Provincial Election 2011: Candidate Profiles

Jeff Green | Sep 29, 2011

Green, Nancy Matte

Liberal, Bill MacDonald

New Democratic Party,  Dave Parkhill

Progressive Conservative, Randy Hillier

Green

Nancy Matte – In it for the long run

Nancy Matte says that bad policies last for a long time, so politicians need to look at the big picture before making decisions.

“I'll give you an example,” she said. “The school boards decided to ban junk food from school cafeterias, which sounded like a good idea, but you know what happened? It created a black market for junk food. Students are bringing cases of pop to school and selling it from their lockers, which is pretty clever of them, but this isn't the outcome that the school boards were looking for,” she said.

The solution she proposes is to work towards providing healthy, local food choices in schools at better prices by expanding programs like the Good Food Box, which provides a selection of vegetables and fruits for a good price.

“The students are telling me that they can't afford the healthy choices in the schools, so we need to get the farmers involved. Everything needs to be looked at together, not in isolation.”

Matte says that the Green Party is very much committed to making changes by reallocating resources, not by increasing budgets in major service areas such as education and healthcare.

“Education savings can be found by eliminating the standardized testing agency, the EQAO (Education Quality Assurance Organization) and its $30 million annual budget, as well as related agencies that have sprung up along with it for a total savings of $100 million.”

Similarly, the Local Health Health Integration Networks (LHINS) that oversee much of the heath care in the province, are something she says is “a good theoretical concept that somehow lost its way.”

For Nancy Matte, the current election campaign has been a learning experience par excellence.

“Every day, at every meeting, at every door, I've learned more and more,” she said.

This is Matte's first political experience and she said she considers herself a long-term candidate, and is casting her eye towards future elections.

She graduated from the University of Ottawa in the early '90s, with a Bachelor of Science in Sociology with a focus on public policy and public administration. The mother of three daughters, she has been a stay at home mom for 14 years, and she has also worked with her husband on a small, home-based business since 2001. With her youngest child entering full-time schooling this fall, she began casting around for a job opportunity this past summer, and when politics and the Green Party came calling she answered.

“I have lots of experience behind me, with three long-time party members running my campaign” she said, “I have never done any public speaking before, but people have been very encouraging Some of the divisiveness at all-candidates’ meetings has thrown me off a bit, but what I say is that I don't want to keep fighting about what went wrong in the past; I want to talk instead about what can be done in the future.”

It is the message of the Green Party, as captured in the five-point plan that the party is promoting with the “It's Time” publication, that Nancy Matte turns to at every opportunity.

“Whenever I see someone pick up the brochure I feel that one other person is being brought to our message, and that in itself is encouraging,” she said.

The five-point Green Party Plan includes: Creating jobs for a 21st century economy; harnessing safe, affordable energy to power communities; feeding communities by championing stronger local farms; providing access to quality, sustainable healthcare close to home; and developing government that works for people.

This all must be done, according to Nancy Matte, without increasing department budgets.

“It is not sustainable to increase budgets and raise taxes or go further into debt. We must spend smarter and not make decisions about one department or one service in isolation. Government needs to take a holistic approach.”

Liberal

Bill MacDonald – Better representation

Bill MacDonald is no stranger to multi-tasking. He spent 18 years in municipal politics, including three terms as mayor of Central Frontenac Township and two one-year stints as warden of Frontenac County. During all those years he continued to run his logging business and an educational supply business as well.

When he was not re-elected in the 2006 municipal election in Central Frontenac he barely missed a beat. He jumped into the Liberal riding association in LFL&A and sought the nomination five months later, a contest he narrowly lost to Ian Wilson.

That was in December of last year, and MacDonald has been on the campaign trail ever since, knocking on doors across the riding throughout the summer and into the writ period.

“The issues that people have been talking to me about at their doors have still been pretty local, but one big difference between provincial and municipal politics is the number of groups and organizations that have a stake in provincial politics,” he said.

