Who's in, who's out, who's up, who's down…the Ottawa Life Magazine 2019 Election Outlook series takes a detailed look at all the national capital area ridings and provides editorial commentary on the incumbents and the challengers in what is sure to be one of the most contentious election in decades.
The key electoral issues in the national capital region are the government's handling (or mishandling) of the disastrous phoenix pay scandal that has adversely affected so many civil servants and the influx of illegal immigrants from the United States via the Montreal area border whose ripple effect has caused a stress on Ottawa's local community housing and social services budgets.
The federal government has allowed the influx of over 40,000 illegal immigrants from the United States since 2017 without providing enough funding to Ottawa to support those who then come here. These illegal immigrants have avoided official border checkpoints where they would have been turned back to the U.S. under the Safe Third Country agreement between the two countries.
In addition 14% of the immigrants who have come to Canada under the Trudeau government since 2015 are now homeless or living in homeless shelters.
Other issues include the controversial new carbon tax, the debate over whether or not Canada should have a national pharmacare program and the matter of the proliferation of spending and the growing federal deficit under the Trudeau government which is the highest it has been in decades.
Ethics, transparency and leadership are also front and centre in upcoming election as both Prime Minister Trudeau and Ottawa West MP Anita Vandenbeld have been found guilty of ethics violations by the Federal Ethics Commissioner. Other local issues sure to arise are whether or not the federal government should intervene in the Château Laurier extension to protect the heritage of the site and whether or not the federal government will commit to funding the expansion of the new OTrain to Kanata and to Orleans over the next decade.