June 16 - Disillusionment with the political mainstream made Stuart Ryan do it.

Stuart Ryan campaigned for Ed Broadbent in the 1988 election, but he's running against him this election as the Communist Party of Canada candidate for Ottawa-Centre.

"He just blew it," said Ryan about Broadbent who ignored the major citizen-driven issue of whether Canada should sign a Free Trade Agreement with the United States during the campaign 16 years ago.

"I got angry."

Ryan's anger deepened when Svend Robinson dropped out of the New Democratic Party leadership race in 1997. Ryan looked for alternatives. A Communist Party of Canada cadre won him over to the party.

Ryan and party leader Miguel Figueroa, candidate for Beaches-East York in Toronto, two of the 31 confirmed Communist candidates, spoke to 18 people in a basement room of the Ottawa Public Library in the Ottawa-Centre riding on June 16. So far, it is the most mixed group of people I've seen near any of the candidates in this riding.

In the liveliest exchange of the evening, a New Democratic Party supporter at the meeting questioned why the Communist Party had made the "mistake" of running a candidate against Ed Broadbent.

Figueroa launched into his spin for the vote-stealing accusation. "We reject the idea we steal votes from the NDP. If anything, we'll get more votes for the NDP" because of the questions raised by Communist candidates.

But I don`t buy either line. The mistake is the NDP`s inability to calculate the odds and a latent desire to co-opt the so-called left-wing of Canadian politics. Ryan and Figueroa have no chance of becoming parliamentarians and they know it. In the 2000 election, the 52 candidates of the Communist Party of Canada received 8,776 votes nationally.

The two candidates denounced the lack of debate on Canadian jobs, sovereignty and foreign policy at the nationally-televised leadership debates between Canada`s two "top business parties" (and those other guys) on June 14 and 15.

"The choices before the Canadian people are pretty stark," said Ryan.

"Everywhere you turn, there's some sort of Liberal government that's screwing the people," said Figueroa. When he collected the 100 signatures for his nomination papers in Toronto, he faced the frustration and anger of people.

"The anger is not just against the Liberals, but at the corruption of the whole system."

Conservatives and their allies in the media have used the Liberal sponsorship scandal to tap people's discontent and create the political space for a Conservative government, he said. The best case scenario would be a Liberal minority with a "strong progressive block."

"The election of a Tory majority government would constitute a devastating turn to the right," said Figueroa, adding that the struggle will not end on election day.

"We will meet on the [picket] line and the barricades and in the trenches after June 28."