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Trash talking Downtown candidates do as much mudslinging as their party leaders by PHILIP PREVILLE
Dégardin's anger, while justified, might seem like nothing more than hot air. After all, both men are running in Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe's riding, and Duceppe--despite his tumultuous campaign thus far--seems likely to be re-elected here. But in any election campaign, it doesn't take long before real issues and party platforms take a back seat to innuendo, rumour and arm-twisting. Dégardin saves his most subtle invective for Duceppe himself. "When I go door to door, what I'm hearing from people is that they see Duceppe as a careerist," Dégardin says. "And people know the Bloc isn't capable of defending social democratic values. As a sovereignist party, they're a coalition of left- and right-wingers--they can't agree on anything. The riding's Liberal candidate, David Ly, is equally unrelenting in his criticism of Duceppe. "People see him for what he is," Ly says. "He's a communist. He stabbed his own leader in the back, he even fired his bus driver. I have nothing against him, but in the seven years he's been our MP, the riding has gotten poorer and poorer." "Oh, I know who that's coming from," says Hélène Groulx, Duceppe's local campaign organizer, mistakenly believing the innuendo is being spread by the Tories. "Jean Charest is running around promoting his new national reconciliation. Why doesn't anyone ask him about what [Tory candidate] Lewis Mackenzie said about Quebec?" she says. "Mackenzie said the U.S. should invade Quebec. Why don't reporters ask Charest about that?" (Mackenzie, a retired general who served with UN peacekeeping forces in Yugoslavia, has said that he wished the U.S. would invade Quebec so that Canada could come to their defense, which would make Quebecers truly appreciate Canada. The Liberals have also been publicizing Mackenzie's comments through press releases.) In Westmount/Ville-Marie, the other constituency encompassing the downtown area, things aren't much different. The riding is currently held by Liberal cabinet minister Lucienne Robillard; as the frontrunner, other candidates squarely take aim at her. "You have to understand the history of the situation," says Russ Williams, the campaign manager for Progressive Conservative candidate Tom Davis. "Lucienne Robillard was parachuted in here by Chrétien himself, with the idea that she would lead the federalist forces in the referendum. And she bungled it so badly, Chrétien had to ask Jean Charest to come in and clean up her mess. So what we're saying to people is: who would you rather vote for this time?" Robillard's campaign manager, Yves Lemire, says the Tories' allegations are false. "The referendum campaign was run by Daniel Johnson and the Liberal Party of Quebec, not the federal Liberals," Lemire says. "Lucienne Robillard served on their organizing committee, as did Jean Charest. They both played the same role in the referendum." Some candidates, of course, have no stake whatsoever in such rumourmongering. Candidates such as the Green Party's Brian Sarwer-Foner in Westmount/Ville-Marie say the mudslinging is distracting from real issues. "The country is in the midst of an environmental crisis," he says. "And there are solutions to be discussed--recycling, sustainable forestry, different forms of taxation. "The major candidates will talk about whatever issue is hot at the moment, regardless of the things that really matter." |
François Dégardin, the candidate for the NDP in Laurier/Ste-Marie, is angry with his Progressive Conservative opponent, Yanick Deschênes. He has caught Deschênes lying on the campaign trail. "He's running around telling people he's the only candidate who lives in the riding," Dégardin says. "That's completely false. I live here too."