Defeated but not down, Olivia Chow goes back to work

After being narrowly defeated by incumbent Tony Ianno, Olivia Chow is back in the swing of things at city council.
We were able to talk to her on the phone as she was travelling between meetings in a car.
Though conceding that vote-splitting with the Green Party was one factor that led to her defeat (Chow lost by 805 votes, while the Green’s Mark Viitala won over 2,000 votes), Chow emphasized the incredible influence strategic voting had on the outcome of the election.
“People were quite afraid of Harper. There was a stampede to protect the country from Harper.” In addition, she said that the liberal campaign was “based on fear. It worked.”
Asked if she thought keeping her job at city council affected the outcome, she replied, “My opponent made a big deal about it. But, no, I don’t think so.” But Chow admitted some constituents may have been more comfortable with the prospect of her staying on council.
“People in the east of my ward come up to me and say, ‘We’re really glad you’re still on Council working for the city.’ I get tons of comments like that.”
Even though she lost to Ianno, Chow had only positive things to say about her campaign. “In most of Canada 42% would have won the election, which is great. It means our riding is really progressive.”
Chow was also proud of the NDP’s campaign as a whole.
“We raised our issues,” she said. Chow said she believed that Martin adopted more progressive platforms on health care and post-secondary education because of NDP pressure. “If we didn’t have a strong campaign the Liberals would not have made all those promises.” Chow says she hopes the Liberals stick to their word.
Chow was unsure as to whether she would run again, though.
“I have lots of work to do at the city.”
Calls to Mr. Ianno’s office were not returned.
Sam Rahimi, SAC’s VP of External Affairs, was pleased with student involvement in this election.
“But,” he said, “there’s still a lot of work to be done to get youth involved.” He believes that a system of proportional representation would motivate more young people to participate in the democratic process. “Under the current system, parties with younger members don’t receive any seats.”
Rahimi was happy to see that “at polls around the campus, there were long line-ups for first time voters signing up.”
He also pointed out that the voter turn-out for Trinity-Spadina riding was much higher than the average for Toronto. According to preliminary results from the night of the election, 66.4% of eligible voters showed up at the polls for Trinity-Spadina, versus 60.0% for Toronto.
Rahimi was also optimistic about the resulting minority government.
“I think a minority government is exactly what Canada needs. It means there will be more constructive debate, rather than having people follow the party line all the time. It will set an interesting background for the next election.”
Asked whether he thought students would have a voice in this government, Rahimi said that the onus was on students and student leaders “to force members of parliament to focus on student issues. They won’t do it on their own.”
Arij Al Chawaf, GSU’s VP of External Affairs, thought that the timing of the election may have had a big impact on student involvement in this past election.
“The percentage of students on campus is very small. It’s harder to reach out to students over the summer, even though graduate students are still on campus, there’s less of them because they’re doing field work or have lighter course loads.”