The 905 will loom large

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This article was published 02/10/2015 (3668 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — Standing outside a downtown Toronto community centre, the Khan family quietly stopped NDP Leader Tom Mulcair as he exited a town hall event and tried to climb into the back of his waiting SUV behind his wife.

Salma and Faraz, with five-year-old Hashim, had just watched Mulcair discuss his environment policy, and now they hoped he would sign their copy of his autobiography.

Mulcair obliged, crouching down to chat with Hashim and signing his book.

"Thanks for coming to see me," he scrawled across the title page above his signature.

In Toronto, families such as the Khans are a huge part of what will happen Oct. 19. Salma and Faraz arrived from Pakistan nine years ago. They settled in Markham, a sprawling suburb about half the size of Winnipeg, north of Toronto proper.

They are voting in their first election and have decided on the NDP because Faraz likes what Mulcair has to say about the economy and national unity.

Markham is part of what is known as the 905 district, named for its area code, that encompasses four municipalities that border the City of Toronto. It is one of the most critical regions in this elections. Rob Silver, a partner at Crestview Strategies in Toronto whose wife, Katie Telford, is the Liberal campaign chairwoman, said when people ask him what is going to happen in this election he tells them the same thing.

"Give me a list of 10 seats in the 905 and you guarantee me who will win those seats and that’s who wins government," he said.

The fact that nobody can produce such a list is one of the reasons this election is so difficult to predict.

Across the Greater Toronto Area — GTA to the locals — there are dozens of competitive races. With 53 seats, nine more than in 2011, the GTA is home to one in every six seats that will be filled Oct. 19. It is almost four times as many as in all of Manitoba.

The vote-rich Greater Toronto Area

The growing Toronto region has a high number of federal ridings, making the area crucial for any party trying to win the election. Drag the slider below to compare the number of ridings in the GTA with Winnipeg.

Most people talk about the GTA as two distinct parts, labelled by area code. The 416, also known as Toronto proper, is the urban portion, while the 905 is the suburbs spanning the four municipalities that surround it including Halton, Peel, York and Durham. This entire area was hallowed ground for the Liberals throughout the 1990s.

But in the last 15 years, the Conservatives made a slow march across, and their 2011 majority government came generally thanks to GTA voters. The Conservatives hadn’t been able to break into the 416 at all until 2011, when they earned the trust of voters in nine of the city’s 23 ridings. In the 905, their seat count increased to 21 from 11. In contrast, the Liberals won just one seat in the 905 and six in the 416.

But the Liberals appear to have their Toronto mojo back and are competitive in almost every race here now. Whom they compete with depends on where you are.

In the central ridings of Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale and Parkdale-High Park, the streets are a sea of red and orange. You do spot some blue Conservative signs but not many.

On Danforth Road in the city’s Scarborough region, the postage-stamp front lawns on a row of newly built townhouses seem to be having an all-out sign war between the Liberals and NDP.

This is Scarborough Southwest, the riding where former Toronto police chief Bill Blair is looking to unseat first-term NDP MP Dan Harris. This riding used to be won by the Liberals with more than half the vote. They finished third here in 2011. It is the kind of seat the Liberals need to win back if they have any hope of even a minority government. It’s also the kind of seat the NDP can’t lose if it wants to stay in the game.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

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As you travel farther north, along Victoria Park Avenue or Kennedy Avenue, the blue rectangles start to emerge and the orange ones recede. Once you get north of the 401, the expressway that splits the city from east to west, the NDP doesn’t factor in much at all.

In Vaughan-Woodbridge, a northwestern suburb some people call more Italian than Italy, Conservative associate minister of defence Julian Fantino is working to hold off a Liberal challenger. Among the sprawling housing developments and endless rows of big-box stores, you have to look really hard to find any evidence the NDP is even campaigning.

Fantino told reporters at an event Sept. 29 his riding has changed a lot, so it’s a different beast than it used to be. Boundary changes mean there are 45,000 fewer voters to attract.

It is a similar story throughout much of the region, where the number of ridings grew to 25 from 18 in this election. One can forgive voters in Toronto for being confused about who they’re voting for, things have changed so dramatically. One riding in the western suburb of Brampton was split into six different pieces.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca