Glen Murray byelection win.
Glen Murray, centre, has his hands raised in victory by Premier Dalton McGuinty, right, and Ontario Liberal Party President and Ottawa Centre MP, Yasir Naqui, after Murray's victory in the Toronto Centre byelection. (Feb. 4, 2010)
Photo/MIKE POCHWAT
Toronto Centre remained red in Thursday’s provincial byelection, with voters opting for Liberal Glen Murray over the other choices on the ballot.
Murray won the seat, taking over from Liberal George Smitherman, who left his post to take a shot at the city’s mayoral campaign.
Murray was able to overcome a few built-in obstacles to earn the chance to represent the people of Toronto Centre at the Ontario Legislature.
“Toronto Centre sent a message tonight that Regent Park and St. James Town matter,” said Murray during his victory speech.
Murray spoke of his 100-day plan to build and strength neighbourhoods:
“Our job now is to keep up with our investment in city-building,” he said. “Six o’clock tomorrow we start our 100-day plan.”
Standing along side his new MPP, Premier Dalton McGuinty told the crowd, it was “an honour and a privilege to be able to continue to represent (residents) in Toronto Centre and build on the great work done by George Smitherman. I look forward to working with the people of Toronto Centre and Ontarians everywhere.”
One of the key election issues was Premier McGuinty’s controversial harmonized sales tax. Murray’s three primary opponents – New Democrat Cathy Crowe, Conservative Pamela Taylor and Green candidate Stefan Premdas – tried to rally voters to use the byelection to send a message to McGuinty decrying the tax reform.
While the election was closer than in recent years – Smitherman had routinely outpaced opponents by huge margins – Murray’s chief rival, Crowe, managed to keep the race tight early on.
After a hard fought campaign that put Crowe neck in neck with the reigning Liberals, she led in the vote count after 40 polling stations delivered their results, but the provincial seat steadily slipped out of her hands as more and more results secured her defeat.
Crowe took the podium inside the Ramada hotel at Jarvis St. and Gerrard St. E to deliver an upbeat speech that focused on the future of social issues in the riding.
“I know a politician should write two speeches, one for a win and one for a loss, but I’m a nurse, not a politician so I wrote one speech because I had an intuition,” said Crowe.
After thanking a lengthy list of campaign supporters, she announced that she felt victorious.
Despite losing the byelection, she had succeeded in bringing the issues of housing, homelessness and healthcare back on the provincial agenda.
“Everyone knows what the Ontario government has been up to, including working with Stephen Harper to bring in a new tax, the HST,” said federal NDP Leader Jack Layton earlier in the night. “This should have, by all means, been a cake-walk for the Liberals, but this shows that they are going to be facing a difficult challenge looking to the future.”
Shortly before the polls closed at 9 p.m. local resident Gilles Latour said the narrowing of Jarvis Street was his main concern.
“The narrowing of Jarvis street has always been an issue for me. I think that beautification of streets in our city is an issue that has always been around,” he said after leaving the voting station near Carlton and Jarvis streets. “We need to limit the amount of automobiles in the city and increase pedestrian access.”
Another issue that cropped up as the election campaign was underway was a threat to the future of the Toronto Grace Health Centre when the Salvation Army stated they wanted to stop operating the hospital.
That issue was solved on Wednesday, Feb. 3 – the day before voters went to the polls – when the province came through with infrastructure funding to keep the hospital open under the auspices of the Salvation Army.
“People are feeling the investment in health care at Sherbourne Health Centre and at Grace,” said Murray Thursday night.
Election night, Crowe said perhaps her most significant victory was the attention she brought to the financial problems at Grace Hospital, which was at risk of closing without government funding. Support for hospitals was one of the issues the “street nurse” championed.
“It was a simple walk through this riding that convinced me to run,” said Crowe. “I saw affordable housing in disrepair, empty lots that could have been used for housing, line-ups at food banks and I saw the sites where we had lost two hospitals.”
She claimed that years of Liberal and Conservative representation had let the community slip and hoped that the NDP would have its chance in the coming years.
Murray also had a lower local profile than his closest opponent. Despite time spent as Mayor of Winnipeg and subsequent turn as CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute, he was less well-known in the community than Crowe, widely cited as Toronto’s ‘street nurse’ for her outspoken advocacy for health care, the homeless and other social issues.
Despite those challenges, Murray had the benefit of his past experience and was running in a riding that has leaned Liberal in recent years.
Crowe finished second, with Conservative Pamela Taylor coming third and Premdas placing fourth.
With more than 100 per cent of the polls reporting, Liberal Party candidate Glen Murray had 47 per cent of the vote, compared to his top challenger, Cathy Crowe from the NDP with 33.1 per cent. Tory challenger Pamela Taylor was far back with only 15.4 per cent of the vote. The Green Party’s Stefan Premdas scored 3.1 per cent. The other four candidates were all well below 1 per cent.