Scott Reid Seeks Eighth Term as MP

Jeff Green | Aug 25, 2021

So when travel restrictions were lifted in July, he did the same thing that many Ontarians have done this summer, decided to visit Nova Scotia for an early August vacation in the Annapolis Valley.

It was a first ever visit for the Reid family, and it ended up being cut short, for Scott at least.

After the election was called on August 15, he quickly returned to his office to launch is 8th election campaign.

In his first election, back in 2000, he was one of only two Canadian Alliance Party candidates in ridings east of the Alberta border to be elected, when he defeated Liberal MP Ian Murray. The riding that he represented during that first term was Lanark Carleton. Four years later, he ran as a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada, after the Alliance Party and the Progressive Conservative Party merged. The Lanark Carleton riding was split in two, and as a Lanark resident (he lived in Carleton Place at the time), Reid ran in the new riding of Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington. In a battle between two sitting MPs, Reid defeated Liberal MP Larry McCormick in the 2004 election.

He held that riding for three more elections (in 2006, 2008, and 2011) each timing increasing his share of the vote. In the 2011 election, he received 57.7% of the vote, and beat the second-place candidate, Liberal Dave Remington, by 30 percentage points and 20,000 votes.

In the 2015 election, after riding redistribution created the new Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding that brought all of Lanark County into one riding which also includes rural Kingston, Scott Reid saw his share of the vote drop by over 10% but still won the election with 47.9% of vote and a 9,000 vote margin over the second place candidate, Liberal Phil Archambault.

And in 2019, his vote percentage ticked up a little, to 48.1%, but in that election his margin of victory over the second place Liberal, Kayley Kennedy, went up to almost 15,000 votes.

Before entering electoral politics, he worked as a researcher and journalist for 10 years, and before that he worked in his family's business, Giant Tiger, for 5 years in the 1980s. He sits on the Board of Directors of Giant Tiger to this day.

He said that, even after 20 years, he continues to be motivated to the role of Member of Parliament.

“I feel that in this last Parliament I had a more of a meaningful impact than in any previous parliament,” he said, in a phone interview last Friday (August 20).

At the very beginning of COVID, the Liberal government put forward legislation granting unprecedented powers, without having to report directly to parliament.

“They had all party agreement and needed the unanimous consent of the house to proceed. I thought, I still do think, that granting powers like that should be debated in the house, so I denied that consent. My own party tried to tell me to stay away, but a member of parliament cannot be ordered to stay away from the house by a party, so I went. That had a real impact.”

During the previous term of parliament, also in opposition, Reid co-chaired the committee looking at electoral reform.

“We did a lot of good work on proportional representation, but the Liberal Party were only interested in the preferential ballot, which favoured them as a centrist party. Whether my party has been in government or in opposition, there is always something I am able to accomplish in Parliament”

At the beginning of the 2019 election, Reid posted a video on his Facebook feed which featured the Progressive Conservative MPP Randy Hillier putting up a Scott Reid sign on the lawn of former North Frontenac Council member Jim Beam, at Beam's home in Almonte.

There will be no similar events in 2021, although Hillier and Reid still share a Constituency office in Perth.

“For one thing, I think Randy is supporting the People's Party, which of course I don't agree with because I am running against them as a Conservative Party candidate.

“I do agree with Randy about Lockdowns, which I don't think were very effective or compliant with the constitution, but on masking and vaccines I take the opposite view. I took the vaccine as soon as I was able to. And I was the first politician in Parliament to wear a mask. In fact, I was able to source 500 masks from my connections at Giant Tiger and I brought them to the house in March of 2020. None of the MPs would put one on at that time, but they were snapped up by the staff who were working there.”

One of his concerns with the current government is the tendency to try to bypass Parliament whenever possible. He cites the “WE Scandal” as an example of a case where the Prime Minister did not want the parliamentary committee looking into it to do their work.

“When I look at this election, and of course I am biased, I think the priority for Canadians is to make sure the Liberals don't get the majority they are looking for. If he has a majority, Justin Trudeau would shut that committee or any other committee down immediately. I don't think we want the Liberals to have that much power.”

He said that the Canadian government, and provincial governments as well, all have an urban bias that politicians who represent rural ridings need to counter.

“We need to work together to represent rural interests, whether it is broadband service, agriculture, or many other issues.”