Amanda Pulker-Mok has only been living in Almonte for 3 1/2 years but she has already made her mark. When a council seat came open in April of last year in Mississippi Mills township after a tragic death, she was one of 11 applicants for the position. All of the applicants appeared before Council and made their pitches, and voting began. Three ballots later, she was declared the new member of council from Almonte ward, no mean feat for a newbie in small town Ontario. It was a result that surpassed her expectations.

“Being new to the area, I applied for the position in order to improve my name recognition, as I intended to run for Council in 2018,” she said, when interviewed last week in her parked car, while preparing to drive from one municipal meeting to another one.

She tries to schedule many of her responsibilities, which include sitting on three committees as well as council itself, around the days when her young children are in daycare. She may still run for council this coming fall, that is if her attempt to wrest the new Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding from the Conservative Party proves unsuccessful.

On December 20, 2017, she was confirmed as the Liberal candidate at a riding association meeting in Perth. She will remain on Mississippi Mills Council until the writ is dropped and the election starts up in earnest, around the beginning of May, at which time she will be taking a leave of absence from council to contest the election.

In the meantime she will be spending time attending riding forums that are being organised by the Liberal Riding Association.

She said that she will be taking advantage of those forums, as well as other opportunities to meet people in the riding.

“It is a very large riding. I don’t want to be going into different parts telling people this is what I think needs to be done, I would rather build on what people are saying,” she said.

Her commitment to the Ontario Liberals comes from what she calls “my political inclination towards the party, which has made me a supporter. More recently, I have come to feel strongly about the Premier’s messaging around opportunity and fairness.”

She said that she will be considering all the issues that are important in the riding between now and May so she is ready to answer questions at public events, during door to door campaigning at all candidates forums, but one thing about her candidacy that is already in place is her attitude towards politics.

“I think I need to be who I am, and my feeling is that the people of this riding are ready for a change, a positive fresh change, and that is what I am offering.”

The issues that she thinks will be top of mind for many voters in the coming election, particularly in this riding, will be education, child care and health care, “three areas that touch on everybody’s lives. Dealing with the urban versus rural reality will also be a challenge,” she said.

And she is happy to be representing the current government, and representing some of the initiatives they have undertaken.

“I feel the current government has done some really great things, such as OHIP Plus and changes to the Ontario Student Aid program.

“It would be good to have someone who comes from a younger demographic sitting at the table.”

Pulker-Mok went to Trent University, where she studied Business Administration and Cultural Studies. Before moving to Almonte, she was working in Newmarket in health administration as a cancer screening co-ordinator at the South Lake Regional Health Centre.

It’s often been said that on St. Patrick’s Day, everybody’s Irish. It’s much the same on Robbie Burns Day, everybody’s Scottish.

Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington MP Scott Reid has Scottish roots. His MPP counterpart, Randy Hillier does not but that doesn’t stop him from donning the kilt, downing a wee deoch-an-doris, and carving up the haggis.

For a few years now, Reid and Hillier have been celebrating the Scottish holiday in Perth and Verona, and last Sunday was no exception.

As piper Steve Brooke led the procession, Hillier carried the beloved sausage while Reid followed with a book of Robbie Burns’ words.

And this year, Hillier finally wore a kilt, the Maple Leaf Tartan, to the event.

“I don’t want this to go to his (Hillier’s) head,” said Reid. “But last night in Perth, a lady told me ‘I like your knees but I like his better.’”

Reid said he was pleased how everyone, including Hillier, has embraced the Scottish celebration.

“To me, this is what Canada is all about — tolerance, inclusiveness,” Reid said. “It’s a very Canadian thing.”

As Hillier prepared to carve into the haggis, Reid gave a brief history lesson on the Scottish poet, referencing Burns’ Address To The Toothache and Written By Somebody On The Window Of an Inn at Stirling on seeing the Royal Palace in ruin.

“Scott and I enjoy doing this,” Hillier said. “I guess that’s why we do it every year.”

Hillier then acknowledged local council members Ron Vandewal, Pat Barr, John McDougall and Brent Cameron.

