1 day Ago By Elizabeth Payne
Not everyone could see Bruce Fanjoy’s path forward when he announced in 2023 that he planned to defeat Pierre Poilievre on his home turf. “Can you do that?” one skeptic asked when Fanjoy was out door-knocking one day. “Isn’t it his riding?” The Carleton riding, which hugs the southern edge of Ottawa, has been held by Poilievre for nearly a generation.
He first won it in 2014 at the age of 25. Residents of the large, traditionally Conservative riding re-elected Poilievre six more times with solid margins. The current federal election campaign is Poilievre’s eighth time – his first as party leader – asking the voters of Carleton to elect him.
In 2021, Poilievre won with 49.9 per cent of the vote, compared to 34.3 per cent for the Liberal candidate.
Since then, the riding has been reconfigured and one calculation, based on Statistics Canada numbers, shows that Poilievre would have had a bigger win last time with the new boundaries. Some Carleton residents can barely remember it being any other way, which made initial skepticism about Fanjoy’s audacious plan to win the riding as a Liberal candidate understandable. “One of the impacts of someone holding a riding for as long as Pierre Poilievre has held Carleton is some people forget it doesn’t have to be that way,” he said.
But Fanjoy has never wavered. “I believed from the beginning that there was a path to victory.” His campaign, considered a longshot by many at the beginning, has gained momentum in recent weeks, grabbing attention from across the riding and the country.
More than 100 volunteers come out weekly to join his three-times-a-day canvasses and work in his campaign headquarters in Stittsville. His campaign raised more than $160,000 in just two weeks, some of that from people living outside of the riding who said they were donating to help him defeat Poilievre. That is virtually unheard of for local campaigns.
All the while, there is criticism within conservative circles regarding Poilievre’s campaign, notably from Kory Teneycke who ran Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford’s recent successful campaign in Ontario, about just how far the federal Conservative Party has fallen in the polls, especially in Ontario. “When you are 27 points down in Ottawa, that means your leader isn’t winning a seat,” Teneycke said in a late-March episode of the Curse of Politics podcast. “It’s bad.
” Some see Carleton as a microcosm of the national campaign. “Most of (the donations) are coming from inside the riding, but some people are looking at this election in Carleton as a national election in a riding and they want to support what we are doing,” said Fanjoy. Some of them have announced their support on social media.
“I would be interested in finding out how many of us in Canada that don’t live in Bruce Fanjoy’s riding have donated to his campaign,” wrote a donor on the social media platform Threads. “I live on Vancouver Island and I sent him a donation. I have never donated to a politician or a political party before.
” Several people replying to the thread said they had also donated from outside the riding to see Poilievre defeated. But it is the 130,000 plus residents of Carleton who will get a say in the race. *** Fanjoy began introducing himself to Carleton residents in 2023 — long before an election call and before parties were even starting to recruit candidates.
He describes himself as “not a professional politician,” in contrast to Poilievre. He has an MBA and worked at Deloitte, as director of marketing, among other private sector jobs before taking parental leave. He then became a full-time parent while his wife, who is now an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Ottawa, pursued a medical career.
He is the father of two adult children. His oldest daughter is a lawyer who signed his nomination papers. Before he entered politics, he was best known in Manotick for helping design the family’s eco-friendly home and promoting its environmental benefits.
Millview House, which sits on the Rideau River in Manotick, is almost net zero, meaning it produces about the same amount of energy it uses. It was built following Passive House standards, and constructed in a way that it consumes up to 90 per cent less heating and cooling energy than conventional buildings. It is equipped with solar panels, a heat pump, an electric boiler and furnace, as well as high-level windows, doors, insulation and construction to limit gaps.
The home makes one exception to passive home standards because it includes a wood stove, in case of power outages, according to a story about the house in the National Observer. Fanjoy is a proselytizer for sustainability and is eager to share details about the structure and the possibilities it represents, even on a much smaller scale. It is something he has talked about with people as he has campaigned in the riding.
There was no one moment when Fanjoy decided to run as a Liberal in the riding. “It crept up on me.” He knew that the riding needed a change, he said, but didn’t originally think he would be the one to take it on.
