Red Toronto stays true to form
Jan. 24, 2006.
THOMAS WALKOM, NATIONAL AFFAIRS COLUMNIST

In the end, Greater Toronto bucked the trend.

Most voters here said they wanted change. They said they were either sick
of, or disappointed by, Liberal Leader Paul Martin.

But when they got into the voting booths, many who had planned to vote
Conservative couldn't bring themselves to support Stephen Harper's party.

In the city of Toronto proper, the Conservatives were shut out completely
once again.

Even in the so-called 905 region around Toronto, the Conservatives picked
up only two more seats.

In making these choices, voters confounded the pollsters, who in the final
days leading to yesterday's election, predicted Harper's Conservatives
would make major gains in the most populous region of the country.

They even confounded themselves.

"I had decided against voting for the Liberals," said Richmond Hill
software engineer Chris Gorgani yesterday.

"I was definitely going to vote Conservative."

But on Sunday, after much soul searching, he said he changed his mind.

"I decided that what the Conservatives are bringing to the table is not
me," he said, referring to the opposition of some party candidates to
same-sex marriage and abortion, as well as Harper's apparent affinity with
U.S. President George W. Bush.

"I just couldn't do it," said Markham resident Mary Brown, another who had
been definitely planning to support the Conservatives.

"As the week wore on, I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I really
would like a Conservative government. But I decided to vote for the man
(Liberal incumbent John McCallum) and not the party."

Even some who did vote Conservative experienced last minute qualms.

"I had a few concerns with Mr. Harper in the last week when he started
talking about things he shouldn't have, like how the courts were too
liberal," Markham consultant Reg Jordan confessed yesterday.

But at the same time, he could no longer support a Liberal party that to
his mind had ceased to stand for anything.

So like thousands of others in the swath of 45 heavily populated ridings
that make up the Greater Toronto Area, Jordan crossed his fingers and voted
Conservative.

But it wasn't enough.

In effect, Toronto and its suburbs kept Harper from winning a majority of
seats in the Commons.

On the face of it, this was Red Toronto determinedly staying true to form.
Until yesterday, the GTA elected only five Conservatives federally in 13
years.

As for the city of Toronto proper, the Liberals owned it. The Conservatives
were shut out completely, as were the New Democrats — until NDP Leader Jack
Layton's narrow win in 2004.

But the apparent redness of Greater Toronto has had more to do with
upheavals inside the Conservative party than the ideological bent of voters
here.

Like most Canadians, Toronto-area voters went Liberal in 1993, largely in
reaction to nine years of Conservative government under Brian Mulroney.

In all likelihood, many would have swung back. But the splintering of the
old Tories and the rise of the more neo-conservative Reform party in its
stead left centre-right voters in the Toronto region orphaned.

The Liberals were quick to pick these voters up. In 1997, and again in
2000, the Liberals racked up massive victories in Toronto and the
surrounding 905 region.

That didn't mean there were no small-c conservatives in Greater Toronto.
There were.

In 1995 and 1999, the hard working, heavily mortgaged tax-weary voters of
the suburbs in and around Toronto put Mike Harris's provincial
Conservatives into power.

But federally, the Conservatives, in all their many incarnations, could
never make much headway among the 5.7 million residents of the GTA, a crazy
quilt of cities, old suburbs and new subdivisions that stretches from
Clarington in the east to Burlington in the west, from Lake Ontario north
to Lake Simcoe.

Despite repeated attempts, the Reform party, and its successor the Canadian
Alliance, were unable to crack the region.

In 1997, the old Progressive Conservatives did capture a seat in Markham.
But they lost it again three years later.

In some Toronto-area ridings, the Liberals held on to conservative voters
by running right-wing candidates — like Tom Wappel of Scarborough
Southwest, a vigorous opponent of abortion rights or Paul Szabo of
Mississauga South, a vocal critic of same-sex marriage.

But the Liberals' hegemonic hold over Toronto and its suburbs was always
fragile.

It began to crack in 2004. That was the election in which Layton captured a
beachhead for the New Democrats in east-end Toronto. It was also the
election in which, with their capture of four suburban seats, the
Conservatives began their long march through the 905 ridings that form a
horseshoe around Toronto.

In fact, the Conservatives would have won more GTA seats in 2004 if voters
had not been so mistrustful of Harper.

In this election, too it was all about Harper. From Oshawa to Oakville,
voters repeated a common refrain: We're sick of the Liberals; we're
disappointed by Martin; we want something different.

But were they willing to trust Harper at the helm of government? For many,
that was too, too risky.

"I didn't want them to have a majority," said switch-voter Gorgani. "I was
uneasy voting for the Conservatives. Now I'm not. I'm a lot more confident.

"Regardless of what happens, I'm a Liberal."
Additional articles by Thomas Walkom