As to his Scottish garb, Hillier had this to say.

“I’m not Scottish,” he said. “But I do enjoy haggis and a bit of scotch.

“I noticed yesterday that I had a much bigger sporran (a purse of sorts worn at the front of a kilt) than Scott but today he has a bigger one on.”

Then, after Reid had deftly avoided any mention of politics, Hillier couldn’t resist pointing out that there is an election looming in Ontario.

“This is an important year,” Hillier said. “In June, you’ll have a chance to accept the status quo that hasn’t let Ontario become everything it can be or go down a different path.

“Ontario has had some very Toronto-centric policies lately and we need to show how important rural Ontario is.”

Hillier then told a story about how, last September, he was invited to ceremonies commemorating the 225th anniversary of the very first Ontario Legislature in 1792.

“MPPs from the very first legislature were invited and Frontenac was one of them,” Hillier said. “And the very first act passed by that the first legislature was an act to end slavery in Ontario.

“Those first representatives took action and hopefully we can return to that.”

The gathering ended with the singing of Auld Lang Syne.

The last time we all went to the polls was for the Federal election way back in the fall of 2015, when the 10 year old Steven Harper led Conservative government was tossed out in favour of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau. This year the 14.5 year run of the Ontario Liberals, during which time Dalton McGuinty was elected 3 times and current Premier Kathleen Wynne one time, will be on the line on June 7th. Riding redistribution, which came into effect federally in that 2015 election, will be mirrored at Queen’s Park after this coming election. Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington Conservative MPP Randy Hillier will be contesting the new Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding against Amanda Pulker-Mok of the Liberals, Anita Payne of the Green Party, a still un-named NDP candidate, and perhaps other independent or small party candidates who may come out of the woodwork in the run up to the election.

Our readers in Addington Highlands will be part of the new provincial riding of Hastings, Lennox and Addington (HL&A). Former Conservative Federal Member of Parliament Daryl Kramp, who lost the Federal election in the HL&A riding to Mike Bossio in 2015, was chosen last August as the Conservative candidate in the new provincial riding, and has been campaigning ever since. The other parties have not selected candidates as of yet.

While the local election will not heat up until the writ period, which starts in early May, on a provincial level the contest has been under way for at least a year, perhaps longer.

The thinking as recently as 3 months ago was that the Liberals were headed to certain defeat to the Conservatives, but the polls have tightened since then. We will be watching the provincial election over the next few months, reporting as the candidates surface for the various parties, and trying to get a sense of how riding redistribution will affect the local race.

In the 2015 Federal election, The Lanark Frontenac Kingston riding went to Scott Reid, the long serving Conservative Party incumbent from the former Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding. While Reid’s margin of victory decreased from earlier elections, that could have been more a reflection of dipping Conservative Party fortunes nationally than the impact of riding redistribution. In Frontenac-Hastings, the riding swung from the Conservative to the Liberals, leading to a surprise victory for Mike Bossio over Daryl Kramp.

We will look at the candidates as they are announced and will provide coverage of the local election in May and early June, when we will publish profiles of the candidates and will hold all candidates meetings at two locations.

The municipal election will be the subject of our attention at the Frontenac News over the summer and into the early fall. There will certainly be a good number of current council members who will be running again, and a smaller number who will be stepping away from municipal politics at the end of the year. The first thing to watch for after May 1st, when the nomination period opens, is whether any current members of council decide to take a run at the incumbent mayors in Frontenac County. If any do it will open up the council vote and create a more competitive race overall. And if the previous election is any indication, running for council as an incumbent can be anything but a sure thing. In Central Frontenac the last time around, only two of the 7 incumbents who sought re-election kept their place. An incumbent lost in each ward, as did the sitting Mayor, Janet Gutowski. The other townships were not as volatile, but there were hard fought races in many wards, and in the mayoralty races. We will also be closely watching Addington Highlands. If Reeve Henry Hogg does indeed step down, the race for Reeve will be pretty wide open, and it will be interesting to see if any of the current members of council decide to step up to the plate.

