“I was door knocking until about 7:30 tonight and every door was either, ‘I voted for you,’ or, ‘I’m about to go vote for you.’”
After missing the mark by a little more than 2,000 votes in 2022, Liberal Party candidate Tyler Watt pulled off a sweeping victory for the seat in Nepean, finishing nearly 5,000 votes ahead of Progressive Conservative candidate Alex Lewis.
“I’m so honoured to be a part of the Ontario Liberal Party, going to Queen’s Park and adding another Ottawa seat in there for us,” Watt said.
The result in Nepean flipped what had been a PC stronghold represented by Lisa MacLeod since 2006 in what was then the riding of Nepean-Carleton. MacLeod beat Watt in 2022, but he said he felt more prepared this time.
“I was door knocking until about 7:30 tonight and every door was either, ‘I voted for you,’ or, ‘I’m about to go vote for you,’” Watt said. “I didn’t have that experience last time, so I feel people are more familiar with me this time.”
Watt’s campaign team staked out the auto detailing shop MP Detailing for his election night party, which drew more than 100 jubilant supporters.
He cited the short campaign window as a challenge to reaching more voters this time.
“We had such a limited amount of time in this election,” Watt said. “My original plan was to take six months off from work to knock on every single door at least twice in this election because I know, if I can have that personal connection with people, that we could have a great chance at winning this election.”
A registered nurse, Watt said he was instead working at a hospital “just over four weeks ago.”
He said he viewed that background as valuable in a province where “everyone has a health-care story and everyone agrees that we want it to be better.”
Evening Update
“I was born and raised here. I grew up here in the ’90s and I’ve seen how much has changed,” Watt said. “Back when I was a kid, it was farmland … Now it’s like its own city.
“We just haven’t been given the investments needed to keep up with how much we’ve been expanding when it comes to road infrastructure, when it comes to access to primary care and hospitals.”
Despite the loss in his first election, Lewis took it in stride, describing the campaign as one of the best experiences of his life.
At his election-night party at a Barrhaven pub appropriately called The Jolly Taxpayer, Lewis said it was unfortunate that the “tide had turned” in Nepean. He said he knocked on about 6,000 doors during the campaign and was well-received.
“The results at the door were not reflective of what we were seeing up there (on the results screen),” he said.
At the same time, though, Lewis wasn’t disappointed about going back to his job as an Ottawa police officer.
“I get to go back to policing and ride a motorcycle for a living?” he said. “There’s worse things.”
Former Nepean MPP Lisa MacLeod sent Lewis off on a high note, saying he did a great job in the short campaign and would have been a fine MPP. She was one of the high-profile members of the community who endorsed his campaign, along with former Ottawa police chief Vern White, former MP John Baird and former city councillor Jan Harder.
“It was four hard weeks for a young man who I consider to be the future of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party,” MacLeod said.
In keeping with the 2015 redrawing of federal boundaries, which divided Nepean-Carleton into separate constituencies of Nepean and Carleton, 2018 was the first provincial election for the modern riding of Nepean.
Within the boundaries of Nepean is the family-friendly suburb of Barrhaven, as well as several mature neighbourhoods, including Bells Corners and Craig Henry. The riding stretches from Bankfield Road in the south to Corkstown Road at its northernmost end and from Eagleson Road in the west to the Rideau River in the east. It has a population of 132,769, according to the 2021 census.
Over the years since she first won election in 2006, MacLeod held cabinet positions as minister of children, community and social services and minister of sports and tourism, but also struggled with her mental health. After six winning campaigns, MacLeod announced last fall she would not run again.
Lewis, a proudly gay, married father of one, has been a member of the Ottawa Police Service for a decade and was recently trained to join the squad of officers on motorcycles. He’s also an Ontario Police College lecturer who instructs officers on 2SLGBTQ+ community relations and previously was executive director of the Bells Corners BIA.
The NDP candidate was Max Blair, a recent Carleton University graduate who has been employed as a legislative assistant for the House of Commons.
The Green Party candidate was Shelagh McLean, who previously ran in the 2018 provincial election in Ottawa-Vanier. An Ottawa resident for more than 50 years, she’s a retired federal government human resources professional who remains active in her community as a volunteer and yoga teacher.
Other candidates included Peter Westaway (independent), John Kovach (New Blue Party) and Carmen Charbonneau (Ontario Party).
Unofficial voter turnout was 45.49 per cent in the riding.
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