As he began knocking on doors and meeting people, he became more confident that many people in the riding wanted change. Fanjoy says the people of Carleton have not been well-served by Poilievre, explaining they are tired of the negativity. “Throughout his career, he has attacked workers and public servants and fought for American-style anti-union laws in Canada.
He has been voting against $10 a day childcare, pharmacare and housing investments.” Fanjoy says voters care about housing, the cost of living, jobs and a representative who is focused on them. “A lot of people are looking for an alternative.
I wanted to make sure I gave Carleton a strong, thoughtful, solutions-focused alternative to someone who hasn’t accomplished anything in 20 years of service.” Among his key promises to voters is that he will be in the riding and more available. Fanjoy also wants to help businesses and farmers cut energy costs using some of the technology he used in his own home.
He also vows to bring the riding’s suburban and urban residents closer together. But Trump and tariffs are also on the ballot in Carleton, as they are across the country. By the time the writ was dropped in January, Fanjoy had knocked on 15,000 doors, making it clear that his campaign was about defeating Poilievre.
He has walked the neighbourhoods and country roads of Carleton in all weather – environmental and political. A photo of a smiling Fanjoy trudging through Manotick in a snowstorm in 2024 is prominent in his campaign literature. In the early months of his campaign, national frustration levels with former prime minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals helped propel the Conservatives to a large, seemingly unbeatable, lead in public opinion polls.
Fanjoy was trying to convince residents to change long-held patterns and vote for him, even as the opponent he vowed to defeat was projected to be the next prime minister of Canada and head of a majority government. Fanjoy trudged on. And then things shifted.
The resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the election of former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to lead the Liberal Party at a time when newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump was threatening tariffs and annexation of Canada, profoundly changed the political landscape in Canada.
The ripple effects were felt in the villages, farmlands and neighbourhoods of Carleton riding. “The election of Donald Trump and the change in leadership has certainly changed things. At times when I was canvassing, it felt like I had the wind in my face.
That has changed and now we have the wind at our back.” The question is, how big an impact will that have in Poilievre’s home turf, a riding that has almost always supported Conservative candidates and whose candidate is now party leader? Fanjoy says he is optimistic based on what he is seeing and hearing. “I probably have better information than anyone, simply because I’ve talked to so many people.
” Fanjoy said he believes the race is close and that he has an opportunity “if we just keep putting in the work.” On a balmy early April day, Fanjoy is doing some of that work, knocking on doors in Riverside South with his team. One couple, Linnea and Brian Sorlie, said they are supporting Fanjoy after seeing a video and thinking he was a credible person.
They said they are not affiliated with any one party, but “we don’t lean very far right and have felt like we have been in a political wasteland” in the riding until this campaign. Fanjoy believes that many long-time Conservative supporters in the riding are Progressive Conservatives who are growing less comfortable with the party under Poilievre. He is hearing from some of them.
One longtime Conservative supporter told Fanjoy he was voting for him because “it is the shortest route to a Conservative leadership review.” Other voters note that Poilievre spends little time in the riding or supporting local concerns. He gave a brief speech in Manotick the day he launched his campaign and was back in the Ottawa area over the weekend of April 12 and 13.
For some, Poilievre’s support of the truckers who occupied Ottawa in 2021 remains a sore point. Originally, Fanjoy thought someone else should take on the challenge of running against Poilievre. “I started to realize just how hard it would be to ask someone to take this on and realized that I could do it.
I could invest the time, I had the background, the skills and the passion for both the community and the country.” Along the way, he has faced online attacks along with incredulity from some, and his campaign has experienced some bumps – including the removal of some 300 Liberal signs around the riding and vandalism on others. Supporters see that as a sign that the Conservative campaign is concerned.
The riding is also the target of a protest from a group that says it is promoting electoral reform. Fanjoy and Poilievre will be among 91 names on the Carleton ballot – a record in a Canadian general election. Fanjoy’s campaign says it is not concerned because he has built good name recognition.
Fanjoy calls Poilievre a “dream opponent,” noting that, even on his home turf, the Conservative leader is “uniquely unlikeable – people are not unopinionated about him.” Fanjoy is confident about his chances. In response to one naysayer on social media, Fanjoy recounted this story.
“I was in line at a coffee shop when someone tapped me on the shoulder. They said: ‘When I first heard about your campaign, I thought you didn’t have a chance. But now I think you can win.
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