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A fly fisherman displays his catch on Princess Royal Island in Northern B.C. in September of 2007.

Monday, November 9, 2009 10:41 AM

Fish fight in New Westminster-Coquitlam

Bill Curry

The results for New Westminster-Coquitlam will come in last tonight but the British Columbia riding is shaping up as the most hotly contested of the four by-elections taking place today.

The last three federal elections produced very close races between New Democrats and the Conservatives. Dawn Black, who left the riding to run for the provincial NDP, won in 2008 with 41.8 per cent, narrowly ahead of the Conservative candidate. Yonah Martin, who received 38.8 per cent, has since been appointed to the Senate.

Prior to Ms. Black’s victory, the riding was held for 13 years by Paul Forseth, who was first elected as a Reform MP.

This time, the NDP is running Fin Donnelly, executive director of the Rivershed Society of B.C.. The NDP portrayed last week’s announcement of a public inquiry into the collapse of the sockeye fishery as an attempt to blunt Mr. Donnelly’s support on the fish issue.

The NDP and the Liberals have also campaigned in British Columbia against the harmonized sales tax, so this by-election could provide a test of whether the HST has become a significant political issue at the federal level.

The Conservatives are also running a candidate with an environmental background. Diana Dilworth is a former Port Moody city councilor who has worked for the past seven years with the Fraser Basin Council.

The Liberal Party, which obtained an unusually low 11 per cent of the vote in 2008, is running professional engineer Ken Beck Lee and the Green Party – which received 7.2 per cent last time – is running Rebecca Helps, a consultant with experience in environmental and homelessness issues.

Coming up, breakdowns of the three other by-elections, including Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley in Nova Scotia and the two Quebec ridings of Hochelaga and Montmagny-L’Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere-du-Loup.

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Ottawa Notebook Contributors

Jane Taber, senior political writer

Jane Taber

Jane Taber has been on Parliament Hill since the Mulroney days, first writing for the Ottawa Citizen in 1986. Since then, she's reported for a small television network, WTN, and for the National Post before joining The Globe’s parliamentary bureau in 2002. She is the senior political writer and also co-host of Question Period, which airs Sundays on CTV.

 
John Ibbitson

John Ibbitson

John Ibbitson started at The Globe in 1999 and has been Queen's Park columnist and Ottawa political affairs correspondent. Most recently, he was a correspondent and columnist in Washington, where he wrote Open and Shut: Why America has Barack Obama and Canada has Stephen Harper. He returned to Ottawa as bureau chief in 2009. Before joining The Globe, he worked as a reporter, columnist and Queen’s Park correspondent for Southam papers.

 

Steven Chase

Steven Chase has covered federal politics in Ottawa for The Globe since mid-2001. He's previously worked in the paper's Vancouver and Calgary bureaus. Prior to that, he reported on Alberta politics for the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun, and on national issues for Alberta Report. He's had ink-stained hands for far longer though, having worked as a paperboy for the (now defunct) Montreal Star, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Vancouver Sun and the North Shore News.

 
Deputy Ottawa bureau chief Campbell Clark

Campbell Clark

Campbell Clark has been a political writer in The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau since 2000. Before that he worked for The Montreal Gazette and the National Post. He writes about Canadian politics and foreign policy. He stopped being fascinated by ShamWow commercials after that guy’s nasty incident in Florida, but still wonders if one can really pull a truck with that Mighty Putty stuff.

 

Bill Curry

A member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1999, Bill Curry worked for The Hill Times and the National Post prior to joining The Globe in Feb. 2005. Originally from North Bay, Ont., Bill reports on a wide range of topics on Parliament Hill. He is very protective of the office’s brand new copy of O’Brien & Bosc, the latest Parliamentary rule book.

 

Gloria Galloway

Gloria Galloway has been a journalist for almost 30 years. She worked at the Windsor Star, the Hamilton Spectator, the National Post, the Canadian Press and a number of small newspapers before being hired by The Globe and Mail as deputy national editor in 2001. Gloria returned to reporting two years later and joined the Ottawa bureau in 2004. She has covered every federal election since 1997 and has done several stints in Afghanistan.

 

Daniel Leblanc

Daniel Leblanc studied political science at the University of Ottawa and journalism at Carleton University. He became a full-time reporter in 1998, first at the Ottawa Citizen and then in the Ottawa bureau of The Globe and Mail. While he likes the occasional brown envelope, he is also open to anonymous emails.

 

Stephen Wicary

Stephen Wicary has been with The Globe since 2001, working on the news desk as a copy editor, page designer, production editor and front page editor. During the U.S invasion of Iraq, he pulled a three-month stint as overnight editor of the website. He moved to the parliamentary bureau at the end of 2008 to bolster online political coverage.