The Candidate

by Noah Richler

  Yes, they say—and, better, they got in through the back door and canvassed the building anyway.

  —

  I’m on the fifth floor of community housing in the northeast corner of the riding when I learn that Chris Alexander and Kellie Leitch, the minister for the status of women, have pledged funds and a “tip line”—a.k.a. a snitch line—to aid in the enforcement of the party’s Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. I am genuinely floored. I have to exit the building onto its public verandah and sit down on the ground to take the air. I’d grown up in Quebec—knew about folk using the language laws to rat out their neighbours to the Office québécois de la langue française—but still cannot believe that the ploy of a governing federal party has come to this. I am stunned at the lengths that Harper’s desperate and cynical government is constantly superceding in order to create conditions of festering animosity and profit by them. But it is this—the existence of a prime minister and his disciples creating divisions between Canadians for political expediency’s sake—that drew me into the melee in the first place. The measure has the mark of the Australian campaign strategist Lynton Crosby, the so-called Wizard of Oz credited with cementing Conservative prime minister David Cameron’s May 2015 U.K. parliamentary elections in similar fashion. Harper was said to have hired Crosby at the beginning of September in order to resuscitate the Conservatives’ flailing campaign (though Mark Textor, the other half of the Australian’s strategic consulting firm, Crosby Textor, would subsequently deny any involvement). Such was Crosby’s reputation for effectively whipping up handy phobic sentiment, the Australian was believed to have been the mastermind behind the manipulation of the issue of the niqab that the new Canadian Zunera Ishaq was insisting she had a right to wear at the public citizenship ceremony, the defence of which wounded the NDP so after Mulcair stood by it in the September 24 French-language debate. When the news broke that Crosby’s services had been engaged, I’d told friends it was a ploy that would not work, that Canadians would not fall for more of the invidiousness that had kept the Conservatives in power for so long. Now, sitting at the foot of the wall on the co-op verandah as if I’d taken a punch, I was not so sure. I contacted Jonathan and Doug, who quickly prepared a cartoon for a possible social media blast that read:

  RAT OUT THE PRIME MINISTER

  PHONE THE RCMP NOW AND REPORT

  CHRIS ALEXANDER, LYNTON CROSBY

  AND STEPHEN HARPER FOR:

  BARBARIC CULTURAL PRACTICES

  IF YOU HAVE TO SNITCH

  SNITCH ON STEVE

  But we decided not to dispatch it, keeping our energies in reserve for the videos. And, besides, blows weren’t only coming from the CPC corner; I was beginning, finally, to be jealous of Bennett’s glossier material—starting to notice just how much more effective our rivals’ brochures were likely to be than ours. Their candidate cards looked better in the mail slots (fix them so the side with your picture is face out to passersby), looked better even when discarded on the path or littering an apartment block corridor. We were approaching the last two weeks of the campaign and, though it was not my business to keep track, I was sure there was enough money for a new colour brochure to be distributed. It was time for more campaign literature, I argued, and I wanted to know what we could afford.

  The finance gang meets in the back room.

  “What’s in the account?” I ask.

  “Hard to say.”

  There is a tabulation of outstanding and settled bills, and a confused recounting of the various ways money finds its way into the campaign’s account—through the NDP site, via the central party, via a commercial credit card processor, as cheques or as cash. The discussion is protracted. It verges on the philosophical. After twenty minutes, the straightforward question still has no straightforward answer.

  “Don’t let anybody know about this,” says Janet, watching over the meeting from the door and shaking her head in disbelief. “We’re trying to convince the country we can form a government.”

  —

  Even at the Wychwood farmers’ market, the going is not so easy. October has brought a chill to the air, and more purpose. Not as much produce, save the glorious apples, and not so many people. There are fewer shoppers with smiles and they are ambling less. Almost no one is drifting our way willingly and stopping to chat. The only constant is that the farmers’ market manager is persisting in giving our team a hard time: no signs, get off the paths, you’re in the way of shoppers, etc. We know the charges.

