Ottawa-area candidates hoping to ride momentum of back-to-back elections

The next federal election has yet to be called, but many candidates in the Ottawa region have already spent months door-knocking — with many taking full advantage of the recent provincial race. 

Looking around NDP candidate Joel Harden's newly opened office, the ghosts of that campaign are obvious. 

A pile of familiar orange signs are emblazoned with Catherine McKenney's name rather than Harden's, while a laptop sports an image of the newly elected Ontario MPP's face. 

"We were here organizing for Catherine out of this space," Harden told CBC. "Some folks took some time off. I took that weekend off."

Harden said the volunteers are now raring to get back out on the campaign trail, without the punishingly cold temperatures. 

The former MPP for Ottawa Centre is hoping to take back the seat from the Liberals, facing off against a familiar foe in incumbent Yasir Naqvi. 

Lessons learned

For Green Party candidate Jennifer Purdy, her experience on the provincial campaign was perhaps even more invaluable. 

She was running. 

"Oftentimes campaigns will have four years or so to try to remember the lessons learned and things that they could have done differently," Purdy said from her Kanata home. 

"We can implement these recommendations and things to avoid as well for the upcoming federal election in probably a few days."

That includes knowing where advertising efforts will pay off, and where they don't. 

Still she said it would have been nice to "take a breath" after the last race. 

"It's a little bit exhausting," she said. 

Purdy is running in the newly redrawn Kanata riding, for the third time — which went Liberal red both times. 

Avoiding burnout

Out in Rockland, Liberal candidate Giovanna Mingarelli is running for the first time. She also gained boots-on-the-ground experience by helping out her provincial counterpart. 

"It at once helped us train actually quite a few new volunteers for what we knew would soon be a federal election," she said. "And it also gave us more insight as to how to set up a really successful and happy federal campaign."

That includes hiring a "safe office manager" to support the mental and physical health of her campaign team and volunteers. 

"We're setting our campaign up so that people can come in, they can feel empowered at a time when a lot of people are scared," she explained. "They can feel like they're being included at a time when a lot of people are feeling alienated and frankly just disappointed with the political process."

Mingarelli said she'll be offering complimentary yoga and three meals a day to anyone willing to help canvas the sprawling Prescott-Russell-Cumberland riding. 

She aims to replace outgoing Liberal MP Francis Drouin, the only representative from the region who opted not to try for another term. 

High engagement

None of the candidates expressed any major concerns about volunteer burnout, saying the importance of the issues — the economic and existential threats being levelled against Canada chief among them — is a powerful motivator. 

David Stewart, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, agrees. 

"These are very atypical times in Canada and people seem to have been really engaged by what's going on in the United States," he said, adding that the close polls between the Liberals and Conservatives provide another incentive. 

CBC requested interviews with Conservative candidates running in Ottawa, but none of those people were available. 

Tim Powers, chairman of Summa Strategies, said "fewer and fewer" Conservative candidates have been participating in local debates or media interviews in recent years. 

"That's less about being distasteful or disdained by the media and more about risk management. And that's certainly something that Conservative candidates are taught or encouraged," he said. "Communicate directly with people. Do it without intermediation. Use the tools that are there now through social media to get to people."

That could change, he said, in ridings where a close race makes the reward of greater exposure outweigh risk of making a public misstep.

With an election expected to be called Sunday, the Liberals and Conservatives are getting close announcing a full slate of candidates for eastern Ontario. Some have spent much of the last year preparing. 

As of Thursday afternoon, though, Kingston and the Islands is the only riding in the area where all four major parties have publicized a candidate.