LFK Candidates In Place As Election Gets Underway

Jeff Green | Aug 18, 2021

NDP acclaim Steve Garrison as their standard bearer in the riding.

With the New Democratic Party (NDP) nomination of former Kingston City Councillor Steve Garrison, the five largest national parties all have candidates in place in the Lanark-Frontenac Kingston (LFK) riding, as the first week of a five week election campaign gets under way.

Garrison, a Kingston resident, said he lives “two miles south of the riding boundary at the 401” in a phone interview with the News on Monday.

While sitting on Kingston City Council between 2002 and 2010, Garrison sat on the Rural Advisory Committee, the Kingston Frontenac Public Library Board and the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority Board. He teaches at St. Paul Elementary School in Kingston, and is an executive member of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association and a Secretary of the Kingston and District Labour Council.

Earlier this summer, Garrison sought the NDP candidacy in his home riding of Kingston and the Islands, but the candidacy went to Vic Sahal after a virtual vote on July 6.

With the expectation that an election call was pending, Garrison was then approached by the Lanark Frontenac Kingston NDP riding association, which was conducting a candidate search as the Liberal government signaled it was preparing for a summer election call.

On August 10, John Fenick, the President of the LFK NDP riding association, announced that Steve Garrison had been acclaimed to the candidacy in a media release.

It’s a development that can be nothing but good for residents of the riding,” said Fenik in the release. “Steve Garrison is an exceptional candidate and he will be a great Member of Parliament. A teacher, union and social justice activist, Steve works tirelessly for the people he represents.”

Garrison’s career in municipal politics ended in 2010. He did not seek re-election at that time in order to focus on his parental role. He has three children, who live with him in Kingston. Now, with two of his children in their 20’s and one entering grade 12, he said he is ready to take an active role in electoral politics again.

He said that the succession of Liberal and Conservative governments in Canada over the last 40 years have not served the interest of working Canadians.

“I look at where Canadians are today as compared to 40 years ago, and see that they are worse off. The Liberals called an election this week for only one reason, to gain a majority. And we know what a Liberal majority means, they are a party that campaigns to the left but governs from the right. Their record speaks to that,” he said.

He cited income disparity as a big issue in Canada, and the one that motivates him to be active in politics.

“The economy that we need to build is an economy that is designed for people to find decent jobs and provide for themselves. To me that’s the big thing. The NDP policies of a Guaranteed Basic Income so people do not slip through the cracks, universal free Pharmacare and Dental Care, are all designed to ease the burden on families.”

He said that a tax on the ultra-rich can fund these programs.

“We are not talking about raising taxes on people making $50,000 a year, or even $100,000 a year. There are people who make $10 million a year and pay less tax than those who make $50,000. That is not right,” he said.

He said he will be spending the next few weeks travelling the breadth of the sprawling riding.

“It is a unique riding with a lot of diversity. There are people living in semi-urban larger towns, in smaller communities, rural people in the countryside, and farm communities. I look forward to spending the next few weeks in the riding full time, and when school starts I will be there after school and on weekends until the election,” he said.

Although the NDP have never won the LFK riding, which has been represented by Conservative MP Scott Reid since being created in 2014, Garrison said he is “in it to win it. I would not be running if I did not think the riding was winnable for the NDP.”

With Garrison in place for the NDP, the candidates in Lanark Frontenac Kingston, as of this week, are: Scott Reid – Conservative (incumbent), Michele Foxton (Liberal), Steve Garrison (NDP), Calvin Neufeld (Green) and Florian Bors (Peoples).

This will be the third federal election for the Lanark Frontenac Kingston riding, which was created in 2013 as part of a riding redistribution process. In 2015, Scott Reid won with just under 48% of the vote. The Liberal candidate, Phil Archambault, finished second with just under 34% of the vote, and John Fenik was third for the NDP, with just over 14% of the vote and Anita Payne of the Green Party received 3.5% of the vote.

In 2019, Reid’s vote was up marginally, topping 48%. The Liberal candidate, Kayley Kennedy, finished second with 25% of the vote, and Satinka Schilling of the NDP received 14% od the vote. The Green Party saw the biggest increase in 2019, mostly at the expense of the Liberal Party. Their candidate Stephen Kotze, received 11.2% of the vote

(Editor's note - With the call of the election being widely anticipated, the Frontenac News has published articles on 4 of the 5 candidates already, and we are in contact with the Scott Reid campaign to set up an interview for an article in our next edition. We will gather these articles in an election tab on Frontenacnews.ca for the convenience of our readers.

We will be talking to the candidates again as the September 20 vote approaches. With indoor gatherings restricted to 25, we are not planning any all candidates meetings at this time, although that may change. We are actively considering alternate formats to give our readers a chance to get to know the candidates better before advanced voting begins on September 10.)