Sheila Copps to rally Liberal troops
Daniel Nolan
April 25, 2011
The Liberal party has drafted Sheila Copps to help the party’s fortunes in Hamilton.
The former longtime Hamilton East MP and deputy prime minister will be the guest speaker at a rally Wednesday morning at the Discovery Centre.
The move comes as various polls indicate the New Democratic Party is surging in support, almost tying the Liberal party. A weekend poll by the Nanos Research Group had the NDP at 23.7 per cent national support, compared with 26.1 per cent for the Liberals. The Conservatives remained in the lead with 37.8 per cent. The NDP control the city’s three urban seats.
Copps is attending the 11 a.m. rally to endorse Anne Tennier, who is running in Hamilton Centre. But fellow local candidates Dave Braden, Marie Bountrogianni and Michelle Stockwell will also be on hand. Tennier is trying to take Hamilton Centre from New Democrat MP David Christopherson, who won it in 2004 after defeating Liberal cabinet minister Stan Keyes.
Bountrogianni, a former Hamilton Mountain MPP and Ontario cabinet minister seen by many as Copps’s heir, called the visit “fantastic.” Copps was ousted from the party in 2004 after a bruising nomination battle with cabinet minister Tony Valeri and Bountrogianni believes the visit indicates “the wounds are healed and Sheila is coming to pay a political visit to Hamilton. That shows you how classy she is.”
Copps also staged a local rally for the Liberals in the dying days of the 2008 election. She was later courted by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to run again, but she spurned all advances.
Bountrogianni said the NDP surge is largely as a result of the party’s numbers jumping in Quebec.
Bountrogianni is trying to win Hamilton Mountain from NDP incumbent Chris Charlton.
“It is hard to defeat incumbents,” she said. “I’m not, by any means, saying this is easy, but I don’t think Mr. Layton’s surge in Quebec will affect us here except to make people rethink who they want to vote for. ... Do we really want a socialist government getting us out of a recession? I don’t think people want a socialist prime minister.”
The Liberals held every Hamilton-area seat during Copps’s decade in power. In the 2006 election, it was wiped out. The Conservatives hold nine of the 13 seats from Oakville to Niagara Falls, including Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, Burlington, Haldimand-Norfolk and Niagara West-Glanbrook. The NDP hold the remaining four.
[email protected]