In York Centre byelection, will Maxime Bernier spell trouble for the Conservatives?

OTTAWA—When it comes to what matters in the York Centre byelection, Rina Camarra has a lot on her mind.

She has worked at Mastro’s Ristorante on Wilson Avenue since it opened more than 50 years ago. Now manager, she is running the business through the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic, navigating shutdowns and the myriad government programs designed to help her Italian eatery survive the crisis. But it’s not enough.

“It’s been very, very difficult — extremely,” Camarra told the Star on Friday. “All kinds of challenges, because you have the expenses but you don’t have the income.”

Camarra also sits on the York Centre Seniors’ Steering Committee, a group advocating for construction of a new “seniors’ village” on vacant land near Downsview Park. She wants whoever wins the byelection in her riding to stand up for seniors like her, especially in light of how her demographic has been hit hard by the pandemic.

“At one time they were so used to going out, and going to the different places like community centres and churches and so on… And now, they’re all locked up inside their homes, afraid to go out,” she said.

“For everybody, in one way or another, this sucks right now.”

It’s one voter’s perspective among tens of thousands across the inner suburb riding of York Centre, which stretches across a swath of North York that includes York University, Downsview Park, and the neighbourhoods of Bathurst Manor and Clanton Park. Paul Di Prospero, project co-ordinator of the Wilson Avenue Business Improvement Area, has lived in the area his whole life, and describes it as a diverse mix of cultures — Italian, Filipino, Black, Jewish and more — that is typical of life in Canada’s largest city.

A majority of the riding’s 104,000 residents are immigrants, with about 48,200 identifying as visible minorities, according to Statistics Canada’s 2016 census profile of York Centre.

“It’s a beautiful community — it’s underrated,” said Di Prospero. “There are lots of nice suburban homes and families around there, but there’s also lots of different cultures and communities.”

The community is now choosing its next MP, after Liberal incumbent Michael Levitt — who held the seat since 2015 — resigned this summer to take over as head of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies. It’s one of two Toronto byelections set for Monday, and could be considered the more competitive race, given how the riding is held by the Progressive Conservatives at the provincial level and was represented by federal Conservative Mark Adler from 2011 to 2015.

“If we’re going to take anything from these byelections, it may be a better indicator of how more suburban swing voters are feeling about things right now,” said David Coletto, chief executive officer of the polling firm, Abacus Data. Coletto said it would still be a surprise if the Liberals lose, since before Adler won in 2011, the riding was held by the Liberals for decades.

“If they lose this seat… it would signal perhaps that the Liberals are in trouble,” he said.

One wild card in the race could be Maxime Bernier, Coletto said. Bernier is the former Conservative MP from the Quebec region of Beauce who created the right-wing populist People’s Party of Canada. He decided to run in York Centre, announcing at his campaign launch that he wants a “moratorium” on immigration until unemployment returns to pre-pandemic levels. Echoing the rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump and fringe anti-maskers, Bernier also accused the Liberal government of instituting “socialist policies” and called COVID-19 lockdowns a “frontal attack on our fundamental freedoms.”

Coletto said he will be watching to see if Bernier can earn more than a few per cent of the vote on Monday, which would be an indicator of interest, most likely at the expense of Conservative support.

Julius Tiangson dismisses the possibility. After running unsuccessfully in Mississauga in the 2015 election, the 57-year-old father of three is now trying again for the Conservatives in York Centre. In an interview with the Star, Tiangson said Bernier is “not a factor” in the race, and that he thinks he can convince voters to return to the Conservatives in part because of concern over the massive deficit in Ottawa after the Liberal government spent hundreds of billions — so far — on programs during the pandemic.

He also said the Liberals have “failed” to implement rapid testing across the country.

“People are worried,” said Tiangson, who moved to Canada from the Philippines in 1985. “Many small business owners that I have connected with are very concerned.”

Based on the riding’s history, Tiangson’s main opponent in the race is the Liberal candidate, Ya’ara Saks. Saks, a single mother with two daughters, owns a yoga studio in York Centre and runs a mental health charity. She told the Star recently that she wants to join Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s team in Ottawa to try and create better supports for people during — and after — the pandemic. That includes setting up a national child care and early learning system, as the government promised in its throne speech on Sept. 23.

Her time working in the office of the mayor of Jerusalem during the second intefadeh — a sometimes violent Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation — prepared her for complex challenges, she said.

“This is a time for ambitious thinking and for thinking out of the box and putting smart investments where they matter,” said Saks.

Di Prospero, the project manager from the Wilson Avenue BIA, said there are also pressing local issues the next MP will need to be attuned to. The status of Downsview Park, which is federal land, is a perennial concern, he said. “There’s big parcels of land around the park, in particular the Bombardier (facility), which is leaving the community in a few years… The big issue around this is what will happen to that land.”

For Camarra at Mastro’s, the status of land near the park is the deciding issue. And while she’s open to voting for whoever she likes best, regardless of party, she’s going with the Liberals in Monday’s byelection. Saks stopped by Mastro’s to chat for almost an hour, and seemed open to Camarra’s ambition to see a new seniors’ village built near the park.

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But no matter who wins the byelection, Camarra expected them to have a full plate of immediate obligations — from the distinctly local, such as land near the big park, to the decidedly national, like federal programs during the pandemic.

“That person actually has a lot, a lot, a lot to do,” she said.

The work, for whoever it will be, starts Tuesday.