#onpoli SPECIAL SIDEBAR - Part 3: the #munipoli candidates of the Greens and the NDP
And the rest!
Welcome to another issue of #munipoil Matters, where you can find the latest updates on what’s happening in the often underreported area of municipal elections, politics and governance happening in the local councils spread across Canada and beyond.
The Ontario provincial election campaign is in full swing and as of May 12, all candidates listed on Elections Ontario are the confirmed candidates for each of Ontario’s 124 ridings. For this election cycle, there seems to be a rather large number of municipal elected politicians running for all four main parties.
While the Progressive Conservatives appear to have the bulk of the local government experience running on their slate, the Liberals, the Ontario NDP and even the Greens have also managed to recruit those with current, past municipal governing experience or those who previously ran for a council of some form.
This will be a series of special SIDEBAR issues focusing on those candidates. Let’s take a look at who running for MPP in each party has a municipal government background.
This list is exclusively those who are currently, formerly served on a city or town council or who previously ran for council before running for MPP. I am not including school trustees, police board members, or current MPPs who used to be in local government.
Parts 1 and 2 took a look at the slate offered by the governing PCs and the Ontario Liberals. Now in our final instalment, here are the candidates from the NDP and the Green Party.
Brampton North: Newly minted NDP candidate Sandeep Singh, who defeated sitting NDP MPP Kevin Yarde in a rare nomination contest, actually ran for town councillor in Caledon’s Ward 2 in 2018 before this foray into provincial politics.
Chatham-Kent-Leamington: Brock McGregor is a two term municipal councillor in the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, representing Ward 6 (Chatham). He was first elected in 2014 and reelected in 2018.
Kingston and the Islands: Mary Rita Holland is the current Kingston City Councillor for District 7 (Kingscourt-Rideau) having served in the role since 2014. She is also the city’s Deputy Mayor.
Mississauga East-Cooksville: NDP candidate Khawar Hussain is a public health inspector who also ran for Mississauga City Council in Ward 3 in 2018.
Niagara West: Former Pelham mayor and Niagara regional councillor Dave Augustyn is the party’s candidate here, making him the only former mayor running for the New Democrats in this year’s election.
Nipissing: Erika Lougheed is a municipal councillor from East Ferris township. With Vrebosch running for the Liberals and both women looking to oust the previous sitting PC MPP, former North Bay mayor Vic Fedeli, the Nipissing riding will have candidates with municipal experience from three major parties.
Perth-Wellington: Jo-Dee Burbach is currently a Stratford City Councillor.
Scarborough Centre: It seems the name Neethan Shan will pop up for just about every available political office in Scarborough these days. Shan has been a school trustee from York Region, the TDSB, and for a brief year a Toronto City Councillor representing Scarborough-Rouge River.
Here is a complete list of Shan’s runs for elective office: for City Council in 2010 and 2014 against Raymond Cho, also a former councillor now a PC MPP and Seniors Minister. Provincial elections in 2011, 2014 for the NDP. Shan ran in a by-election for TDSB trustee in 2016, only to run in another by-election in 2017 after Cho was elected to Queen’s Park.
In that 2017 by-election, Shan finally got into Council but that only lasted a year when the Ford government reduced the size of Toronto’s council, leading Shan to run against another strong candidate in Jennifer McKelvie, who ended up winning the Scarborough-Rouge Park ward they both contested.
Toronto Centre: Kristyn Wong-Tam might be the most high profile municipal politician running for the NDP. A three term city councillor representing first Ward 27 (Toronto Centre-Rosedale) then the revamped Toronto Centre ward in 2018, Wong-Tam was one of the more vocal progressive critics during the Rob Ford mayoralty.
Wellington-Halton Hills: Diane Ballantyne is a Wellington County councillor, elected to Ward 6 since 2018.
Windsor-Tecumseh: NDP candidate Gemma Grey-Hall ran in the Windsor municipal election in 2018, where she lost to the Liberal candidate she is facing in this election, Ward 8 Councillor Gary Kaschak.
Green Party
Barrie-Innisfil: Bonnie North has run for the Greens numerous times, for the federal Greens in 2015 and 2019, as well as the Ontario Greens four years ago. During the 2018 municipal elections in Barrie, North also ran for Barrie City Council in Ward 7, coming in third place.
Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound: Danielle Valiquette is a Councillor in the Town of Grey Highlands.
Toronto-St. Paul’s: Ian Lipton is a sustainability and climate change specialist who ran for Toronto City Council in 2018.
Most of the candidates that have some local level experience running for the Ontario NDP are primarily trustees coming from school boards, and given the party’s historic support of public education this is not shocking.
The party did attempt to get some local star power in Ajax, the riding of former Finance Minister Rod Phillips, in former mayor Steve Parish. But Parish was dropped after revelations that he supported naming a street in Ajax after a Nazi warship commander.
You have to admire the NDP’s ingenuity in opposition research this cycle: they fine tuned their game in chopping the legs off their own candidates before moving onto other parties, which resulted in three Liberal candidates being dropped by that party just days before the nomination deadline by Elections Ontario.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this article omitted McGregor as the NDP candidate in Chatham-Kent-Leamington. We regret the error.
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