7 hours Ago By Hiren Mansukhani
Lindsay Luhnau enters a seniors’ housing complex near the Central Library with a disposition that matches the sunny spring day outside. The Liberal party’s candidate for the Calgary Centre riding knocks on apartments, doling out flyers. She is wearing a white shirt with black stripes, navy blue jeans and black sneakers.
A man opens a door. Luhnau, who has worked with the city as a business strategist for a decade, introduces herself to the older gentleman and informs him he could vote inside the facility. “I do hope I can count on your support on election day,” Luhnau says, smiling.
“Yeah, we’ll see,” the man replies, accepts the flyer and immediately shuts his door. Luhnau and her campaign manager, Hannah Wilson, then climb the stairs to a floor above. Luhnau knocks on an apartment door, and Lynn Kolsen answers.
“I think Liberal is the way to go,” Kolsen tells a Postmedia reporter who joins Luhnau on her campaign trail. Calgary Centre among most competitive federal ridings in city Calgary Centre has been among the most competitive ridings in the city. The Liberal party won the electoral district in 2015 with 46.
3 per cent of the vote, narrowly exceeding the Conservatives’ share of 45.3 per cent. The constituency has since elected a Conservative MP with a majority, although the party’s hold on the vote slipped in 2021.
Kolsen, who spends between 30 minutes and three hours daily consuming the news, says she is most concerned about the threat posed by the U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
“(Mark Carney) can deal with the crisis going on in the U.S. in a tactful way; (Pierre) Poilievre can’t,” she says.
“He doesn’t have the smarts. He tends to lose his temper a little bit.” After distributing several flyers, Luhnau and Wilson leave the building.
“We were prepared to be yelled at,” says Luhnau, who decided to run in the federal election for the first time after Mark Carney was selected as the leader of the Liberal party. The response has been a welcome surprise. “We did a coffee (meet) at the corner of 9th Avenue and 11th Street where all the people work downtown, and we set up a giant Liberal banner,” she says.
“We got one thumbs down, but got eight thumbs up.” Down on 17th Avenue S.W.
, three workers strategize for the Conservative candidate Greg McLean’s campaign in a room bereft of furniture save for a few tables carrying boards with sticky notes. McLean, in a pair of jeans and a cerulean T-shirt emblazoned with his name, walks in. He admits competition is stiff.
However, McLean, who’s held his seat for two successive elections, is confident Calgarians’ dissatisfaction with the Liberal government will hand him a victory again. “I just got back from a building knocking on doors again, and people are concerned about the rising cost of living and how much it takes them to pay rent,” he says. “Young people can’t get into housing.
People who have houses are saying, ‘Okay, our take-home pay is less. It doesn’t cover as much of our bills as it used to.’ ” For some, there are issues bigger than Donald Trump Kyle Lyle shares these concerns.
Lyle, wearing a golden cross that hangs below his chest, stands at the far end of the City Hall CTrain station, distributing flyers featuring a picture of Jesus guiding a man at a crossroads. Lyle, a part-time truck driver and volunteer who works with at-risk youth, says he’s fed up with watching the decline of the middle class. “It’s almost impossible to pay for houses and child-care now,” says Lyle, who’s 41.
“The Liberals ran this country into the ground the last 10 years,” he says, adding he couldn’t vote for the party, especially after seeing his purchasing power wither away. Instead, he says he is going to vote either for the Conservatives or the People’s Party of Canada. For him, what matters more than Trump’s capriciousness and the crashing of the stock market is his ability to pay his bills.
“I don’t have millions of dollars in the stock market,” he says. “I couldn’t care less if the stock market crashes. I’ve been saving for like 10 years, and I barely have $27,000 saved.
” McLean dismisses the notion that choosing one leader who is best able to address Trump’s threats is an election issue. “It’s not just the prime minister — it’s a whole cabinet,” adds McLean, an investment portfolio manager by trade. “So, it’s not just Donald Trump — it’s Howard Lutnick, it’s (Peter) Navarro .
. . and I assure you, the bench we’re putting together is going to be far superior to the bench that the Liberals would be able to put together.
” For many Albertans, the future of the energy industry is the ballot question. “A lot of people are concerned about the sector,” McLean says. “It’s the previous administration that cancelled our pipelines.
” McLean makes his pitch to his constituents as their representative by assuring them his party would reinstate pipelines such as Energy East and Northern Gateway, which were cancelled under the Liberal administration. Meanwhile, Luhnau defends the Liberal party’s work — such as building the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project — to support the province’s oil and gas sector. But she also has her sights beyond the industry.
“We are experts in all energies here in Calgary.” Luhnau sells the idea of bringing private investments to multiple areas, including geothermal and renewable energy. She also wants other sectors, such as fin tech, to find a home in the province.
“I would be a huge proponent of trying to beef up that investment readiness for different parts of our economy,” she says. NDP candidate vows to focus energy on workers’ needs However, Beau Shaw, NDP’s candidate for Calgary Centre, believes the approaches of his rivals aren’t focused enough on workers. His ideas align with Luhnau in that the province’s economy could benefit from diversification without undermining the oil and gas industry.
“That conversation has never stopped,” he says at a library, wearing a beige blazer and trousers. “It’s never going to stop in Alberta — that is our bread and butter. “(But) how are we localizing our economies? How are we making power that doesn’t have to cross borders?” Shaw, an electronic technologist, tells voters in the constituency that his party would first listen to workers about how they would be impacted by tariffs instead of instating blanket countermeasures.
“We need to talk about how we move our economy forward strategically and preserve jobs that are already existing in industries that we need,” he says, adding that people are listening. He has hosted several potlucks and concerts, trying to convince many about his ideas. While door-knocking, he does encounter conservative voters, but he’s impressed by the overall reception.
“People really believe in the message,” he adds. However, Erin Bird, a member of the humanitarian advocacy group Engineers Without Borders, wants voters to look past the tariffs. “That’s not the only issue at play here,” Bird says at a bar in downtown Calgary where tens of people have gathered to watch a debate between party leaders .
“There are so many important issues, especially in Calgary Centre.” She lists off her priorities this election: maintaining infrastructure, mental health and climate change. She says so far, the NDP is most aligned with her stance.
In contrast, Richard Fang, a product manager at a software company, says he wants to vote for the Green Party. “I think we need a party that can come in and really be strong,” Fang says. “Environment comes first.
Capitalism comes second.” Green Party eyes universal basic income, electoral reform The party’s face for Calgary Centre is an undergraduate student named Jayden Baldonado, who’s 21. The party is campaigning on a universal basic income, a shift from the first-past-the-post voting system to proportional representation and mitigating climate change.
Baldonado also says he’s been pleasantly surprised by the people’s responses. “I honestly expected it to be a lot more hostile than it actually is,” he says. “If people aren’t interested, they’ll just say they’re not interested; everyone’s pretty civil and open to discussion, and that’s a good contrast from all the divisiveness that we see in an online setting.
” However, Fang says his vote for the party would be pointless. “They don’t have their structure together, so it’s just a waste of a vote.” Instead, he’ll throw his support behind the Liberals.
Standing outside city hall, Lyle explains why he’ll probably vote for the Conservatives. “I think the Conservatives are not perfect,” he says. “But you only have so many choices.
” This is one of a series of articles profiling select ridings in our region in the leadup to voting day on April 28. See our full coverage of the federal election campaign. To learn more about who’s running in your riding and the focus of their campaigns, check out our list of federal election candidates in Calgary and Southern Alberta.
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