We began our early coverage of the election this week by polling incumbent heads of council (reeves and mayors) as to their intentions. We will continue to report on the intentions of current members of council and others who are ready to declare their candidacy as they come forward over the winter and early spring. After May first we will report on nominations as they are submitted in the townships, and our coverage will swing into higher gear after nominations close on July 27th. In the run up to the election we are planning to hold all candidates meetings in each ward where our paper is delivered, as we have done in the past, and we will profile the candidates in September and early October. We will also look at the issues that will be contested in the election, from development pressures in South Frontenac, to the septic inspection issue in Central Frontenac, to the fallout from the rebuild of the township office and the onset of the One Small Town initiative in North Frontenac. The underlying issue of taxation and service levels in all townships is another concern will will address in our coverage.

The Liberal sweep of Monday's federal election had an impact in the new Lanark Frontenac Kingston (LFK) riding, but the Conservative roots of the riding shone through in the end, returning Scott Reid to Parliament with a comfortable 8,000 vote advantage over the second place candidate, Liberal Phil Archambault.

With 48% of the vote, Scott Reid did not achieve an absolute majority for the first time in the last four elections. In 2011, he received 57% of the vote in the former Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding, which makes up 79% of the new LFK riding. Ontario-wide, the Conservative Party vote dropped by 9%, from 44% in 2011 to 35% in 2015.

The night began well for Liberal candidate Phil Archambault. The electoral map was lit up in red after he took a 100 vote lead over Scott Reid in early results, but the tide turned in later voting, and he received 19,325 votes in the end (34%) to Reid's 27,399 (48%). Four years ago the Liberal candidate received only 16% of the vote in the former riding, so the Archambault campaign more than doubled the Liberal vote from 2011, mirroring an increase in the share of votes that went to the Liberals in Ontario. The party received over 45% of Ontario votes this time as compared to just 25% in 2011

John Fenik suffered a fate similar to other NDP candidates across the country, as the party slipped from Official Opposition status with over 100 seats, to 3rd party status with only 44 seats and less than 20% of the popular vote across the county. In 2011 in the previous Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding, the NDP candidate finished second with 20% of the vote. Fenik received 8,073 votes in the new riding, 14% of the votes cast. That number is still higher than the party's numbers in the 2008 and 2006 elections, which did not feature the fabled Orange Wave of the 2011 campaign. Ontario-wide, the NDP vote dropped from 25% in 2011 to 16.5% this time.

Anita Payne of the Green Party received 2,025 votes, 3.5% of the votes cast in LFK, a marginally lower percentage than the 4% showing in 2011.

Voter turnout in Lanark Frontenac Kingston was 72.6%, which was 4 percentage points higher than the national average and 7 percentage points higher than the 65.5% turnout in 2011.

In the new Hastings Lennox and Addington riding (HL&A), Liberal Mike Bossio and Conservative Daryl Kramp, the incumbent from the Hastings part of the new riding, seemed headed for a dead heat until the final returns came in.

Eventually, Bossio won the seat by 363 votes, 20,813 votes (42.5%) over Kramp's 20,440 (42%). At one point, with over 95% of polls reporting, Bossio held a two vote margin, and with 96% of the votes in, Kramp had taken a four vote lead, but the last 4% of votes counted were in Liberal-friendly territory somewhere in the large riding, which includes Belleville and Napanee as well as Addington Highlands.

Daryl Kramp had won four elections in a row before his defeat last night. He was elected in Prince Edward Hastings in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2011. However he has never fared well when his riding has included Lennox and Addington County. He tasted defeat in the former Hastings, Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding to the late Larry McCormick in 1997 and 2,000, when Kramp was a candidate for the Progressive Conservative Party.

On October 15, students at Harrowsmith Public School had a chance to experience first hand what it means to engage in the democratic process as they participated in the school's first ever Student Vote program. Students in Ms. Thayer's and Ms. Ranson's grade 4/5 classes took the lead in implementing the program and over 175 students in grade four and higher had a chance to cast their ballots for their party of choice in the riding of Lanark Frontenac Kingston.

