Red ripple in blue Calgary? Liberals eye record gains in Conservative stronghold

A veteran political organizer in Calgary asked Lindsay Luhnau if she'd consider running for the Liberals last fall.

It was an easy "no thanks" for Luhnau, director of a local investment co-operative — Justin Trudeau's party was polling miles behind the Conservatives, and the leader's name was mud nationwide, let alone in blue Alberta's biggest city. 

Then in March, after Mark Carney became Liberal leader, Luhnau reached out to the politico again. Was it too late to get her nomination papers in, after all?

"This was not really a winning proposition six months ago," the Calgary Centre candidate said, as she canvassed blocks in a Marda Loop neighbourhood dominated by red signs bearing her name. This part of the riding went Conservative by almost 20 points in the last election. 

With the Liberals hugging onto a national polling lead that defies their previously dismal odds, the party is now campaigning with hopes of achieving the unprecedented and once-unthinkable.

Four red seats in Calgary.

Luhnau is hopeful in Centre, which the Liberals held for a single term in 2015. North of the Bow River, the party believes it can flip Calgary Confederation, the other inner-city district.

In the city's northeast, George Chahal is defending the turf he won in 2021 in Calgary McKnight, trying to make history as the first two-term Liberal MP in Calgary history. And just north of his riding, Hafeez Malik is pushing in the redrawn riding of Calgary Skyview, where Conservatives have been marred by infighting and controversy over their candidates' nomination.

"We have an opportunity to win more seats, but we're going to have to work right to the end to make sure we're able to do that," Chahal told CBC News.

In the middle of the campaign's final week, the Centre, Confederation and Skyview ridings are rated as toss-ups, according to seat projections from polling aggregators 338 Canada and The Writ (by Éric Grenier, the researcher behind CBC's Poll Tracker). Calgary McKnight was forecast by both as a Liberal hold, while both researchers predicted the other seven Calgary seats would likely stay Conservative.

Liberal hopes for Calgary are unusually high, but most campaigners are aware that history and habit aren't on their side in this traditionally Conservative city. They'll need elements to all line up in their favour to rack up multiple wins here, in a city which has been represented by a grand total of three Liberals MPs in all elections since the 1970s.

Carney's leadership seems to be one of those factors putting wind in Liberal sails. Chahal was one of the earliest Liberal MPs to openly call for Trudeau's resignation last year, and he can sense the aversion to voting for the party has eased.

"With Mark Carney, the fear factor is gone," Chahal said.

Liberal aspirations are tied to wooing more voters like Marda Loop resident Christopher Thierman, a self-described fiscal conservative who has long voted that way. The retired telecommunications worker said he admired Carney when he was Bank of Canada governor under then-prime minister Stephen Harper, and has been turned off by the Conservatives now deriding the economist.