One of the themes that he has returned to often during this campaign has been his contention that for the last four years there has been a lack representation at Queen's Park from Mr. Hillier, specifically as far as bringing provincial money to projects in the riding is concerned.

“To me, this election is all about representation,” he said. “I think that, particularly in Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Counties, that has been sorely lacking. We haven't had a voice speaking to the provincial table. The Liberal government has been spending money on infrastructure, and we need an MPP who is willing to go to bat for projects in the riding. We have the worst section of Highway 7 in the entire province running through our riding, and we need an MPP who is going to work hard on that.”

He also sees opportunities for the riding that could come from the Green Energy Act, should the Liberal Party be returned to power on October 6.

“I've seen solar panels everywhere as I drive around he riding, that is economic activity in our riding that would not have happened if it weren't for the Green Energy Act. And there are more opportunities. But someone would have to sit down with the Minister of Energy, Brad Duguid, to talk about the capacity in Smiths Falls and Napanee to put in manufacturing plants for solar inverters or other industrial possibilities related to Green Energy. Instead of working to create jobs in the riding, Randy Hillier voted against every job creation initiative for the entire four years he has been the LFLA MPP,” he said.

MacDonald also believes that provincial policies can and should be applied differently in different parts of the province, which is something he pushed in his municipal career, both as part of the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus and through direct contact with provincial politicians.

“I remember sitting down with Leona Dombrowsky at an AMO [Association of Municipalities of Ontario] meeting when she was Minister of the Environment. She asked me about the Clean Water Act and rural Ontario, and I told her we need different rules for different parts of the province, and the legislation was altered.”

Bill MacDonald stands by the Liberal Party record in rural Ontario and in the changes that have been made to the education system.

“When the Liberals came to power in 2003, education was a mess. Now, high school graduation is up to 80%, and we are ranked in the top ten in the entire world,” he said. “I want to be the MPP for this riding to continue making that kind of progress” he said.

New Democratic Party

Dave Parkhill – Committed to social services

Dave Parkhill comes to the LFL&A election with pretty good credentials for an NDP candidate. He is the chief steward in the union local of the Frontenac County Paramedics; is a vice chair of the regional OPSEU labour council; and has worked with the Canadian Labour Congress on their pension campaign. As the father of two children with autism spectrum disorder he became involved with health, education and social services in Kingston, first as a parent seeking services for his children, and later as an advocate for others. He also became involved as a volunteer board member at a number of agencies, including Pathways for Children and Youth, Community Living Kingston, and Extend -a-Family.

In his professional life as a full time paramedic, he has a detailed insider’s view of how at least one segment of health services operates.

When the idea of running for the NDP in LFL&A was presented to him, he was ready and willing to give it shot.

“Since I was in my mid-20s it's always been in the back of my mind that I'd like to run. I got a call on a Saturday asking if I would consider running, and the next day I met with some people from the association. It was an easy decision for me. One thing I would say, however, is that it would be better in the future to have more lead time before an election,” he said.

That being said, Dave Parkhill said he is having a great time travelling the riding and meeting people during the campaign.

“I'm really surprised at the folks who are feeling left behind in one way or another, and I'm happy to bring their issues to the campaign,” he said.

One of the aspects of the NDP platform that he feels strongly about is the commitment to cut out the Local Health Integration Network, a policy that is shared by the Progressive Conservative Party.

“But our rationale is a bit different. My problem with the LHINs in particular is that they are basically a buffer level of bureaucracy for the government between the Ministry of Health and local providers. We can cut out layers of red tape and make government directly accountable for the services they are funding. The regional offices of the Ministry of Health are still there.”

He also feels that the downloading of provincial services to municipalities, which he witnessed first hand in his professional life as a paramedic based at Parham and Ompah for 21 years, is a particular hardship for Eastern Ontario.