  “Why are you surprised?” asks American Sarah. She’s been doing her homework and hands me the “Choose Your Canada” flyer that Bennett’s pack of young Liberals, canvassing without harassment, is distributing further along the path. Bennett’s flyer contains endorsements from a prominent clothes retailer, a Toronto District School Board trustee, the Liberal city councillor in the riding, and

  COOKIE ROSCOE, WYCHWOOD BARNS FARMERS’ MARKET MANAGER

  I’m so grateful to have such an engaged politician in my riding.

  Carolyn’s leadership inspires me every time I see her.

  I find the impressive, expensive weight of the card it is printed on frustrating. We had the money, I’d argued at our finance gang’s tête-à-tête—or, at least, we were reasonably able to expect it—but my gang is parsimonious by habit and won’t run a deficit, damn it. We have produced, in the place of Bennett’s nice glossy brochures, black-and-white photocopied letter-size paper sheets cut into thirds so poor in quality that, to my mind, they communicate only insufficient means and I’m not using them.

  I see councillor Joe Mihevc and he tries to duck around me. Mihevc does a little dance that makes me think of Al Jaffee’s Mad magazine illustrations of my youth, flashes me an uncomfortable grin and, as if in atonement, says he is canvassing for the NDP in University—Rosedale. The avowedly left-wing councillor had been incumbent since 1991, when his campaign was backed by the NDP. But no help had been forthcoming—no lists, no advice, no canvasses, no note of events, and certainly pictures of Mihevc and Bennett doing neighbourhood work together were easily found on social media. Between the local councillor, Cookie Roscoe and the CUPE head I’d seen chatting to Bennett in the market (and the insistence of one very prominent and influential local NDP activist saying he needed to avoid direct association because of social work he was doing with my Liberal opponent), I realize that what I am up against is the league and power of incumbency.

  A young father approaches. He is on his own, pushing an empty pram.

  “I think maybe you’ve lost something,” I say. (It’s a joke.)

  “No,” he says dourly. “He’s with his mom.”

  I give a bit of a pitch, he says he knows who I am and wants to vote for me, but—I relieve him of the burden of telling me he’s voting strategically and ask about a sign.

  “We had one,” he says.

  “It was nicked?” I ask.

  “No,” he says a little sheepishly, “my wife made me remove it.”

  I nod. He moves on.

  I do my best to convince another dad, who says he’d really like to put up a sign but he works for the CBC and is not allowed to show any affiliation.

  “But your director of strategic planning and communications, Dan Lauzon, is working in the Liberal war room. Isn’t that declaring an affiliation?”

  “I’m not allowed to put up a sign. Sorry.”

  —

  Fatigue is now a factor, and I am wary of incidents coming at me in threes.

  Incident One:

  Canvassing in the northeast, I take a moment in the late afternoon sun and put my iPhone on a bench. I do not realize I’ve left it there until I have cycled down to the University of Toronto to join Sarah for a book launch celebrating the publication of Massey Lecturer Margaret MacMillan’s History’s People. I make a spectacle of myself to guests staring out the window at the comedy of the fella in orange NDP colours who’s patting his pockets and checking his bicycle panniers and then the g
round around his feet for whatever it is that he’s lost. Sarah is a sport, introduces me to a few businesspeople and academics from my riding and then, leaving her own pleasant garden party, uses a tracking app to pinpoint the corner where I left my iPhone. But it does so only approximately, Google Earth lagging behind the pace of Toronto condo development. We drive to the street in question and Sarah, in a smart dress and high heels, waits patiently as I walk up and down the block several times with her iPhone in my hand. I’m trying to make sense of the movement of the pulsing green dot and the correlation of the app’s building shapes with the houses, offices and construction site to the north of me. Sarah follows me through a hole in the wire-mesh fence dividing the construction site from the parking lot of the community housing I’d canvassed earlier in the day, where I’m convinced I’ll find my iPhone tossed in the detritus of wood and bricks underfoot. Sarah’s had enough—she’s in her Ferragamos—and goes back through the hole in the fence to the car and it occurs to me that I am losing perspective, if not my mind.

  “It’s a phone,” says Sarah. She is angry, which is unusual. “Murders happen in places like this,” she says. “Get a grip.”

