Candidate Profile - Scott Reid

Jeff Green | Oct 17, 2019

Unlike all the other candidates in Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, Scott Reid is not a rookie candidate. Not by a longshot. He has been a member of Parliament continuously since 2000, when he was elected in Lanark-Carleton, making him one of only two Canadian Alliance Party MP’s from Ontario.

He was one of the negotiators in the merger talks between the Canadian Alliance of Progressive Conservative Party that led to the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada, and was re-elected under that banner 4 times (’04,’06,’08,’11) in the Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington riding, and again in 2015 in the newly created Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding.

He has served in opposition and government over that time, and as Deputy House Leader under Stephen Harper. He is a long serving member and chair of the Human Rights subcommittee and of the committee that oversees the application of parliamentary procedures as well.

As he seeks re-election for the 7th time, contemplating over 20 years in public office, he said that, “my political career could well end next week, but I don’t see myself leaving office voluntarily any time soon.”

He said that his father Gordon, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Giant Tiger, the company he founded, “is 86 years old and still goes to work everyday. He is also more productive with his time than ever since he knows his business so well, so I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t be effective in Parliament for some time yet. I find my job endlessly interesting and changing.”

That being said, he added that even though he offers up himself to voters as someone who has the experience to be effective in the House of Commons on behalf of the riding, that does not mean some of the younger candidates running against him would not do a good job as well.

“There have been very effective MP’s in their 20’s, as well as in their 60’s,” he said

Scot Reid is a long-time student of parliamentary reform around the world. He as also the co-chair of the committee that was charged with providing a plan for proceeding with reform in Canada. The committee came up with a multi-partisan plan to move forward, but the Prime Minister rejected it and said he was no longer going to pursue any change to the current system.

“It is clear that there will be no reform as long as the Liberals have a majority under Justin Trudeau,” Reid said.

One thing that has surprised him during the current campaign, and he said that might be changing a bit as voting day nears, is that the spending promises that have been made aren’t balanced out by a consideration of fiscal constraints.

“At least the last time around every party presented a costed-out platform. They may not have followed through and certainly the Liberals overshot their promises by a lot, but this time around there is no real costing, just really laundry lists, and only in the last few days have some media reports started to look at that,” he said. “It might become an issue over the last week of the campaign.”  

With the real potential for a minority government after the election (at the time of writing both of the major poll tracking websites  - 338Canada.com and CBC poll tracker - were predicting a dead heat between the Liberals and Conservatives with neither being in a likely position of wining a majority) Reid said that decision-making may change radically in Ottawa next week.

He said it will only be after the seat distribution is settled, not only between the Conservatives and Liberals but the other parties as well, before any knows what kind of government will result.

“Talk about coalitions are pre-mature at this point. In my experience it is at least as likely that, like it was when Stephen Harper was in a minority, the government finds support from another party on a vote by vote basis in order to continue to govern instead of forming a formal coalition, but that is a conversation for next week.”

With change in the air as the election approaches, Scott Reid may indeed find that his role is entirely different after October 22nd, whether he is re-elected or not.