Lanark Frontenac NDP Candidate: Packenham's Danielle Rae

Jeff Green | Apr 02, 2025

After an appeal to the local membership to step up and provide a locally based candidate, the Lanark Frontenac (LF) NDP Riding Association found two candidates who were willing to run. Since there was no time to complete vetting for both, the association selected 28 year old Danielle Rae as their candidate.

The NDP candidate, Steve Garrison, finished in third place in the former Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding with 15.6% of the vote, and with the party's national standing at a low ebb at this time, Danielle is not coming into the race with high expectations, but is not deterred.

In a phone interview with the News on Monday, she said “I want to push back against the narrative that says the only point of elections is for people to choose between what they think is good and reject what they think is bad. That is a negative formulation. I ran because I really feel like we need to move past that way of thinking. What I want to do is plant seeds for the future here in Lanark Frontenac, and to grow the NDP volunteer base. We need to approach people as citizens rather than voters.”

Rae has political science degrees from the University of Ottawa and McGill, where her focus was on Middle Eastern politics. When she lived in Ottawa she volunteered in several NDP campaigns, and noted that in Ottawa Centre, the local NDP riding association was active at all times, not just when elections were coming up, and that is her hope for Lanark-Frontenac.

Part of the reason that she is living with her family in Packenham, is the cost of housing for a single person in Ottawa. And that gives her personal experience that informs her perspective on one of the key issues in this campaign, the cost of housing.

“Everyone talks about the expense and overall lack of housing as an issue in places like Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver, but it is as much a rural issue as it is an urban issue, and it is an issue for renters in Carleton Place and Perth as well,” she said.

“Working people are trapped in a sort of loop a lot of the time, when too much of their income is going towards housing costs. They can’t set aside money for kids, or can’t even think about having kids. If they have a car, there is no money for repairs, and the car slowly breaks down. The only solution is for people’s housing costs to go down as a percentage of the wages they earn.”

Although unfamiliar with the Frontenac County part of the riding, Rae is looking forward to finding ways to connect. She is looking at organising events in Frontenac communities.

She said that the local riding association does not have the necessary resources to open a campaign office, so she is hoping to meet people in their own communities. She will be participating in an all candidates meeting at the Verona Lions Hall on Wednesday, April 9th at 7pm. The Frontenac News is hosting that event (see above).

She can be contacted by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.