Through the process the students gained an understanding of the country's three levels of government, its four major political parties, and how each party's platform differed in the 2015 federal election campaign.

Ms. Thayer said that the program ties in nicely with the social studies curriculum for the lead students, who are studying government and the democratic process. The aim of the lead students was to convince their fellow students that their chosen party had the strategies and policies that would best serve and benefit Canadians. Ms. Thayer said the focus was on the four major political parties and their platforms rather than the individual candidates running in the riding.

Lead students were invited first to research the platforms and to chose the party they most wanted to represent. They learned about numerous issues including the Syrian refugee crisis, the state of the economy, the environment, health care and more. Students were also instructed how to use various forms of media in order to get their information across to their fellow voters as well as to think critically about the media they were researching. The students gained a whole new vocabulary and awareness of the political process and you can bet that there were some very interesting conversations taking place throughout the school on voting day. After choosing their party, the students made numerous presentations to their fellow students and were also in charge of running and officiating at the ballot stations.

I spoke to two students, Emma Aitken and Noah McDougall, who were respectively campaigning for the Conservative and NDP parties. Emma said that she chose to campaign for the Conservative party because she “felt that Stephen Harper over the years did a good job in keeping Canadians safe”. She added that prior to this program she “did not know very much about politics”, but said that now she feels that she has become much more interested in the topic.

Noah said he chose the NDP because he felt “it was time to take a break from Stephen Harper and see what it would be like without him”. He also liked the NDP's stance on hand guns and their goals to create more affordable health care and housing.

Asked what qualities they feel a prime minister needs to run the country, Noah replied, “being enthusiastic about what they will do for the country, not being grumpy and caring about what things might be going wrong for people”.

Emma said that “being bilingual, not backing out of promises and helping other people in the world” are all important.

The results from the Student Vote Program are in and the Liberals won in a landslide with 67%, (225.8 seats), Conservatives, 20% (67.4seats), the NDP, 12% (40.44 seats) and the Green party 1% or 3.37 seats. As in the past the results reflect the decision of Canadian voters. By the end of the day students at HPS were not only well informed but were also thrilled to be able to have their say in the 2015 federal election.

It is not exactly news now that the biggest winner in the 2015 election was the Liberal Party and Justin Trudeau, who have been given the right to push through their agendas without consulting any other party, even though they received less than 40% of the popular vote.

Does that sound familiar?

Locally, Scott Reid has won a sixth term in office in the new Lanark Frontenac Kingston (LFK) riding with a comfortable 48% of the vote. Adding Mississippi Mills and the portion of the City of Kingston north of the 401 to the riding in exchange for Lennox and Addington seems to have made little difference.

The change did create an opening for the Liberals in the new Hastings Lennox and Addington riding, however, where Liberal Mike Bossio won a squeaker over long-serving Conservative Daryl Kramp.

Liberal candidate Phil Archambault can also be considered a winner on the night. He received over 19,000 votes (a 34% share), more than doubling the number of votes his party received last time around.

There were losers, too. Nationally the NDP suffered a greater defeat than even the Conservatives did, dropping to under 20% in the popular vote, losing more than half of their seats in Parliament and being relegated again to third party status.

LFK candidate John Fenik shared in that fate, receiving only 14% of the vote. For Fenik, who abandoned the Liberal Party just five months ago to join the NDP, the outcome could not have been what he had hoped for. He returns, however, to his municipal role as mayor of the Town of Perth, where he will no doubt be lining up with municipalities across the country to get their share of the promised Liberal infrastructure grants.

While his party kept its base support of 32% of the vote, Stephen Harper went from being the most powerful politician in the country, to a man with no job and no influence on national policy. He also lost, it must be said, considerable personal credibility by allowing the Niqab issue to fester in this campaign. Without going too deeply into it, the Niqab debate was about more than a head scarf, it was about identifying an “us” and a “them”, and you can pick the “them” the way you pick your favourite flavour of ice cream, based on colour or texture or public sentiment.

