Former pilot to win seat as MP

Edmonton - Anne McLellan has ministerial titles in front of her name -
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety. Before these
jobs, she was minister of natural resources, minister of health and
minister of justice, to say nothing of being Alberta's political
minister in Ottawa.
Politically speaking in Edmonton, however, her nickname is Landslide
Anne. Ms. McLellan was supposed to lose every election since entering
politics in 1993, but she never has. In 2000, her margin was a shade
above 700 votes. It won't be any easier this time.
When the Conservatives pin a map of Alberta to the wall, Ms.
McLellan's riding of Edmonton Centre (her old riding of Edmonton West,
with borders redrawn) is the bull's-eye. But then she was the
bull's-eye, too, in 1997 and 2000 for the Reform Party and Canadian
Alliance.
Laurie Hawn is the latest opponent to target Ms. McLellan, and at
least in military terms, he knows something about targeting. Mr. Hawn,
the Conservative candidate, spent 30 years in the Canadian air force,
among other responsibilities as a fighter pilot for CF-18s. He was one
of the first three airmen authorized to fly CF-18s in 1982. Campaign
literature shows him a pilot's uniform in front of one of the planes.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Hawn deplores the state of Canada's military and
vows his party will do something about it. He accepts that the new
Liberal Defence Minister, David Pratt, "cares" about the military and
will try to improve matters, but "he's going to be disappointed."
Mr. Hawn favours something not yet enshrined in Conservative policy:
doubling the military budget over 10 years to bring Canada's defence
spending to the NATO average. He, too, might be disappointed if the
Conservatives ever form the government, because that sort of increase
is whopping by any standards. But before he can pit his preference
against fiscal and political realities, he and the party have to win.
To that end, Mr. Hawn says he has already knocked on 11,000 doors,
having started work last summer. This week, Conservative leadership
candidate (and the likely new leader) Stephen Harper dropped by. He'll
certainly be back during the campaign, given the importance the
Conservatives attach to knocking off Ms. McLellan.
Asked what issues he's finding on the doorsteps, Mr. Hawn replies:
health care, crime and taxes. His own policy prescriptions are
standard Conservative fa eliminating waste in government, cleaning
up corruption, lowering taxes, stopping corporate subsidies, opposing
the Kyoto accord on climate change, closing down the gun registry, and
enhancing Parliament's power at the expense of the Prime Minister's
Office.
He, like Conservatives everywhere, has been handed a political
windfall from the sponsorship scandal. Before the Auditor-General's
report, the Liberals had guarded hopes for gains in Western Canada.
Now they're fighting to protect what they have, including Edmonton
Centre. Redistribution has substantially shifted the riding's
boundaries. It envelops most of downtown Edmonton and stretches
farther to the south, losing a big chunk to the west.
The net effect, according to both the Hawn and McLellan camps, is a
wash. The artificial exercise of superimposing the results of the 2000
election on the new riding boosts Ms. McLellan's margin from just over
700 to about 900, or a handful of votes per poll.
Mr. Hawn joined the Conservatives from the Canadian Alliance stream.
He'd been president of an adjacent Alliance riding association, and
this is his first time as a candidate. In a riding so closely
contested, what happens to the former Progressive Conservative vote
could be decisive.
The Tories gained only 5 per cent of the votes in 2000. Will a
majority of their supporters fold themselves into the new party and
support Mr. Hawn? Or, having resisted the Alliance, will they feel
more comfortable with the Liberals led by Paul Martin - whose Deputy
Prime Minister and confidant is Ms. McLellan?
And what about the 5-per-cent who voted NDP last time? Will they stay
faithful to a lost cause, at least in Edmonton Centre? Will some of
them vote Liberal to stop the Conservatives, whom the Liberals will
charge are the old Alliance in new clothing? Or will the improvement
in NDP national fortunes increase NDP votes in Edmonton Centre,
thereby perhaps bleeding support from Ms. McLellan? Mr. Hawn obviously
hopes for this result. "Vote-splitting on the left sounds good to us,"
he quips.
Mr. Hawn says he has received financial donations from six provinces
and territories plus Canadians in four U.S. states. That's a small
testament to how Edmonton Centre, with Anne McLellan in the
bull's-eye, is one of the Conservatives' prime targets.


