Voters in Fleetwood-Port Kells send Liberal Ken Hardie back to Ottawa
Credit to Author: Susan Lazaruk| Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019 06:57:53 +0000
Liberal Ken Hardie secured a second term in Surrey’s Fleetwood-Port Kells on Monday, despite predictions of a race too close to call in the days leading up to the election.
Hardie, who won handily in 2015, held on to his seat with a healthy 1,700 vote lead over Conservative Shinder Purewal.
“Four more years,” said Hardie, as he poured champagne into flute glasses at the victory party at a Guildford sports bar after being declared the winner multiple national television newsdesks around 10 p.m.
Annie Ohana, a high school teacher and Indigenous and LGTBQ advocate was third, more than 7,000 votes behind Hardie, followed by fourth place finisher Tanya Baertl for the Green Party and People’s Party of Canada candidate Mike Poulin.
Hardie’s supporters and campaign workers whooped and clapped each time the TV results showed him in the lead soon after the polls closed.
The party was subdued early in the evening with a couple dozen supporters and campaign workers watching the results with Hardie.
Ken Hardie, Liberal candidate in Fleetwood-Port Kells, watches federal election results come in at Taphouse Guildford in Surrey on Oct. 21, 2019, with Kuldip Bhangru (in red), who has worked in Hardie’s constituency office for four years.
“I’m a little relieved because everyone said it was going to be close,” said Hardie after learning he had won. “But we had to work for this. It took a really big effort.”
Hardie, a former media spokesman for TransLink, lost some support, having won the riding in 2015 with 47 per cent of the votes. Nina Grewal who had held the seat for the Conservatives since 2004, was second with 29 per cent of the votes. The NDP was third (22 per cent), followed by the Green Party (two per cent).
Hardie said he and his team were trying to secure the votes of his known supporters and ensuring they got out to vote with just a few days to go. The strategy worked and was enough to send him back to Ottawa.
Shinder Purewal was the Conservative candidate for Fleetwood — Port Kells.
Purewal, a former citizenship judge, teaches political science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, said he is an advocate of strong national defence. He was able to increase the share of the Conservative vote from 2015 by four percentage points but it wasn’t enough to beat Hardie.
Messages left with Purewal’s campaign manager weren’t returned on Monday night.
Ohana in a text congratulated Hardie and said, “In a race where many thought the NDP would be down and out, we proved how strong we were. I am proud of my volunteers and team for pulling off an amazing result and look forward to holding this government accountable.”
And Baertl said in a text, “Going into this campaign, I knew I would be successful if we doubled our 2015 vote and we more than doubled that number. I wish Mr. Hardie all the best and he can expect a visit from me soon.”
Hardie said voters told him during the campaign that they were concerned about “guns and gangs” and about Surrey mayor Doug McCallum’s plan to replace the RCMP with a municipal police force.
And people in the Surrey riding were also concerned about building infrastructure and transportation in the province’s fastest-growing city. Hardie said there was a lot of support for extending the SkyTrain to Langley or at least Clayton and some concern that a Conservative federal government wouldn’t come through with the money Ottawa had already pledged.
University of the Fraser Valley political science professor Hamish Telford said crime, infrastructure and immigration are the big issues in the riding.
The Liberal brand has always stood for multiculturalism and attracts disproportionate number of new Canadian voters, said Telford.
“There are multicultural dimensions of Surrey,” he said. “The Liberals have promised more family class citizenships and that’s a large part of the story tonight” in Fleetwood Port-Kells.
The main language spoken at home in the riding, with a population of 117,000, is 60 per cent English, followed by 14 per cent Punjabi and seven per cent Mandarin.