This election also demonstrated, once again, that our voting system is flawed. There are many, perhaps hundreds of thousands of voters in this election who voted strategically, meaning they reluctantly voted against the party or candidate they would have liked to support in order to try to bring down the Conservatives. The voting system could be easily changed to make this kind of tormented decision-making unnecessary.

The Liberals have promised that there will be a change in how the vote is carried out the next time around. If recent history is any guide, mixed member or proportional representation systems will not likely be acceptable to Canadians.

The easier change, ranked voting, would not address all of the problems, but it would have two important effects. First, it would allow all of us to vote according to our conscience for our first choice, without fear of inadvertently helping to elect our least favourite party. Strategic voting would be a thing of the past.

Second, it would force all parties towards a more conciliatory approach to politics. It would no longer be possible for a party to use wedge politics to carve out a winning 35 or 40 per cent of the electorate, safe in the knowledge that even if 60 or 65 percent of the electorate despises them, they can still count on vote splitting to enable them to win the country. Every party will need to create at least some good will with at least some of the people in the country who do not support them fully.

Finally, a confession. Back in August when the election was first called, I wrote but did not publish an editorial that said Liberal supporters might just as well switch their allegiance to the NDP immediately because Justin Trudeau was the latest in a line of unelectable Liberal leaders.

I did not run the editorial because I thought it was cruel to beat up on Liberal supporters before the election was even underway, not because I thought it was wrong-headed. I looked for the editorial in my files today to see what it said, but it turns out I wisely deleted it from my hard drive.

The election is set for next Monday, October 19, as readers know, and the national campaigns are winding down.

All that is left are the desperate, strategic, final campaign ads and “the ground game” getting out the vote.

In Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, a riding that is not only vast but also has no cities with a population over 10,000, there is no specific polling data available. Aside from a whistle-stop visit, in late August, from NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, none of the leaders who have been crisscrossing the country for almost three months, have made an appearance. The candidates seem confident, however.

Scott Reid, who represented Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington, which has a 79% overlap with this new riding, at the dissolution of parliament, has been in Parliament since 2003, and has a rock solid support base in Lanark County

Meanwhile, Perth mayor, John Fenik, is riding his own personal popularity and a sense that voters he has met at the door are ready to look at the NDP, as well as a relatively strong showing for the party in the former riding in 2011 (the NDP vote jumped to 20% from 13% in 2008).

Philippe Archambault has been on the campaign trail the longest. He was nominated in October of last year and has been working at it ever since. He says he is doing very well in the Kingston and Frontenac parts of the riding and is hoping for a breakthrough in parts of Lanark County.

Green Party candidate Anita Payne is a party loyalist who is a veteran of many campaigns in different Ontario ridings. She is trying to get the Green message out and increase the party's vote share, which dropped to 4.5% in 2011 from a historic high of 8.5% in 2008.

As reported last week, at the candidates' meetings in Frontenac County and Kingston, supporters of the opposition were over-represented and the questions, which varied from economy and environment to social and health issues, tended to be pointed against the three-time incumbent government.

The following candidate profiles are not intended to delve into party policies, as all the party platforms are available elsewhere. They are designed, however, to provide a glimpse into the candidates' own motivations and interests, a chance to get a bit of their personal story out. The interviews all took place last week.

Conservative, Scott Reid

Green Party, Anita Payne

Liberal, Phil Archambault

NDP, John Fenik

Conservative Party, Scott Reid

Scott Reid has been elected five times to the House of Commons, and each time he has increased his share of the popular vote. He was first elected in 2000, representing the Canadian Alliance in the riding of Lanark Carleton. The vote was close; he beat Liberal Ian Murray by less than 2,000 votes, receiving 39% of the votes cast. He was one of two Canadian Alliance MPs from Ontario.

He was Stephen Harper's Ontario organizer during Harper's successful run for the Alliance Party leadership over Stockwell Day, and a year later he was deeply involved in the merger talks between the Alliance and Progressive Conservative Parties, leading to the formation of the Conservative Party of Canada. In 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2011, he won elections in the riding of Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, polling 49%, 51%, 56% and 57% respectively in those elections. He has served as deputy government house leader ever since the Harper Conservatives took power in 2006.