Laurie was born on Mother's Day, 1947 and raised in Winnipeg.
Laurie joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1964 and received his
pilot wings and Queen's Commission in Gimli, Manitoba in January 1967.
He flew the T-33 Silver Star as an Instructor Pilot and several
fighters as a Tactical Fighter Pilot and Instructor. These included
the CF-5 Freedom Fighter, CF-104 Starfighter, and CF-18 Hornet.
In thirty years in the Air Force, Laurie rose to the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel. He held many high profile senior staff positions,
commanded a CF-18 Tactical Fighter Squadron and was the operational
commander at 4 Wing Cold Lake, supervising six squadrons, 1,800
personnel, multi-million dollar budgets, and multi-billion dollar
assets. He has served in Europe and many parts of Canada.
Upon retirement in 1994, Laurie entered the financial services
business. He has successfully managed branch offices and held senior
supervisory positions in this highly regulated and very demanding
industry.
Laurie has been very involved in his community. His first project
after retirement was as Executive Director of the highly successful
1996 Edmonton International Air Show. He has served as a Director of
the Cold Lake Credit Union, as a Director of the Canadian Institute of
Management (Cold Lake Chapter), and on the Advisory Board of Masakhane
College in Cold Lake.
Laurie has been active with the 20,000 member Air Force Association of
Canada, serving as Honourary President of Alberta Group and winning
the honour of 2002 Member of the Year for Alberta Group. He is a
member and frequent contributor to the Council for Canadian Security
in the 21st Century. Laurie also served as the Honourary Colonel for
417 Combat Support Squadron for five years.
Laurie joined the Reform Party of Canada in 1993, and has most
recently served two years as President of the Constituency Association
for the Canadian Alliance in Edmonton Southwest.
Laurie was nominated as the Canadian Alliance Candidate for Edmonton
West in June 2003. An aggressive door-to-door campaign was launched to
meet constituents and fund-raising from across Canada and beyond was
very successful.
On February 28th, Laurie was officially acclaimed as the Conservative
Party of Canada candidate for Edmonton Centre. Campaign activities
have accelerated rapidly and the team's door-knocking efforts are at
over 12,000 doors and counting. Laurie and the team are more than
ready to take on Deputy Prime Minister whenever her boss musters up
the courage to call an election.
Laurie and his wife of thirty-five years, Judy, have two grown
children, Jennifer and Robert.

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NAIROBI (CNN) -- The office of the Kenyan president Saturday issued a
directive suspending all flights to and from Somalia, Kenya Airport
Authority officials told CNN Saturday.
The ban effectively grounded 10 to 15 small to medium-sized aircraft
due to take off from Nairobi's private Wilson Airport Saturday morning
with cargo and passengers. It also meant that flights from Somalia
were not allowed to enter Kenyan air space.
It was not immediately clear whether the very few commercial carriers
flying from Somalia to Nairobi's larger Jomo Kenyatta International
Airport were affected by the directive, however the government
statement implied all flights and overflights would be affected.
The ban on such flights appears to be connected to current fears among
American officials that an aircraft could be used as a weapon to fly
into a building associated with U.S. interests in Nairobi, such as the
U.S. Embassy.
The U.S. Embassy Saturday issued a statement saying it would be closed
Monday and Tuesday of next week because of what it described as "new
and concrete information concerning the continuing threat of terrorist
activity in Kenya and East Africa."
A police source in Nairobi said that a police operation possibly aimed
at netting terrorist suspects continued Saturday in the Nairobi suburb
of Eastleith, the suburb has a large Somali-speaking community.
Saturday's suspension of flights to and from Somalia came a day after
intelligence and diplomatic sources told CNN that U.S. intelligence
agencies have uncovered information about a possible al Qaeda plot --
involving possibly a plane or a truck bomb -- to attack the U.S.
Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya,
And on Thursday, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a "defense
terrorism warning report" to government agencies and officials in the
East Africa region, warning of a specific threat to U.S. interests in
Kenya, intelligence sources said.
The threat is deemed specific, credible and ongoing and the United
States is "taking it very seriously," officials said.
A senior U.S. official said the threat information pointed to a plane
or a truck bomb being used as the "weapon of choice."
State Department officials confirmed that the target was the new
Nairobi embassy, built to replace a facility destroyed in a 1998
terrorist attack.
Kenya and the Horn of Africa region have long been centers of al Qaeda
terrorist activity. U.S. authorities blame al Qaeda for the August
1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania.
Last November, suspected al Qaeda terrorists attacked an Israeli hotel
in Mombassa, Kenya, killing at least 13 people. The same day, would-be
terrorists unsuccessfully tried to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet
with surface-to-air missiles.
In May, British Airways and Israel's El Al suspended flights into
Kenya because of terrorist threats. Intelligence sources told CNN that
Thursday's warning was not an extension of those earlier threats but
was based on fresh information.
Last month, the State Department issued a travel warning urging
Americans to defer all non-essential travel to Kenya. Non-essential
U.S. personnel in the country were also urged to leave.