  I spend the next morning obsessively watching the green dot on the Google Map of Sarah’s iPhone leave the northeast and make its way down to a grittier part of Toronto Centre. Given to the apocalyptic, I am wondering how long it will be before the battery gives out, convinced some gang member is looking for the family-owned computer store that will wipe its contents.

  Our landline rings and Sarah calls from the kitchen. A woman says her cleaning lady found my iPhone and could I come by to pick it up. When I meet her, she laughs and refuses a reward.

  Incident Two:

  On the Sunday morning, it is down to the Annex for a debate hosted by the Social Justice Committee at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church on McCaul Street, where I am a late NDP stand-in debating Adam Vaughan and the Green candidate from the Toronto Centre riding. It is baffling to me that I am doing so but, a team player, I go—to the wrong address at first, though still in plenty of time for the meet in the church cafeteria and the showdown with Vaughan that would be routine had I been the Spadina—Fort York candidate. It is an off day and I don’t perform well. Vaughan has statistics, and years of pugnacious city council experience, and the Green Party candidate for University—Rosedale, Nick Wright, speaks powerfully and on point. I am tired and in a bad mood, made worse because I am ashamed to be speaking below par. Vaughan is agile and unappealing but convincing, too, and I have nothing to match the claims he is making for housing policy in the city. He has me beat, there is no Conservative we might have picked on, and the event seems to have been lost until, at the end of it, I say I need to apologize because the panel and its chair are composed entirely of white men and no women and this anachronism makes me profoundly uneasy. There is nothing calculated about what I say; it is just the truth. My remarks earn the best round of applause of the day, and there is consolation in that. But I am ragged. My dreams are for cretins and, the night before, I’d been an understudy thrust on stage without a script but the stage manager said not to worry because I had no lines.

  But in the evening, my spirits are lifted. It is the second of our pub nights, this time at the Wychwood Pub. The owner, Reza, is Persian, and I introduce him with enthusiasm to a volunteer from my bunch who knows his world, I figure they are kindred spirits, but don’t get that far. The owner recognizes her and says she’s not welcome; there’s an outstanding bar bill and the bartender is not happy seeing her either. I calm the situation down and promise the owner that I’ll settle the outstanding tab. An iffy start, but the night turns out to be terrific, one of my favourites, and what is making me proud is the diversity that was no one’s intention but is simply a fact of the campaign: Quique had performed at the first pub night, and tonight, a musical duo with whom I’d worked at the Young Centre for the Arts—Waleed Abdulhamid, from Khartoum, Sudan (who’d also played at my nomination meeting) and John Millard, from London, Ontario—are performing on the same NDP Toronto—St. Paul’s bill as Emily West, an affecting young singer-songwriter from Alberta, and Joanna Burt, a Métis opera student cast in a 2017 revival of Harry Somers’s Louis Riel at the Canadian Opera Centre, whom I’d met canvassing and urged to participate. The reggae band Mike Garrick and the Posse were due to perform at the last pub night, scheduled for the week preceding E-Day, and we had canvassers from First Nations, as well as Canadians of African, Caribbean, Caucasian, Chinese and South Asian origin; we had young people and old; we had Christians, Jews and Muslims; and a panoply of LGBTQ diversity, too. It wasn’t even an achievement; it was just the way it was.

  —

  Mulcair must have listened to my or someone else’s arguments, because he’s called a rally for October 5 at the 99 Gallery on Sudbury Street at which a “major arts and culture announcement” is to be made. There’s a disruption to the routine, would you believe. There’s the usual claiming of front-row seats by candidates wanting to be in view, the platform of reporters and cameras, Sam Roberts’s “We’re All in This Together” blaring at top volume, but this time Andrew Cash brings on singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer and then Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland of the husband-and-wife folk duo Whitehorse. They play marvellously and, after they do, a dozen or so Toronto producers and artists, including actor Gordon Pinsent, take to the stage to form the backdrop behind the party leader. Mulcair tells the assembled that an NDP government will restore $115 million to the CBC, introduce income-averaging for artists, provide money for digital content for the country’s upcoming 150th anniversary and increase funding by $60 million for the Canada Council, the NFB and Telefilm.

