TORONTO — The Conservative Party could not break into the Liberals' Toronto stronghold in yesterday's election, but the New Democrats had a good night, with Leader Jack Layton winning in Toronto-Danforth and two more MPs taking downtown ridings.
One of those new MPs is his spouse, former Toronto city councillor Olivia Chow, who -- in her third attempt -- finally won a Commons seat in the diverse riding of Trinity-Spadina, knocking off long-time Liberal MP Tony Ianno in a tight race.
"I have been your voice at city hall and now I'll be your voice in Ottawa," she told a crowd of cheering supporters in last night. She pledged to fight "to end child poverty" and for Chinese Canadians and their descendants seeking compensation for the head tax paid by immigrants until 1923.
Some Torontonians in the west-end riding of Parkdale-High Park also agreed to "lend" their votes to Mr. Layton's party as the Leader pleaded during the campaign, electing senior Canadian Auto Workers union official Peggy Nash and defeating Liberal MP Sarmite (Sam) Bulte.
The rest of the city remained Liberal red, although the NDP had actually gone into the election with high hopes in a handful of other downtown ridings. The Conservatives, while making slightly stronger showings in some ridings outside the downtown, were simply not on the 416 area code's scoreboard.
"I think the big story of the night in the 416 is the failure of the Conservatives to make a breakthrough," said Ryerson University politics professor Myer Siemiatycki. ". . . I think it's a testament to the breadth of Liberal support in Toronto."
As a result, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, major urban areas where the Conservatives fared poorly, essentially determined the outcome, he said.
"Toronto and the other large cities have kept Mr. Harper and the Conservatives from a majority, and have created a very shallow and weak mandate," Prof. Siemiatycki said.
The Conservatives' so-called star candidate in Toronto, former TV news anchor Peter Kent, was crushed by Liberal Public Health Minister Carolyn Bennett in the midtown riding of St. Paul's.
Michael Ignatieff, the international public intellectual touted as a future Liberal leader and parachuted into Etobicoke-Lakeshore, also won, defeating long-time Conservative insider John Capobianco.
Mr. Ignatieff, a Harvard academic, now heads to Ottawa despite a rocky campaign that saw the local Ukrainian community take issue with his writings on Ukrainian nationalism.
A concern among voters for a long time already, the issue of gun crime burst into the middle of the election campaign in Toronto. The year had seen a rising number of shootings, but on Boxing Day a gun battle on a crowded downtown stretch of Yonge Street killed high-school athlete Jane Creba, 15, and wounded six others.
That attack even had the NDP -- traditionally more comfortable with a "root causes" approach to crime -- calling for mandatory minimum sentences for gun offences, along with the Liberals and Conservatives.
But law and order had been an issue from the beginning in Toronto. In the early days of the campaign, before the Boxing Day shootings, Liberal Leader Paul Martin called for a total ban on handguns, with Toronto Mayor David Miller at his side. The NDP and the Tories derided Mr. Martin's idea as meaningless, since handguns are already severely restricted.
Mr. Miller publicly endorsed only two candidates: Liberal John Godfrey in Don Valley West, and Ms. Nash.
The NDP mayor canvassed with Mr. Godfrey on the weekend, telling voters of the millions of dollars in federal funding for public transit and child care in Ottawa's "new deal" for cities that Mr. Godfrey, in his role as Infrastructure Minister, had delivered.
NDP workers on the campaign trail talked of Mr. Layton's role in negotiating changes to the minority Liberal government's spring budget, which added $4.7-billion in spending on affordable housing, public transit and other programs, much of it bound for Toronto.
Conservative strategists were clearly hoping to convince Toronto that the party was listening to urban concerns, promising to give a tax break to users of a public-transit pass and pledging to honour Ottawa's commitments on transferring billions in gas-tax revenues to municipalities over the next five years.
But when the counting was done last night, Toronto remained barren ground for federal Tory aspirations.
Five fast facts
1
Liberals hung on to at least 20 out of the 416 area code's 23 seats.
2
The Conservative Party was handily shut out of the city.
3
The NDP made gains in Toronto, with Peggy Nash and Olivia Chow defeating opponents.
4
Green Leader Jim Harris was fourth in Beaches-East York.
5
NDP Jack Layton easily defeated the Liberal challenger, Deborah Coyne.
