Party leaders scatter from Vancouver Island to Montreal as campaign starts Week 3

Scheer has a morning announcement scheduled at Jarry Park and then hits the town with Conservative candidates in what have historically been among the safest Liberal ridings in the city: Mount Royal and Saint-Leonard-Saint-Michel. (File Photo: Andrew Scheer/Facebook)

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and Green Leader Elizabeth May are both in Montreal today, as the third week of the federal election campaign begins.

Scheer has a morning announcement scheduled at Jarry Park and then hits the town with Conservative candidates in what have historically been among the safest Liberal ridings in the city: Mount Royal and Saint-Leonard-Saint-Michel.

Mount Royal has gone for the Liberals in every election since 1940; it was the seat of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre for nearly 20 years.

Saint-Leonard-Saint-Michel has elected Liberals since it was created in the 1980s, though its three MPs have been Alfonso Gagliano, a minister brought down in the sponsorship scandal of the early 2000s; Massimo Pacetti, whom Justin Trudeau expelled from the Liberal caucus in 2014 over allegations he’d harassed another MP; and Nicola Di Iorio, who stopped showing up in the House of Commons before eventually resigning last winter.

Still, Conservatives have never come close to winning there.

May is to speak in the afternoon about the role she sees Quebec playing in the Greens’ vision of a Canada powered by renewable energy.

Trudeau starts his day in Sudbury, Ont., expected to continue a string of environment-related announcements at a conservation area, before whistlestopping his way southeast to a rally in Peterborough, where cabinet minister Maryam Monsef is fighting to keep her seat.

The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh is spending a third day in a row in British Columbia, talking mainly about housing in events on Vancouver Island. He’s playing defence: Vancouver Island is where the Greens see their best chances of picking up seats, after a byelection win over the New Democrats in Nanaimo-Ladysmith last May.

Singh is starting in Campbell River and plans to roadtrip south to Nanaimo.

And Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party continues his own trip to the West, spreading his populist message in Calgary after spending Wednesday in Vancouver.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2019.