By Althia Raj
Richard Mahoney looks out of place in his Bank Street office. A floor above is the Rideau Club where gentlemen wear ties and ladies lock their fur coats in the washroom.
Mahoney, 46, wears cotton pants, a yellow and black shirt, and running shoes — not the Canali suit one expects of a law partner at Fraser Milner Casgrain, but an appropriate campaign outfit.
After all, it’s election season.
It’s a good thing Mahoney’s comfortable because he’ll face tough questions on voters’ doorsteps in Ottawa Centre.
Before the campaign even began, there was some controversy over whether he’d registered as a lobbyist while already the Liberal candidate for Ottawa Centre. Mahoney insists he didn’t do anything that was “lobbying” and only sought to register as a lobbyist as a precaution.
He says he’s ready to protect his reputation in court. He threatened to sue Centretown News over an editorial published in November, but backed off once an apology was printed.
Mahoney may be familiar to many in the riding. He ran unsuccessfully in 2004 against former NDP leader Ed Broadbent.
But the candidate says his chances of winning are better now that Broadbent has resigned. Mahoney says he is relieved to be “running against a mere mortal.”
“The attraction of Broadbent as a candidate went beyond his ability to debate me,” says Mahoney. “He is literally an icon and people saw him as such.”
Due to his association with Prime Minister Paul Martin, Mahoney might be cabinet material if the Liberals are elected. “We’ll jump off the next bridge when we get there,” he says.
He’s no stranger to politics. At age 9 he organized friends to bike around his Toronto neighbourhood with Pierre Trudeau signs in their hands at the height of Trudeaumania. He says Trudeau shaped his idea of a modern, tolerant and multicultural Canada.
Mahoney joined the Liberals at 23 while in his first year of law school at the University of Ottawa, eventually becoming president of the Young Liberals. He worked on John Turner’s 1984 election campaign and, later, on Martin’s unsuccessful 1990 leadership bid. He then served for two years as Martin’s executive assistant before becoming president of the Ontario Liberal party from 1992 to 1995.
Mahoney says he’ll campaign on the Martin government’s record. “The contemporary view that Martin hasn’t done enough is a) wrong and b) will be proved wrong,” he says. He admits Martin failed to meet expectations, but says no one could have met them.
Mahoney says the Liberals started a national daycare program, boosted foreign aid and money for the military, and provided tax rebates to cities for housing, infrastructure and urban transit initiatives — such as his pet project, the O-Train.
He says he also wants to change the way local organizations function.
“Their programs, their work, adapts yearly if not monthly as to what the needs of the city are. The federal government cannot move that quickly,” he says.
In a riding filled with bureaucrats, Mahoney says public service jobs won’t be cut. “We have a number of new Canadians coming in the next five or 10 years. That’s going to take more resources and more public servants. I don’t see the civil service contracting; I would imagine it will be expanding.”
Mahoney and his family live in the Glebe. Since returning to Ottawa 14 years ago, he’s worked as an employment, immigration and government relations lawyer. He’s on the board of directors of Care Canada, an international relief organization that’s petitioning the government to increase foreign aid levels to the UN target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income.
“The ideal of point seven, I support and celebrate but the reality (is) that nobody has seriously, including our country, made any significant effort to get there,” he says.
The Liberals have committed to increase foreign aid to 0.37 per cent by 2010. Voters will be left to judge if Mahoney’s Liberal parcel is what they really want after the season of giving ends.