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This week, Mr. Stewart sent out a missive on city letterhead in which he declared that a Conservative government under Andrew Scheer would be a terrible result for Vancouver.Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

Is it ever okay for a mayor in Canada to advocate against a federal party at election time?

Or should municipal leaders remain neutral, cognizant of the fact that the citizens to whom they are beholden have a range of political views and allegiances?

That is the question many are asking in the wake of Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s remarkable intrusion into the current federal election campaign.

This week, Mr. Stewart sent out a missive on city letterhead in which he declared that a Conservative government under Andrew Scheer would be a terrible result for Vancouver.

He boldly proclaimed that a prime minister Scheer would make housing less affordable, would kill a planned rapid transit line to the University of British Columbia and halt progress in the overdose crisis.

If that wasn’t galling enough, he had the audacity to add: “I want to be clear, [I’m] not telling people who to vote for. But I do want to tell people in Vancouver that if you care about these top issues: and I know most people do – Andrew Scheer would be worse than Stephen Harper.”

Remember: He’s not telling anyone who to vote for!

Either Mr. Stewart takes the good citizens for whom he toils as complete idiots, or he thought they might need a good laugh. (In his original release, the mayor also spelled Mr. Scheer’s last name wrong three times, writing it as Sheer instead of Scheer. He sent out a correction afterward.) Either way, there is no question that he was trying to influence voters – something most big city mayors generally try to stay away from, even if their own political leanings are a well-established fact.

Which is certainly the case with Mr. Stewart, the former NDP MP who was out campaigning not long ago with the person who hopes to continue representing his old riding in the House of Commons after Oct. 21 – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

So, of course Mr. Stewart was never going to be open-minded about what a Conservative government would mean for his city. I understand that. But was it wise for him to effectively make an enemy of someone with whom he may have to work in the not-too-distant future? Someone he will have to sit across from, cap in hand, looking for handouts to fund a host of projects.

Probably not.

I’m not positive that the Conservatives would make housing less affordable in Vancouver – nor is Mr. Stewart. Nor does he know for certain that a Conservative government would be the death knell for the SkyTrain extension to UBC. He likely has a legitimate case to make around the opioid crisis, and what a Scheer-led government would do about some of the programs aimed at grappling with this problem – programs with which many conservatives feel uncomfortable.

Also, there happens to be a lot of conservative voters who live in Vancouver. Maybe Mr. Stewart thinks they didn’t vote for him so who cares how they feel about his denunciations of Mr. Scheer and his party. But it doesn’t really work that way. A mayor is supposed to be agnostic, at least publicly, when it comes to elections at the provincial and federal level, in recognition of the fact that the people he or she serves support many different political parties.

I couldn’t imagine, for instance, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi ever publicly hammering away at Mr. Scheer, and urging people to vote for a progressive-minded alternative to the Conservatives. Even if he prefers Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, which my guess is he does, he would never in a million years stick his nose into this campaign in such a blatantly partisan way.

The same would go for Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, whose council joined others across the country in declaring a climate emergency. Think he hopes the Conservatives get in? Not a chance. Think he would ever say that publicly? Not a chance.

This week, former U.S. president Barack Obama sent out a tweet endorsing Mr. Trudeau – a development some felt was an unwelcome intrusion into our affairs. Few of those complaining said anything when former prime minister Harper endorsed the re-election of Narendra Modi in India.

As far as meddling goes, I can’t get too excited about either of those examples. What Kennedy Stewart did, however, is something else entirely.

Should the Conservatives win, Mr. Stewart will have to do business with them at some point. And you wouldn’t blame a prime minister Scheer if, at his first meeting with Mr. Stewart, he pulled the mayor’s letter out of his pocket and just set it on the table.

And if Mr. Stewart doesn’t walk away with much from that first encounter, he’ll have only himself to blame.

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