Retired officers unleash battle strategies on Carleton-Mississippi Mills riding
BY ANDREW DUFFY, OTTAWA CITIZEN
APRIL 3, 2011
During her 26-year military career, Lt.-Col. Karen McCrimmon, the Liberal candidate in Carleton-Mississippi Mills, was the first woman in Canada to qualify as an air navigator and the first to command an air force squadron.
OTTAWA — It’s army versus air force in Carleton-Mississippi Mills where two retired military commanders are about to wage politics.
Decorated air force pioneer Lt.-Col. Karen McCrimmon will attempt to seize the riding for the Liberals from army Brig.-Gen. Gordon O’Connor, the former defence minister who now serves as chief whip in the Conservative government.
Such a high-ranking contest is unusual. Only 11 MPs in the last Parliament boasted military service — the lowest number in Canadian history — and of those, only six were officers.
O’Connor, a tank commander, has the advantage of an entrenched position in Carleton-Mississippi Mills. He has won the riding by more than 20,000 votes in each of the past two elections.
“I don’t try to defend it: I go out and try to earn every vote,” says the 71-year-old O’Connor. “I assume nothing.”
McCrimmon, 53, is not one deterred by a challenge. As a teenager, she joined cadets on a dare. She enlisted in the air force despite her mother’s remonstrations. During her 26-year military career, McCrimmon was the first woman in Canada to qualify as an air navigator and the first to command an air force squadron. She served in Afghanistan, the Balkans and the first Gulf War.
In Carleton-Mississippi Mills, McCrimmon is waging an asymmetrical campaign. She’s appealing to NDP, Green Party and former Progressive Conservative voters to unite behind her against Stephen Harper’s government.
“Liberals put the needs of people first,” says McCrimmon, “but they’re also trying to be fiscally responsible at the same time.”
The central defence issue in this election is the F-35 fighter aircraft purchase, and like their political parties, the candidates hold strong and conflicting views about its merits.
The Liberals have vowed to scrap the sole-sourced deal and hold a competition to select a new fighter. The Conservatives contend the F-35s are needed to defend Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and to ensure this country continues to play a role in international missions.
The 65 fighters are projected to cost between $16 billion and $21 billion, making them the most expensive single military purchase in Canadian history.
McCrimmon says it makes no sense to buy the fighters without a competition to ensure the best plane at the best price.
She says the F-35, which remains in development, has not been cold-weather tested, cannot land safely on some small northern runways and cannot be refuelled in the air with Canada’s existing tanker aircraft. Unlike the CF-18, it uses a single engine, she says, which makes it less-than-ideal for use in the Arctic.
“A procurement process is a risk management tool,” she argues. “They should do the process, find out what the weaknesses are, and address them.”
O’Connor defends the Lockheed Martin planes. The aerospace firm, he says, won an intense, four-year competition to design the new fighter for the U.S. military, a process that has informed the Conservative government’s decision.
“The aircraft is in the final stages of its development: it’s a world leader,” he says.
There are different versions of the F-35, O’Connor notes, and Canada will be able to select the one that best suits its needs. What’s more, he says, the purchase, when amortized over the life of the aircraft, will not cost appreciably more than what Canada now spends each year on its aging fleet of CF-18s.
While it promises to be spirited, the campaign in Carleton-Mississippi Mills will also be respectful.
McCrimmon’s military record, O’Connor says, shows she’s a “brave individual.” He calls the election political, not personal. For her part, McCrimmon has vowed to challenge O’Connor’s policy positions, but not his integrity: “The man wore a uniform. Regardless of our political differences, he still served his country. End of story.”
The biographies of both candidates offer compelling narratives.
McCrimmon was born in Weston, Ont., where her father worked at A.V. Roe Canada. A metallurgist technician, he helped build the CF-105 Arrow, an advanced interceptor aircraft that was ultimately scrapped by John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative government.
Out of work, McCrimmon’s father moved his young family to Timmins where he took a job as an airport baggage handler. He worked his way up to airport manager, first in Timmins, and then in Windsor.
Karen McCrimmon studied Russian at the University of Windsor with an eye to a career in the diplomatic corps. When she graduated, the foreign service wasn’t hiring, so she turned to the military, which in 1979 had opened its colleges to women.
“When I heard that women could fly, I thought, ‘I’m going to try this,’” she says. “I’d been around airplanes all my life. I loved airplanes.”
McCrimmon graduated in 1981 as the country’s first female air navigator and went on to log more than 5,000 hours of flying time. In 1998, she took command of 429 Transport Squadron in Trenton. Its members were teased mercilessly about reporting to a woman, but McCrimmon quickly earned their respect.
“It’s just about earning trust. That’s what leadership is: it’s a two-way street, it’s a relationship.”
Among her decorations is the Order of Military Merit, one of the highest peacetime military awards a Canadian soldier can receive.
In 2006, she retired from the military when her children were in high school and her mother was terminally ill. “There were other priorities to be dealt with: it was time,” says McCrimmon, who is married to an Air Canada pilot.
Gordon O’Connor is also a distinguished veteran — and the first general to serve as defence minister since Liberal Charles “Bud” Drury in the early 1970s.
Born in Toronto, O’Connor earned degrees in math, physics and philosophy from Concordia and York Universities. He dreamed of being a great scientist — “Einstein was a hero” — but settled on the family business, the military, after graduation. His father had been a sergeant in the air force.
O’Connor joined the army’s armoured branch in 1962. He was posted four times to Camp Gagetown, twice to staff colleges in England and twice to Lahr, Germany, where he served as a tank squadron commander, and in the late 1970s, as regiment commander.
“Those were the days of the ‘hot’ cold war,” he says. “We never knew when we were going to collide with the Warsaw Pact ... We had a number of alerts there where we thought we were going to war.”
O’Connor, who retired from the military in 1994, says he has decided to seek re-election because he enjoys the work of an MP.
McCrimmon says she wants to change the country’s political culture: “I want to show people that politics can be done differently: more civil, more responsive, more reflective of the needs of the community.”
Curiously, the Ottawa-area riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell also features two candidates with significant military credentials. Conservative incumbent Pierre Lemieux and Green party challenger Sylvie Lemieux (no relation) attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel during 20-year careers as engineers in the Canadian Forces.
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