — a move that saw former CPC MP Dave MacKenzie endorse our Liberal candidate in this byelection.
“Clearly, this is a desperate attempt by Conservatives to distract from the fact that Canadians are rejecting Pierre Poilievre’s reckless policies that would take Canada backward.”
Conservative Arpan Khanna, left, Liberal David Hilderley, centre, and New Democrat Cody Groat, right, ran in the southern Ontario riding of Oxford in a federal byelection. (arpankhanna.ca, davidhilderley.liberal.ca, oxfordndp.ca)
Khanna was running in a riding that is among the least racially diverse in the province — a largely rural area with smaller population centres like Woodstock and Tillsonburg.
According to the 2021 census, 90 per cent of the Oxford riding’s residents are white English speakers. The second most commonly spoken language in Oxford is Dutch.
Since the last census, the riding has seen an influx of racially diverse newcomers, some of whom have settled in Woodstock, a manufacturing hub that’s home to a number of automotive supply companies.
Khanna won 43 per cent of the vote compared to 36.2 per cent for Hilderley — a relatively tight race in a riding that has had a conservative-leaning MP for most of the past 70 years.
A Khanna campaign volunteer, who spoke to CBC News on the condition that they not be named, said the Liberal campaign was “just gross.”
“I’m not adverse to some hard campaigning but it was unseemly. The only point of their campaign was, ‘Arpan is not from here,'” the volunteer said.
“If it had been a white candidate from London, you wouldn’t have seen this stuff. All of this talk about, ‘We don’t want Brampton politics in Oxford,’ it was barely a dog-whistle.”
Conservative candidate Arpan Khanna at his victory party in the southwestern Ontario riding of Oxford. (Isha Bhargava/CBC News)
The Conservative Party’s nomination race for the seat was a contested one — and talk of Khanna’s Brampton ties started there first.
Outgoing MP Dave MacKenzie endorsed his daughter, local councillor Deb Tait, to succeed him as the Conservative candidate in the race.
Tait has alleged dirty tricks by party headquarters secured the nomination for Khanna, who served as Poilievre’s Ontario campaign co-chair. The party denies Tait’s claim.
MacKenzie and Tait ended up endorsing Hilderley.
“We’ve been here for over 50 years and all that time I’ve known [Hilderley] he’s been a good, strong, honest man with principles,” MacKenzie told CBC News at the Liberal byelection night watch party.
“He’s been very active in the community. I’m just one that believes it’s about the community. I don’t think you can drop in someone from 100 kilometres away and have the community’s interest at heart — no matter what they tell you.”
Catherine Agar and Brian Kaufman, the Conservative Party’s Oxford riding association president and vice-president respectively, resigned after Khanna’s nomination.
In a letter announcing her resignation, obtained by the London Free-Press, Agar said the nomination was “full of problems” and the party’s rules were “repeatedly ignored.”
“It is my personal opinion that the Oxford nomination was hijacked by people from Ottawa and Brampton who crafted a win for Mr. Khanna with a small sample of the Oxford Conservative membership,” she said.
EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government’s $8.6-billion plan to fast-track building new schools will include a pilot project to incentivize private ones.
Smith said the ultimate goal is to create thousands of new spaces for an exploding number of new students at a reduced cost to taxpayers.
“We want to put all of the different school options on the same level playing field,” Smith told a news conference in Calgary Wednesday.
Smith did not offer details about how much private school construction costs might be incentivized, but said she wants to see what independent schools might pitch.
“We’re putting it out there as a pilot to see if there is any interest in partnering on the same basis that we’ll be building the other schools with the different (public) school boards,” she said.
Smith made the announcement a day after she announced the multibillion-dollar school build to address soaring numbers of new students.
By quadrupling the current school construction budget to $8.6 billion, the province aims to offer up 30 new schools each year, adding 50,000 new student spaces within three years.
The government also wants to build or expand five charter school buildings per year, starting in next year’s budget, adding 12,500 spaces within four years.
Currently, non-profit independent schools can get some grants worth about 70 per cent of what students in public schools receive per student from the province.
However, those grants don’t cover major construction costs.
John Jagersma, executive director of the Association of Independent Schools and Colleges of Alberta, said he’s interested in having conversations with the government about incentives.
He said the province has never directly funded major capital costs for their facilities before, and said he doesn’t think the association has ever asked for full capital funding.
He said community or religious groups traditionally cover those costs, but they can help take the pressure off the public or separate systems.
“We think we can do our part,” Jagersma said.
Dennis MacNeil, head of the Public School Boards Association of Alberta, said they welcome the new funding, but said money for private school builds would set a precedent that could ultimately hurt the public system.
“We believe that the first school in any community should be a public school, because only public schools accept all kids that come through their doors and provide programming for them,” he said.
Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, said if public dollars are going to be spent on building private schools, then students in the public system should be able to equitably access those schools.
“No other province spends as much money on private schools as Alberta does, and it’s at the detriment of public schools, where over 90 per cent of students go to school,” he said.
Schilling also said the province needs about 5,000 teachers now, but the government announcement didn’t offer a plan to train and hire thousands more over the next few years.
Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi on Tuesday praised the $8.6 billion as a “generational investment” in education, but said private schools have different mandates and the result could be schools not being built where they are needed most.
“Using that money to build public schools is more efficient, it’s smarter, it’s faster, and it will serve students better,” Nenshi said.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides’ office declined to answer specific questions about the pilot project Wednesday, saying it’s still under development.
“Options and considerations for making capital more affordable for independent schools are being explored,” a spokesperson said. “Further information on this program will be forthcoming in the near future.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
OTTAWA – Health Minister Mark Holland urged a committee of senators Wednesday not to tweak the pharmacare bill he carefully negotiated with the NDP earlier this year.
The bill would underpin a potential national, single-payer pharmacare program and allow the health minister to negotiate with provinces and territories to cover some diabetes and contraceptive medications.
It was the result of weeks of political negotiations with the New Democrats, who early this year threatened to pull out of their supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals unless they could agree on the wording.
“Academics and experts have suggested amendments to this bill to most of us here, I think,” Independent Senator Rosemary Moodie told Holland at a meeting of the Senate’s social affairs committee.
Holland appeared before the committee as it considers the bill. He said he respects the role of the Senate, but that the pharmacare legislation is, in his view, “a little bit different.”
“It was balanced on a pinhead,” he told the committee.
“This is by far — and I’ve been involved in a lot of complex things — the most difficult bit of business I’ve ever been in. Every syllable, every word in this bill was debated and argued over.”
Holland also asked the senators to move quickly to pass the legislation, to avoid lending credence to Conservative critiques that the program is a fantasy.
When asked about the Liberals’ proposed pharmacare program for diabetes and birth control, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has often responded that the program isn’t real. Once the legislation is passed, the minister must negotiate with every provincial government to actually administer the program, which could take many months.
“If we spend a long time wordsmithing and trying to make the legislation perfect, then the criticism that it’s not real starts to feel real for people, because they don’t actually get drugs, they don’t get an improvement in their life,” Holland told the committee.
He told the committee that one of the reasons he signed a preliminary deal with his counterpart in British Columbia was to help answer some of the Senate’s questions about how the program would work in practice.
The memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and B.C. lays out how to province will use funds from the pharmacare bill to expand on its existing public coverage of contraceptives to include hormone replacement therapy to treat menopausal symptoms.
The agreement isn’t binding, and Holland would still need to formalize talks with the province when and if the Senate passes the bill based on any changes the senators decide to make.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s NDP are accusing the government of prioritizing landlords over residents who need an affordable place to live, as the opposition party tables a bill aimed at addressing the housing crisis.
NDP Leader Claudia Chender took aim at the Progressive Conservatives Wednesday ahead of introducing two new housing bills, saying the government “seems to be more focused on helping wealthy developers than everyday families.”
The Minister of Service Nova Scotia has said the government’s own housing legislation will “balance” the needs of tenants and landlords by extending the five per cent cap on rent until the end of 2027. But critics have called the cap extension useless because it allows landlords to raise rents past five per cent on fixed-term leases as long as property owners sign with a new renter.
Chender said the rules around fixed-term leases give landlords the “financial incentive to evict,” resulting in more people pushed into homelessness. She also criticized the part of the government bill that will permit landlords to issue eviction notices after three days of unpaid rent instead of 15.
The Tories’ housing bill, she said, represents a “shocking admission from this government that they are more concerned with conversations around landlord profits … than they are about Nova Scotians who are trying to find a home they can afford.”
The premier’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also included in the government’s new housing legislation are clearer conditions for landlords to end a tenancy, such as criminal behaviour, disturbing fellow tenants, repeated late rental payments and extraordinary damage to a unit. It will also prohibit tenants from subletting units for more than they are paying.
The first NDP bill tabled Wednesday would create a “homelessness task force” to gather data to try to prevent homelessness, and the second would set limits on evictions during the winter and for seniors who meet income eligibility requirements for social housing and have lived in the same home for more than 10 years.
The NDP has previously tabled legislation that would create a $500 tax credit for renters and tie rent control to housing units instead of the individual.
Earlier this week landlords defended the use of the contentious fixed-term leases, saying they need to have the option to raise rent higher than five per cent to maintain their properties and recoup costs. Landlord Yarviv Gadish, who manages three properties in the Halifax area, called the use of fixed-term leases “absolutely essential” in order to keep his apartments presentable and to get a return on his investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
