Liberal candidate Andrew Telegdi lost the Kitchener-Waterloo riding for the second time to Conservative incumbent Peter Braid on May 2 by 2,184 votes.
“You know,” Telegdi said to the crowd of his devastated supporters, “I feel more upset for you than I do for myself. But I have to say, in all the campaigns I ran, by far this was the best campaign that I have ever been part of and that’s because of you guys.”
After the applause had died down, Telegdi expressed his beliefs that a Conservative majority lead by Stephen Harper is a poor change for the country. “So the challenge for us is going to be to reach out to center left and make sure, come next election, we’re not going to go with this kind of division again,” he said.
He persisted in stressing the negative aspects of the Harper majority and possible problems in the coming years. “The issue I think Canadians should be concerned about is we cannot have a Prime Minister who demonizes his opponents for two years, using taxpayer funded money to do it,” he said. “Why haven’t we been raising that issue more forcefully?”
“We’re going to have to build,” Telegdi said, explaining what he believed to be a possible solution to the night’s surprising results. “It really comes down to the kind of Canada that we want, and I don’t see the kind of Canada we want reflected in the votes tonight, as far as you folks are concerned.”
“We’re going to have to reach out and make things happen,” Telegdi said. “We have a great party tradition so please plan to stick around and be involved because we are going to have to get it together, because we have to get our Canada back.”
The Cord asked Telegdi if he thought the split votes between NDP and Liberal parties were a major cause of the Conservative majority. “Oh it had a huge impact,” Telegdi said. “It was the vote split that elected a majority conservative government.
I’m not going to blame the NDP but the fact of the matter is fundamentally this is not good for the country. Canada needs to follow the Green Party’s strategic voting plan in order to have a left wing government.”
When asked if a Liberal and NDP merging would be a solution, Telegdi responded, “I think we’re going to have to talk about it, unless we want a right wing government in Canada.”
Telegdi ended the night by announcing his continual support, but as a candidate, resignation from the Liberal campaign, “We’ll do it again in four years, I won’t be doing it but I’ll be there to help.”