Reid has actually been working in politics since 1994, as an advisor and organizer for Preston Manning, and later, Stockwell Day.

After 21 years in political life, the question of retirement did not really come up for Reid this time around.

“I enjoy what I do, balancing constituency work with parliamentary responsibilities, and at the same time being able to publish,” he said.

Before his time in politics, Reid published two political books, Lament For a Notion, and Canada Remapped. He continues to publish articles on public policy.

Even as Parliament has a reputation as a hotbed of partisan politics, Scott Reid has for the most part avoided confrontation. He has chaired the International Human Rights Committee, one of the only committees in the house that is not only non-partisan, it operates by consensus most of the time.

“People see question period and media scrums on the news, but that is not the whole picture,” he said.

Aside from his human rights work, Reid has turned what was at first a way to spend a $20,000 MP salary increase he did not need into a life saving program. He invests the money each year into defibrillators, which are installed at public locations throughout the riding.

The program now includes training of students and others in how to use the units, and also in CPR.

Reid's current goal is to convince the OPP and the RCMP to place the units in their cars, which, he says, would save lives.

“I am trying to get the units into police cars, because they are first responders, but there is resistance from the OPP and RCMP. The OPP say they have no room in the trunks of their cruisers. But at the Frontenac County Anniversary in Harrowsmith there was an OPP officer there on traffic duty, and his trunk was open so I took a picture of the inside and there was plenty of room. I’m going to keep working on this. It would be a $10 million expense that would save hundreds of lives.”

Another item of study and politics for Scott Reid is Direct Democracy and Electoral Reform.

He had been instrumental in changes within his party and the election of the speaker of the House of Commons, both times bringing in a ranked voting system.

In terms of electoral reform in federal elections, he does not favour any of the mixed member proportional representation systems that have been proposed, but does think ranked voting would be an improvement, a position that is at odds with Conservative Party policy.

He also favours referenda on contentious public issues, and has held informal riding votes to determine his vote in Parliament on six different occasions.

 Green Party, Anita Payne

As Anita Payne describes it, her initiation into the Green Party started when she was living in Stratford a dozen years ago. She was home one Saturday morning listening to the radio when she heard there was a local Green Party meeting later that day. She was teaching and running a bed and breakfast at the time but was able to attend.

“So I put on a pair of green jeans and a green shirt and off I went,” she said. It turned out the meeting was a nomination meeting for an upcoming provincial election. Ontario Green leader Frank de Jong was in attendance, and the people who showed up at the meeting ended up forming the riding association and working as a campaign committee. Anita Payne has been a party member ever since, both on the provincial and federal level, and served on the provincial executive between 2006 and 2009.

She said that in 2006 she went to hear Elizabeth May speak and “I was so inspired that I decided I wanted to be a candidate. I even had to contest the nomination the first time around.”

She was the candidate in Perth-Wellington in the 2007 provincial election, in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes Brock in 2011, and again last year in Prince Edward-Hastings.

“I never had any political aspirations,” she said. “I first heard about the Green Party in Europe in the 1980s when the report of the Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future, came out. When the Green Party came to me, I was compelled to join. I have always had a keen interest in protecting the environment. That's why I run in these elections and that's why I took part in the Great March for Climate Change last year as well.”

The Great March was a walk from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. She marched from Los Angeles to Phoenix between March 1st and April 9 (2014) and from Chicago to Washington from September until November.

Anita Payne was born in Scarborough and has lived in different parts of Ontario. She lived with her family at a property on Black Lake, between Perth and Westport, from 1991 to 2000, when they moved to Stratford. They returned to Black Lake four years ago and Anita retired from teaching in 2013.

She said that when she compares herself to the other candidates, “I am the only one who is a mother and a grandmother. If we had more women in politics we might not even be in the situation we are in now. We need to look after our Mother Earth; she sustains us and gives us life, that's where I come from. That's the core of my being. The other candidates are really politicians. They are running because they want to be elected. I'm running for entirely different reasons.”

She said that she was encouraged at some of the all- candidates' meetings because “I felt when I was talking about climate change everyone was listening. Everyone knows we have to do better and they want to know how to do it.”

