Ottawa-West Nepean candidates share their election platforms

For three elections, Ottawa-West Nepean incumbent Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld was in the same Britannia area campaign office when she learned of her win. Now she’s hoping luck in the walls will help her through a fourth term. 

Ottawa-West Nepean has been Liberal since 2015, when Vandenbeld first won the riding. Before that it was held by Conservative MP John Baird, but was Liberal before 2006. 

Vandenbeld has never been at risk of losing her seat, and polling projections on 338 Canada show the incumbent winning with 57 per cent of the vote. Conservative candidate Ryan Telford is in second at 29 per cent, and NDP candidate Josh Bizjak is third at eight per cent. 

Polls had it going in the Conservatives’ favour just months ago, but swung to the Liberals when Mark Carney was elected leader. 

“Justin Trudeau was the right person for his time. Ten years ago, he was the right one. I think Mark Carney is the right person for the time right now, Vandenbeld told the Lookout. “People are afraid. Carney is somebody who has navigated a lot of crises, somebody who's serious, somebody who understands global economics. He knows how to talk to world leaders.”

Vandenbeld said Carney is different from Trudeau in style and personality. While she thought the carbon tax was good on the surface, she understands the desire for its removal. 

“I think Mark Carney comes in and says, well, good policy, nobody wants it - it's becoming the flash point. The end goal is that we want to fight climate change and we want to make sure that we do it in a way that we help our economy,” the Liberal candidate said. “The end goal doesn't change. The values don't change. But I think he's much more ready to say if something's not working, let's try something else.”

But Ottawa-West Nepean Conservative candidate Ryan Telford said he’s hearing a desire for a change in leadership altogether. A longstanding member of Canada’s national security community, he has held positions in five government departments with responsibilities for strategic issues, national defence, federal policing and national security.

Telford is a single dad to a teenage daughter and said he understands just how expensive life is getting. 

“She's not gonna have the same opportunities that everybody else has. We have such a challenge that's facing our young people today, and we want to be able to restore hope in the future,” Telford told the Lookout. 

He said affordability is a key concern at the doors. 

“Young people want to know how they are going to get a home someday, how am I gonna start a business in this country? How am I going to start a family or afford to be able to have these things? And they're worried about basics, like, how do I put food on the table? How do I pay my mortgage,” said Telford. ”The other group is the people that are worried about the pathway to stability, and that is an entirely different category. For them, they might already own their house, but they're a senior citizen, they've lost their partner, they are on a fixed income, but expenses keep going up. So, how do they keep their house?” 

Vandenbeld said she’s running on her legacy. Over 10 years she said, affordable housing for seniors has been built in Ottawa-West Nepean, women’s shelters have opened, wetlands have been restored, and a berm was installed along the Ottawa River at Britannia Beach to stop flooding. 

Looking forward to the next four years, Vandenbeld said she wants to expand on that work. That includes using federal lands to build more affordable housing. 

“Two of those pieces are directly across from the Queensway Carleton Hospital,” she said. “One of the things they want to do is build housing that will have primary care on the main floor and then the next few floors would be transitional from the hospital. Somewhere on this campus with greenspace in between could be housing for the frontline workers in the hospital. Because if you look at the neighborhoods around the Queensway Carleton Hospital, these are out of reach for a lot of the people that are working in that hospital.”

The Liberal candidate also has a commitment to protecting wetlands like Mud Lake, which has the second most species in Ontario. Vandenbeld said she’d also like to see that work done outside the Greenbelt. 

On a local level, Telford said one of his priorities is also housing for seniors. 

“Conservatives talk about building homes in this community. It means mostly maintaining the homes we already have for the seniors that are here, which means investments in infrastructure to make sure that we're working with our municipalities and provinces to be able to deliver,” he said. “That is super important because we want to maintain that community. How are the young families that are coming in so that when the properties are turning over, we have that infill in the densification, that our community works for them as well, and then we can continue to have that next generation that comes in.”

Transit has been a contentious issue in Ottawa for some time and city councillors, alongside the mayor, have been crying for more support from the federal government to support the struggling system. 

In Ottawa-West Nepean, there are plans to eventually build the Baseline bus rapid transit corridor, with the first phase stretching from Baseline Station to Heron Road. But it comes with a price tag of about $500 million. 

Vandenbeld didn’t specifically say whether or not federal funding should come from the feds to help the project, but highlighted how she advocated for the light rail extension to Moodie Drive. With that also came dollars for active transportation networks of segregated bike and walking paths. 

”Just before the election, we announced $180 million. When you look at the interview with the mayor at that time, he said that this is going to really go a long way to help the shortfall that the city is facing on transit funding,” said Vandenbeld. ”That partnership is very alive and well. We have been supporting the city on transit and transit is going to be a big part of meeting our climate targets.”

Telford said he thinks there needs to be better interconnectivity from all levels of government when it comes to public transit. 

“It's not necessarily going to be a federal responsibility. But we need to invest in infrastructure projects, large scale projects to get our cities moving, to get our economies going again,” he said. “At a federal level if we can make some smart investments in infrastructure, it has that type of fillover impact where it improves transportation and other services in the city.”

NDP candidate Bizjak did not respond to our request for an interview ahead of publication.