Julian Fantino leaves Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Monday, January 5, 2015.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Will he or won't he
Stephen Harper's Tories may be losing another veteran minister: Julian Fantino, associate minister of defence, has not been nominated in the Vaughan-Woodbridge riding.
Mr. Fantino's riding association president, Frank Domenichiello, sent an e-mail saying that Mr. Fantino is "seeking to run" in the election, but a senior Conservative official says it is still "up in the air" whether he will run again. The riding is being held open, says the official, pending Mr. Fantino's decision.
The original riding of Vaughan, which Mr. Fantino now represents, has been split into two as a result of redistribution, reflecting the population growth in the city north of Toronto. The other Vaughan riding, King-Vaughan, nominated its Tory candidate last July. If Mr. Fantino decides not to run, he will be another name to add to the list of senior ministers opting out. Last month, Justice Minister Peter MacKay announced he won't run in the election; earlier this year, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird stepped down.
Mr. Fantino, 72, was a star Harper candidate when he won the 2010 by-election in the Vaughan riding. It had been dominated by Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua for more than 20 years until he stepped down to run for mayor. Mr. Fantino, a long-time police officer who served as chief of Toronto police and Ontario Provincial Police commissioner, embodied the Conservative law-and-order brand and also appealed to seniors.
More recently, however, he was seen to have bungled the Veterans Affairs file and was shuffled out of that portfolio. If he does run, he'll face newly nominated Liberal candidate Francesco Sorbara, a 43-year-old husband and father, who works in the financial sector. (He is not related to former Ontario finance minister Greg Sorbara.)
Vaughan-Woodbridge is one of the ridings that Justin Trudeau and his Liberals desperately need to win to make inroads in the next election. The GTA is considered one of the key battlegrounds in the fall vote and Mr. Sorbara says the fight for Vaughan will be extremely competitive.
"It's going to go riding by riding … the ground campaign will count even more. The 'get-out-the-vote' campaign will be crucial in this election," he says. "The messaging to demographic groups, based on income levels and such, it's going to very precise."
But Mr. Sorbara says he will provide a generational contrast to Mr. Fantino, if he runs. He says Vaughan now needs an advocate coming from the second generation of Italian-Canadians. The NDP candidate could not be reached for comment.
Ontario's big spender
NDP MPP Gilles Bisson's $94,433 expenditure on travel and accommodation for 2014-2015 pales in comparison to the spending shenanigans on Parliament Hill. Still, he is the biggest spender among MPPs at Queen's Park.
There is a valid explanation: Mr. Bisson's riding is Timmins-James Bay, a sprawling northern riding of which two-thirds is not accessible by roads. With a population of about 80,000, Mr. Bisson, the NDP House Leader, describes the physical size of the riding as being "bigger than most European countries and about the size of France."
The only way to practically service his constituents is to fly in and out of the communities – and so he learned to fly and bought a plane.
Mr. Bisson was first elected in 1990 in the riding of Cochrane South. But in 1999, it was combined with another northern riding to create the gigantic constituency. Every year since then, he's been either first or second in the spending category. The MPP in Kenora-Rainy River, another large northern Ontario riding, sometimes tops him.
"The expensing on an airplane is the same as a vehicle. So when I fly I lose money," Mr. Bisson says. "There is no way that you can physically service a riding like this, without incurring even larger expenses as far as charter costs."
Flying is easier on his sanity, too. He is based in Timmins, which is a seven-hour return trip by car to Hearst. If he takes his plane, it's just over two hours.
Bags of cash vs. a bag of hammers
Although the federal and provincial Liberals are simpatico on a number of issues, they do differ significantly on political fundraising.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced new electoral law reforms recently but did not make any change to political fundraising.
In Ontario, corporations and unions can cut big cheques to political parties, a practice that was banned by former prime minister Jean Chrétien and his Liberal government in reaction to the cynicism created by the sponsorship scandal. At that time, Liberal Party president Stephen LeDrew, now a broadcaster on Toronto's CP24, famously criticized the move as being "dumb as a bag of hammers."
The Liberals had relied heavily on big corporate donations and didn't have to appeal to individual Canadians. Mr. LeDrew likened the annual parade of corporate cheques to "bringing in the sheaves."
Conservatives, however, forced to rely on smaller donations, moved with the times and have a fundraising machine that is focused, targeted and tremendously effective.
"The Liberals were bereft for a long time," Mr. LeDrew said this week. "For a long time, they just couldn't [raise money] which was why as party president, I said what I said."
About Ms. Wynne's decision, he says that it's "very American" and "very undemocratic."
"You know that once huge money gets there, it's insidious. It's hard to turn it away," he says.
The federal Liberals, meanwhile, are still struggling against the Tories. They are trying to increase the number of grassroots donors.
In the first three months of the year, Elections Canada returns show the Grits raised $3.8-million from 34,508 donors. (This is down from the last three months of 2013, for example, when they raised $4.68-million from 44,228 contributors.) And they are still outpaced by the Tories, who raised $6.3-million from 41,161 donors.