In Oakville, the ground war continues. From the Mississauga like subdivisions in the eastern part of the riding westward through the longer established areas and on to the neighbourhoods near to Burlington, volunteers seek to identify supporters amidst the undecided and the many homes where nobody answers the door either because they are out or just do not feel like it. Although only the Liberal and CPC candidates have any where near enough volunteers to attempt this task, there are signs of a growing Green Party presence in that their signs are appearing on homes. Green’s growth could be more trouble for Liberal Bonnie Brown.

It has been worth the effort from the CPC point of view to door knock all homes – including ones with Liberal Bonnie Brown signs. It feels like panning for gold. For the most part, the reception is polite – even at homes with Liberal signs. Sometimes CPC supporters are found in those homes. In any case, the CPC teams are able to canvass areas fairly quickly because they have many volunteers.

Candidates have All Candidates Meetings to attend that pull them away from meeting and swaying undecided voters.. They may be useful for getting quotes in the local media but as far as being informative, many to most people who attend All Candidates Meetings are active partisans there to cheer on their candidate.

Terrence Young has come out with a new piece of literature that debunks certain claims made by the Liberals. It has some amusing jabs. Some of Bonnie Brown’s previous statements have been shown to be ridiculous.

Terrence Young has been helping out people in Oakville over the last two years while working at his day job. He has had a degree of flexibility that Bonnie Brown’s office lacked. Not everybody in Oakville lives in palatial lakeside mansions.

Up in Halton, which includes the norther part of the municipality of Oakville, Liberal Garth Turner is holding on primarily due to fluctuating national and regional trends. CPC candidate Lisa Raitt would serve the Halton riding well if elected but Turner is fighting for his political life here. During the dying days of the 1993 PC debacle, Turner managed to fire one more torpedo into the sinking SS Kim Campbell when he made pro Liberal remarks. Raitt might benefit if Turner fires another torpedo with the safeties disengaged so that it comes back and blows his own campaign out of the water.

In any election there are usually hard cores of supporters that will show up to do the grunt work of campaigns – the door knocking, the phoning, the sign placing and so many other tasks.   When a campaign is going well, more peripherally engaged people begin to show up at the campaign office.  It’s not easy to knock on someone’s door or phone a stranger.  If people believe they will not get a bad reception, they are more likely to volunteer.  Conversely, while a core suporter can withstand negative responses, more marginally engaged people are likely to find it difficult to do so.

Terence Young’s campaign is having good days.  Volunteers are plentiful but yet all feel needed as this race is still tight. 

Over at Bonnie Brown’s campaign, they may feel they are reliving the nightmare last days of ‘Asphalt Annie’ Mullvales’s doomed PC campaign in 1993.  Volunteers are becoming fewer as the the SS Dion takes on water dragging down Liberal candidares in the process.  Bonnie Brown is unlikely to survive the SS Dion shipwreck.

The anti Harper sentiment, although shrinking, is likely to find expression in NDP and Green support according to what non CPC supporters are saying. 

The Blue wave had swept into Oakville in 2006 but some last minute Liberal scare tactics caused it to retreat somewhat from the Mississauga border.  There will likely not be a repeat of the same phenomenon this time. 

Barring a knockout blow of Harper by Dion in the English language debate, the deal is done.  Terence Young will be elected MP for Oakville on October 14, 2008.  How many want to bet on such an event?  Not too many, I think.

Up in Halton, the CPC candidate is gaining thanks to blunders by Liberal Garth Turner caught on CPAC.  The Dion Train Wreck is also threatening to include Garth in the mangled wreckage soon to result from Dion’s leadership.  Initial resentment against Lisa Raitt’s appointment as CPC candidate is fading among previously upset CPC supporters as the prospect of getting rid of Turner grows stronger.

The CPC sent in Diane Ablonczy to help out in Oakville on Thursday September 18 as she has her own riding in Calgary locked up. The CPC national campaign team would not waste time sending their strong MP’s into hopeless ridings or ones they will almost certainly win. Terence Young has been door knocking since being nominated to run again for the CPC after his narrow loss in 2006. The mix of national trends and local hard work by Mr. Young and his team should finally move the current incarnation of Oakville into the CPC column. The Liberals seem to be flogging Bonnie Brown as some kind of opposition crusader seemingly conceding that their national campaign is a bust. Ms. Brown should have showed in the House once in a while if that was the way she wanted to brand herself.

Halton is a more difficult situation for the CPC. Garth Turner will get the Liberal core vote plus some CPC supporters annoyed with the way the CPC candidate, Lisa Raitt, was appointed and parachuted into the riding. She is certainly well qualified and should get the core CPC vote. This riding voted for a provincial PC turned federal Liberal (Gary Carr) in 2004. Whether it will vote for a CPC turned Liberal in the person of Garth Turner remains to be seen.

Assuming another election is a few years away, the Oakville and Halton electoral boundaries are likely to be reconfigured follwing the next round of electoral district redistribution.

Terence Young’s campaign office was swamped with volunteers on Saturday September 13 as the campaign ramped up into the next phase.  He has been campaigning ever since he narrowly lost in 2006.  He will likely win this time.  While the CPC may be less successful in Mississauga, Vaughn, Markham, Oakridges and Pickering, it should finally be able to win ridings such as Newmarket-Aurora – and Oakville.  Liberal MP Bonnie Brown may have finally run out of luck.

Halton is another question altogether as Liberal Garth Turner has built up a following and the CPC has parachuted in Lisa Raitt from Toronto.