  But numerology is defeating us again. The $150 million Trudeau promised for the CBC; his “doubling” of the Canada Council budget, like the 50,000 Syrian refugees his party is pledging to admit, is an easy calculus without loose ends. Mulcair’s $115 million is worse than $35 million less. Our number prompts, as 46,000 did in that other arena, the question, why—why not $110 or $120 or, indeed, Trudeau’s $150 million? There is an answer, of course—the CBC has endured $115 million of cuts under the Conservatives—but the number is not inspiring. The Liberal numbers are more adhering and easily conveyed than the NDP’s $60 million and the clarification it demands: did Mulcair mean $60 million for the Canada Council, NFB and Telefilm in toto, or for each? Confusing—and what’s confusing is not tweeted.

  However, Mulcair and his staff have been right about something: from the platform at the front of the room, reporters servicing French- and English-Canadian media want to know about only one issue—and it has nothing to do with the arts. Question after question is put to Mulcair concerning the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal announced the day before and the terms of which the Conservatives were keeping secret. Mulcair answers the first few as he might have done in any scrum, but then he reprimands the pack for failing to address the announcement he’d just made. This he does without effect—until, eight or nine questions in, the audience vents its frustrations and starts catcalling, hollering for a question about the arts. Another comes about the TPP. And another. The game is for the television networks, not the room, and the media does not care. The media is paying no attention. Mulcair packs it in.

  —

  “Not that one,” says Doug, walking up the few steps from the basement apartment to the street.

  “No? You don’t think he’ll take a sign?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. He’s a fucking stoner and we should be calling in Child Services. I can’t believe he has a kid in there. But he said he’d vote for you.”

  —

  Incident Three:

  That evening, I am to appear on Rogers TV for an all-candidates debate. I’m driving alone and trying to make sense of a Google Map that confuses my television station destination with an outlet for the company’s retail operations situated in the nearby mall. The light changes to green and I turn left, but my head i
s down checking the map, I don’t swing the unfamiliar car around tight enough, and I hit the curb before swinging back onto the road and not off the bridge.

  The car went out of control, I think, imagining the sort of headline that has always seemed nonsensical to me. Cars are not animate so it’s the driver, stupid, this one too preoccupied.

  The Rogers TV station is its lacklustre self. A few minutes before the hour, a surly technician shows us the way to the studio from the holding tank where Bennett, her husband Peter O’Brian and the Green Party candidate Kevin Farmer are sitting on an ugly leather couch and the several candidates of the Scarborough—Guildwood riding are having it out on the TV monitor. MacDougall, the Conservative Party candidate, is a no-show again.

  On the way to the show, Farmer pulls me aside.

  “I’ll drop out if it helps you,” says Farmer. It’s an offer that strikes me as charitable if a little disingenuous, as the ballots are already printed, but I also believe the arguments I’ve been making to householders telling me they will vote “strategically.” So I thank Farmer and say no, not to think of it; I’d always urged people to vote for the platform they thought the best and if that one was Green, so be it. We take our places in the studio, and I’m the guy wanting my Canada back and Bennett is once again “reapplying for my job” and extolling the “St. Paul’s model.” The debate is, surprisingly, quite substantial. A good portion of it is centred on the economy, jobs, guaranteed livable incomes, getting “dead money” moving and whether deficits or balancing the books is the antidote to an economy that may or may not be in recession. But I am dour, would be lousy at poker and, to the degree that I am having a hard time being charming, it’s Bennett’s turn to perform better. Farmer speaks at length, and when Bill C-51 comes up I follow one of Bennett’s answers with a question of my own, and the host chides me as a teacher would and tells me it’s her job to ask the questions. Amateur hour, but what difference does it make? I am still feeling sore from the previous Sunday’s relative defeat and so find a way to slag off Adam Vaughan, whom I say is taking credit for Toronto plans about housing long in the making. Unbeknownst to me, he and Olivia Chow are up next and in the waiting room.