For her, the climate change issue is at a critical phase.

“There are many scientists who think we are in deep trouble, already in the teeth of mass extinction. Humans have brought this on and I believe that it is not too late to act, we need to mobilize around this. It's like WWII, everybody was making an effort to win the war, everybody got board and made an effort. This is what we all need to do to prevent the worst effects of climate change.”

While Anita Payne is not in the campaign with expectations of winning a seat, she shares the Green Party view that more Green party members should be in Parliament based on the party share of the popular vote.

“The voting system is not working. It marginalizes small parties and their supporters and hurts the country,” she said.

In addition to her environmental activism, she volunteers with Fair Vote Canada on electoral reform.

Liberal Party, Phil Archambault

Phil Archambault was born in St-Eustache Quebec. He lived in the Montreal area until 1995, when he left to travel the world. He met his wife, Melanie, in Bermuda and they settled for a time in the United Kingdom, where he acquired a Master’s in Business Administration at a University in Wales. He began working as a consultant in Europe, eventually taking a job with the UK National Health Service, working on process mapping and wait times.

The family moved back to Canada because they wanted to raise their children in Canada and settled for a short time in Toronto. In 2010 Archambault got a job with the Community Care Access Centre in Kingston and the family moved to Kingston and then Inverary. He has had a few positions since then and is currently working for Providence Care Hospital in Kingston, which is in the midst of building a new hospital.

He has been involved with the Liberal Party ever since arriving in Kingston, and worked on the election campaigns of John Gerretson and Ted Hsu. His interest in running was piqued when he went to the first meeting of the Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding association early in 2014.

“I told my wife that I thought I might have a better chance than the people at the meeting who were considering running for the nomination, and she said 'Are you crazy?' since we are already working so hard to raise our four young children,” he said.

A few weeks later Phil went to the biennial convention of the Liberal Party in Montreal.

“I met everyone there, Marc Garneau, Justin, the whole team, and I was really impressed with them, particularly Justin. I felt his presence and I felt his strength. And you can really see a leader by the people he surrounds himself with. They were all top people.

“So I decided that I wanted to run, I wanted to be part of it all. When she realized that I really wanted to do this, my wife has been very supportive, and I think she is excited by what we have accomplished.”

One area of government that Phil is concerned with comes from his own professional background, health care.

“The health care system was built 50 years ago with a focus on acute care, but now with an ageing population we need to deal with the Canada Health Act, with chronic care, community-based care, mental health issues, seniors’ homes, all those issues, and to do that the federal government needs to engage the provinces, not just refuse to meet with them and cut their budgets.”

A second issue that strikes a chord with him is the plight of Aboriginal Canadians.

A descendant of a Micmac great grandfather, Archambault is a member of the Métis Federation of Canada.

“I find it terrible that so many communities are drinking bottled water in this country in 2015,” he said.

According to Archambault the current state of affairs is partly the result of the Harper government that scrapped the Kelowna Accord, which the Liberals had worked so hard to achieve.

“Investments should have been made when we signed the Kelowna accord in 2005, but Stephen Harper has walked away from it. The drop out rate for Aboriginal students is higher than it was then. We've got to do something about this.”

After a full year on the campaign trail, Archambault won the Liberal nomination in October of 2014. He feels he has had some success in swing voters, particularly in the South Frontenac/North Kingston portion of the riding.

He feels that the effort, including early mornings on the side of the road, afternoons and evenings knocking on doors, and visits to events throughout the riding, “has been a once in a lifetime opportunity to possibly make a make a difference in this country. You've go to be in it to win it, I like to say, and I have been 100% in it.

New Democratic Party, John Fenik

There are two moments that are key to John Fenik's political career and his candidacy as a New Democrat in this election. The first took place almost 30 years ago when Fenik, a London, Ontario native educated in Social Work in Ottawa, took a six-month contract in the Town of Perth.

“I expected that I would move back to London when the contract was up, but I quickly fell in love with Perth and have never left,” he said.

