Fight for Toronto’s Davenport riding remains up in the air Tuesday

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This article was published 20/09/2021 (1499 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Voters in Toronto’s Davenport riding woke up Tuesday morning unsure who will represent them in the next Parliament.

At 10 a.m., with polls still reporting and mail-in ballots still to be counted, Liberal incumbent Julie Dzerowicz had a lead of fewer than 400 votes over NDP challenger Alejandra Bravo.

“We always knew this would be a really close election,” Bravo said late Monday, adding her campaign made a big push with advance voters.

Also late Monday, Dzerowicz said, “We’re not going to know for, I think, a couple of days,” who won the riding that has flipped between the two parties.

So, for now, the New Democrats’ massive effort to flip Davenport from Liberal red to NDP remains up in the air.

If Bravo’s campaign comes up short in what many observers considered the NDP’s best hope to breach the Liberal’s Toronto fortress, it won’t be for lack of trying.

The popular, multilingual social activist campaigned hard, including with party leader Jagmeet Singh at her side, arguing the interests of residents of the west downtown riding are best mirrored by a party to the political left.

In her first run at federal office, Bravo told voters in the riding’s working class and gentrified neighbourhoods that only her party would impose a tax on Canada’s “ultra rich.”

She said the Liberals, including Dzerowicz, don’t have the courage to impose a special wealth tax on top-income earners and corporations to raise billions of dollars for social programs and housing.

“Everything we have has been won by people who are struggling,” Bravo, a longtime Davenport resident, told the Star’s Richard Warnica while campaigning on other issues, including climate change and making life for Torontonians more affordable, especially housing.

Singh, while launching scathing attacks on Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, called Bravo “an incredible candidate” during a campaign stop last week.

New Democrats poured resources into the riding, which polls throughout the election depicted as a toss-up that could go to either party.

But Dzerowicz and her Liberals, who held the seat for most of the last six decades, were not about to surrender Davenport without a counteroffensive.

Trudeau in early September stood beside Dzerowicz, the Davenport MP since 2015, calling her “an extraordinary voice for all of you and continues to be unbelievably ambitious not just for this community but for the country.”

Dzerowicz told Warnica: “I want to be re-elected because I want to shape the world that we want to live in.

“I want to actually start introducing new programs, new ways of supporting Canadians, and really have us think about: What is the new economic model … that is going to lead us to a more sustainable, prosperous Canada?”

She vowed if re-elected to reintroduce her private member’s bill that calls on the federal finance minister to study a guaranteed basic income for Canadians and a strategy on implementing the best model.

The riding flipped between the Liberals and Conservatives until 1962 when the Liberals seemed to put a lock on it, winning 16 straight elections until New Democrat Andrew Cash seized it in 2011 amid a national Liberal electoral collapse.

Cash, a popular singer-songwriter considered an NDP leading light, was swept out by Dzerowicz in 2015 when Trudeau’s Liberals roared to a majority.

Cash lost to her by a small margin again in 2019 when the Liberals were reduced to a minority government.

When he declined to try again, Bravo got the nod to try to yank Davenport back into the NDP fold.

The director of leadership and training at the Broadbent Institute, a left-leaning think tank, Bravo is no stranger to political campaigns but has yet to win one as the candidate.

She ran for the Davenport seat on city council three times, in 2003, 2006 and 2014, being narrowly defeated each time.

Dzerowicz held senior positions in banking and biotechnology for more than two decades, and co-founded an environmental group in 2010, before winning office.

While debating national issues of affordability, child care, pharmacare and how to make housing more affordable — in a riding that has seen rents and house prices soar — the candidates also sparred over the fate of a local post office.

Community members want to stop Canada Post from selling off the outlet on Queen Street West near Dufferin Street. Bravo accused Dzerowicz of not doing enough to halt land sale plans by the federal Crown corporation.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

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Dzerowicz has said if re-elected she’ll continue pushing her government to stop the sale in hopes a community trust can come together to redevelop the site.

Davenport stretches to Eglinton Avenue to the north, Ossington Avenue to the east, and the GO transit line to the south and west.

At the time of the 2016 census, the riding had more than 108,000 people and was growing faster than the Toronto average.

Portuguese was the second most popular mother tongue, after English. The percentage of visible minorities was lower than the city average.

David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider