Anne Lagacé Dowson on DTNicholson's Wednesday-Night.com

2008

Biography

As host of CBC’s Home Run, Radio Noon, and guest host of As It Happens and Cross Country Check Up, Anne is an award winning public broadcaster, the best listener on radio. Fluently bilingual, Anne has also been a frequent contributor on the CBC’s French radio network and was a judge on the French version of Canada Reads, up against Bernard Landry.

Anne is an environmentalist, a long time member of the NDG Green Cooperative and a supporter of Friends of the Mountain. She and her husband, the award-winning documentary filmmaker, Brian McKenna have two young daughters, Emma and Tess. Anne was on the Governing Board of Emma’s school, Bancroft.

Anne is famous in Montreal for her support of the arts. Three times in the last year Governor General Michaelle Jean has invited her to host national forums at Rideau Hall. She is a stalwart at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival and when Salman Rushdie came to town, she hosted an evening for the literary lion at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Anne decided it was time to take a more active role in doing something about the issues facing Montrealers. She joined Jack Layton’s team to help fight for better education and health care. Anne wants Canada to return to its role as the world’s greatest peacekeeper. And she wants a return of civility to the House of Commons, so it’s no longer a shouting reality show.

But the real tipping point that made Anne realize she had to do something more? When her 7 year-old daughter, Emma, asked her “Mummy, what do we do when there are no fish left in the oceans”?

14 oct 2008 Westmount - Ville-Marie 2008 Results

Friday 10 October 2008 Westmount--Ville-Marie spoilers like their chances
On the environment, Lagacé Dowson argues that the NDP's Five-Point Green Agenda is "more all-encompassing" than the Liberals' Green Shift plan, but eschews the infamous Carbon Tax, which has been "a mixed success elsewhere" in reducing emissions. "Rather than going after people with less latitude to fix the problem," she says, the NDP Green Agenda puts the burden where it belongs — on polluters. The plan also calls for a transfer of one cent per dollar of the gas tax to municipalities, and the development of so-called "green-collar jobs" through funding and tax incentives.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 We get anglos' concerns: NDP candidates
Thomas Mulcair and Anne Lagacé Dowson. But language not the most pressing issue on voters' minds, party's Montreal stars tell editorial board

Wednesday-Night.com/Wed1381.asp

Wed1381 video Gerald Ratzer asked Anne Legacé Dowson What She could do for Westmount 20 Aug 2008 - 3 min Video page

Look to take the country in a different direction

thanks to the Westmount Independent

Wednesday 20 August 2008 Jack Layton and the NDP believe prosperity and social justice
can go hand in hand. By investing in each other and cleaning our environment, hard-working Canadians can together seize the enormous potential of the 21st century.
Millions of Canadians voted NDP last election to ensure a progressive, effective opposition to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. New Democrat MPs are rising to that challenge with a practical agenda that puts working families first.

Monday 18 August 2008 Garneau, Dowson going head-to-head for Westmount byelection seat
The riding has been Liberal since 1958 and Marc Garneau wants to keep it that way. But not the NDP's Dowson.
...Anne Lagacé Dowson, eased out of a slightly rusty sedan and her mostly female entourage got ready to fan out across an upper-middle class neighbourhood, to knock on doors and ask people if they'd like to meet the NDP candidate. "The NDP is canvassing. This is how Alexa [McDonough] started out as the first woman MLA in Nova Scotia, with 51 men banging on doors, one door after the next," she said.

Anne Lagacé Dowson, who's running in the Montreal-area riding of Westmount, described Canada's involvement in Afghanistan as "holding the coattails of the U.S. bully."..

July 9th 2008 Lagacé Dowson to run on NDP ticket
As the anticipation continues to build for the federal government's announcement of Westmount-Ville Marie's impending by-election, the NDP has jumped into the fray with its candidate — broadcaster Anne Lagacé Dowson.

Tuesday Jul 8, 2008 NDP leader Jack Layton attended the announcement of Anne Lagacé Dowson's candidacy in Westmount yesterday. She said her chances of a victory are better in a by-election than a general election. No sacrificial lamb in Westmount
Veteran CBC Montreal broadcaster Anne Lagacé Dowson doesn't see herself as the New Democratic Party'...She is married to documentary film maker Brian McKenna and they have two children.
The Conservative candidate in Westmount is Guy Dufort, a lawyer with Heenan Blaikie.
The Green Party has nominated Claude Genest while the Bloc Québécois will be represented by Charles Larivée. Theoretically, in a tight race, Lagacé Dowson could win the riding with less than 30 per cent of the vote.
In the last election, the NDP polled 15 per cent of the vote in Westmount.

Monday, July 7, 2008 |Former CBC journalist to run for NDP in Westmount

Anne Lagacé Dowson was joined by NDP Leader Jack Layton to formally announce her candidacy in Westmount-Ville-Marie. (Eva Boodman/CBC)
Veteran journalist Anne Lagacé Dowson has confirmed she will be the New Democratic Party's federal candidate in Montreal's Westmount-Ville-Marie riding.

Lagacé Dowson made the announcement in Westmount Park on Monday morning, accompanied by NDP Leader Jack Layton.

Lagacé Dowson was granted a leave of absence without pay from her position as host of the CBC's provincewide call-in show, Radio Noon, to run for federal office in a byelection, the national broadcaster announced last week.

Lagacé Dowson, 49, admitted she is a political neophyte, but told CBC she has been taking calls from concerned radio listeners for years – and felt it was time to make the leap into politics.

"Journalists are human beings too," she said. "They have to do what they think is right, and at a certain point, as a spectator, you can only do so much, and at some point, you have to decide if you want to become part of the solution, and not part of the problem."

Westmount-Ville-Marie is widely considered to be one of Montreal's strongest Liberal bastions, but Lagacé Dowson argued that voters are ready for change.

The byelection is "a chance to send a clear message to Ottawa that it's time to reconsider, and that even Westmount-Ville-Marie is not in the bag for the Liberal Party," she said, pointing to the NDP's byelection victory in Outremont last fall with former provincial environment minister Thomas Mulcair.

Lagacé Dowson will confront Liberal candidate and former astronaut Marc Garneau, who said Westmount can't be compared to Outremont.

"I wouldn't draw any parallels between Westmount and Outremont," Garneau said on Monday. "I have been on the ground here for the past eight months. I have been working very hard in the riding and I believe that the [Liberal] Party has been receiving some very favourable support."

"The fact that I live in Westmount, and am integrated in the community here – my wife and two children were very present in the community – and that has allowed me to get to know Westmount in a very intimate way."

"I'm looking forward for this election, and I hope that Mr. Harper will announce that election very soon," Garneau added.

Conservative candidate Guy Dufour – a Montreal labour lawyer – said voters in Westmount have two options in the byelection: "Either Conservatives, or the quote unquote, the real opposition, the NDP," he told CBC News.

"I have to admit the NDP has shown to be the real opposition [in the House of Commons], they stand on their views, and they're ready to vote, accordingly. The Liberals don't do that," Dufour said.

Voters in the riding are worried about a wide variety of issues, from the economy to family support, and the Conservatives offer a "practical approach to solving problems people face," he said.

Claude Genest is running for the Green Party, while the Bloc Québécois named Charles Larivée is its candidate.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has until July 25th to call the byelection.

Lagacé Dowson upholds her past journalism career

Lagacé Dowson's decision to jump into politics raised questions about journalistic objectivity, which she addressed on Monday.

Journalists "live in an environment [and] they're affected by the issues that are being debated," she told CBC. "The best thing you can do as a journalist is attempt to be fair-minded, even-handed, dispassionate about these questions."

"I think in my journalism I made an effort to ask the questions that I thought the listeners were thinking. I tried to put myself in that position, and I worked very hard at keeping my own opinions out of it as much as possible. But there is no such thing as neutrality, really. We are all human beings with our ideas.

"We live in Quebec, we're Anglophones, a linguistic minority inside a linguistic minority. So we are all affected by those issues," she said.

The riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie has been vacant since long-serving Liberal MP Lucienne Robillard retired from politics earlier this year.

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