Singh in need of a lifeline

There is certainly a vibe on the campaign trail in Montreal, Craig Sauvé told me this week: Rage.

- JUSTIN LING

When I sat down with the NDP candidate in this month’s federal byelection, he had just come back from knocking on doors. At one home, he met a guy still seething from a downpour that flooded his basement. It was just another problem, on top of crime, a housing crisis and more. “He feels like he’s not getting help from anybody,” Sauvé told me inside his campaign office “Nobody’s here.”

Sauvé excluded, of course. The high-profile city councillor made his name on precisely those issues. Now, he’s running to channel that anger into an upset win. On the campaign trail in LaSalle—Émard— Verdun, long considered one of the safest Liberal seats in the country, Sauvé says he’s hearing from longtime Liberal after long-time Liberal that the prime minister needs to go.

Sauvé is a pretty mild-mannered guy. (He’s been a friendly acquaintance for years.) But he says he’s come to identify with the “palpable anger” he’s hearing from voters, especially in his working class corner of Montreal. “The Liberal party has been really dragging its feet (on housing) over the past nine years,” he says.