“Eastern Ontario was really hit when the downloading of roads and other services took place under the Conservatives. It's one thing for a road with hundreds of houses per kilometre to be downloaded, and a whole other story for one with five houses per kilometre to be downloaded. The cost per person is much, much higher, and that pushes property taxes up and service levels down,” he said. “And when it comes to ambulance, you end up with situations like the one in Denbigh, where county budgets take precedence over provincially mandated services.”

Ultimately, issues, such as those addressed at a round table meeting with social service providers in Carleton Place as part of the election campaign, are the kind that motivate Dave Parkhill most directly.

“It is stuff that I care about so deeply,” he said. “There were people there who are working to alleviate violence against women; there were addiction services, poverty action groups, and many others. That was exactly what I want to be doing; that's why I got into politics. We have poverty in this riding, I've seen it for years as a paramedic and it is time we talked about as part of the political process.”

Progressive Conservative

Randy Hillier – Getting government off our back

While other candidates talk a lot about what their party would do for you if elected, Randy Hillier has been pushing his own party to do less. One of the biggest promises that he makes is that a Conservative government will take a good hard look at the work of boards and agencies under its control, and at the regulations those boards and agencies enforce.

“Those that work for Ontarians, we will keep,” he said, “those that need fixing, we will fix, and those that are no good, not in the interest of Ontarians, we will eliminate.”

Another commitment that he makes is to continue fighting for property rights.

“If the government hinders you in the use of your land, for environmental reasons, or to save a shrike or some other endangered species, there should be full compensation paid.”

These kinds of policies are ones that Randy Hillier was expounding as a political activist with the Lanark Landowners Association before he entered provincial politics in 2006, and he has been able to inject a number of them into the Conservative Party platform for this election.

If the party strays too far from policies that Hillier considers are in the interest of the residents of LFL&A, he said he would side with his constituents.

“I represents the citizens of Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington to the government, not the other way around. If there is a conflict, I will side with the citizens, every time,” he said.

That being said, Hillier also said he is “very confident and supportive of Tim Hudak's leadership of the party.”

He does not have much confidence in the Liberal government, however, and was ejected from the house three times over the last four years for defying parliamentary protocol, once for 10 days when he staged a sit-in to protest the adoption of the harmonized sales tax.

He is particularly critical of the current regime’s policies in regards to rural Ontario.

“The Liberal government has done an exceptionally poor job of recognizing the problems of rural Ontario, and has done a poor job with our economy. All of the provinces faced the recession but only Ontario slipped into the status of a have-not province, needing compensation from places like Newfoundland and Saskatchewan,” he said.

Referring to the “Anatomy of Risk”, a study published in 2003 that foresaw a rapid decline in rural Ontario communities, particularly those located 100 kilometres or more from major urban centres, Hillier says that Liberal government initiatives such as the Smart Growth Act, the Provincial Policy statement and the Clean Water Act “have the fingerprints of the report all over them; they seek to turn rural Ontario into a park.”

“The Anatomy of Risk is based on a false premise,” he added. “Where are all the resources that we harvest to bring in wealth? They are not in the cities, but in rural Ontario.”

According to Randy Hillier, a combination of high-energy prices and unnecessary regulations have killed productive sectors of the rural economy, with a case in point being the forestry industry.

“Two things that have hindered that industry most have been electricity costs and the uncertainty of timber allocations, and both of those can be fixed,” he said.

“Our energy policy should be an economic policy, instead of a social experiment policy, as it is now. Businesses are closing or not expanding because of energy costs, particularly electricity costs that rose as the result of the misguided Green Energy Act.”

In terms of his work in the local riding, Hillier said that his office has been able to represent a number of local business owners who have faced hurdles coming from the province.

“That's a major part of a MPP’s job,” he said.

In terms of government investments in the riding for things like road projects, hospitals and schools, he said, “I do my best but I don’t have the decision-making authority to decide what projects get funded. Our biggest obstacle is the ingrained view that there are more votes in urban Ontario than rural Ontario. My experience tells me that this government is only motivated by money or embarrassment.”