New president voted in at Provincial Liberal Association AGM

Photo: Newly elected president Roger Martin of Carleton Place and outgoing president Trisha Waldron.

At their Jan. 28 Annual General Meeting, which was held at St. James Major Catholic Church hall in Sharbot Lake, members of the Provincial Liberal Association for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington voted in Roger Martin as this year’s president.

Martin is taking over the reins from outgoing president Trisha Waldron.

Martin, who is originally from Newfoundland, has been living in Ontario for the last 20 years and currently resides in Carleton Place. A family man, Martin works as a technology coordinator for the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa. He's been involved in Liberal politics since 2008 and worked as Bill MacDonald's campaign manager in the last campaign. He said he felt he “ran a good campaign though it was not a winning campaign.”

Asked what he is looking forward to in the near future as the association’s new president, he replied, “I have lots of energy and excitement for the work ahead and feel that we have a great team here.”

Sharbot Lake resident Doug Steele, who has been with the association since 2008 and whose name was also in the running for the presidency, said that despite his defeat he is still looking ahead to what's in store for the association. “We have a long way to go to win the riding but it’s just a matter of getting down to the local polls and making sure that we have a representative in each local poll to take on the responsibility of the Liberal program. Then it’s just a matter of starting to build up from there. It will be a lot of work but I'm looking forward to working with Roger,” Steele said. Trisha Waldron introduced the guest speaker at the meeting, Kim Donaldson, who worked in the Ontario Liberal party as both secretary and then executive vice-president for several years. In the last two elections Donaldson served as nominations commissioner, and she now works as a senior consultant in the Capital Hill Group. Prior to this post she worked in Dalton McGuinty's office as a special advisor. She spoke on a number of topics at the meeting and ended her talk by leaving guests with a few scary numbers to consider regarding the Ontario government’s recently announced spending cuts. The cuts will mean essentially that services other than health care and education will be cut by one third. “Think about that. One third of all other services cut by that much. That is very scary.”