With his wife Laurie, John has raised three daughters and built a life in Perth. He started his community service as a block parent and a parent council member, and then 17 years ago he took an interest in municipal politics and served as councilor and deputy mayor before running for mayor in 2006. He won the election in 2006, and was acclaimed to the position in both 2010 and 2014.

In his years on municipal council he has overseen many changes in the Town of Perth, including a shift from a dedicated police service to an OPP contract, and a major infrastructure project that closed down an arterial road for the better part of a year. As well he has played a role on a regional level with the Eastern Ontario Warden's Caucus in the development of a rural broadband project that was implemented over the past three years. As a board member on that project, which is called EORN (Eastern Ontario Regional Network), he was part of a group that raised and spent over $170 million in federal, provincial, and municipal dollars upgrading Internet service in the region.

Fenik also sits on the board of directors of the Perth and Smiths Falls Hospital and is the Chair of the Lanark County Housing Corporation.

He was also a long-time member of the Liberal Party of Canada, a circumstance that changed early this spring, which brings us to the second key moment in his political career.

“When Justin Trudeau and the caucus decided to sit on their hands when C-51 was brought in, I took a look at the legislation and made my decision,” he said.

He was approached by the NDP riding association and soon after by Paul Dewar, a long-time NDP Member of Parliament from Ottawa, about running for them in this election. After consulting with his family he said yes, and arranged to take an unpaid leave of absence from his duties as mayor of Perth during the campaign, which he thought would only last about six weeks, but has ended up being almost 13 weeks.

A lot of his motivation in this campaign has been centred on his initial concerns about Justin Trudeau's leadership and his level of comfort with NDP leader Thomas Mulcair.

“I've been increasingly concerned with Mr. Trudeau's poor judgement. I have been speaking with some members of the NDP in recent months, and I have been following Thomas Mulcair for a few years. He has the ability and the vision to lead the country,” Fenik said at the time of his nomination.

He says he has learned a lot during the campaign about the riding and about communities he did not know that well before the campaign started.

“I have learned a lot during this campaign about how important agriculture is to Lanark County and all through the riding, and how dynamic and advanced it is. I see people who are really engaged, are improving infrastructure all time, and making the riding the best that it can be.

“From farm gate sales to dairy farms with robots milking cows, to markets all over the riding, it's a dynamic industry. It is all threatened by the Trans-Pacific-Partnership agreement. I am happy to say the NDP, under Tom Mulcair, oppose the trade deal.”

He said that he has found that the local NDP riding association has been “re-energized during this campaign, with more people engaged than ever, and a structure is in place to keep. It's quite exciting to see this unfold.”

He said that he thinks this election is about the economy and jobs, accountability, transparency and representation, and civil liberties.

“The issue is about a government that's going to move us forward instead of the same old same old, the most important election in my lifetime. I really believe that. And I think the NDP under Mulcair embodies that spirit completely.”

Millions & millions of lives, marriages and families have been ruined by alcohol. Now you & the federal liberal party are willing for a few votes & tax revenue to legalize recreational marijuana. A drug widely recognized as a gateway drug that opens the doors to heavier even more highly addictive drugs.

Mr. Trudeau, addiction knows no boundaries...color, education, intelligence, age, social status, gender or upbringing. Nothing really dictates to addiction; rather it rules your life and all those around you. I know because I lived the life of an addict and it is only by the grace of God I am free today.

I cannot understand how any party would open such a potentially devastating pit for their fellow Canadians to fall into. Shame on you, Justin Trudeau & your Liberal party!

On two occasions over the past week, the four candidates vying for the Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston seat in the October 19 federal election appeared at public meetings to answer a broad range of questions from the public.

Well-attended meetings took place at the Sydenham Legion on Wednesday, Sept. 30, and at Granite Ridge Education Centre in Sharbot Lake on Monday, October 5.

A broad range of questions was asked at each meeting, and after two hours there were still questioners waiting as the meeting ended. On the whole, the questioners opposed the current government direction on particular issues and the three opposition candidates spent most of their time outlining how their party would make changes.

In many cases, incumbent Scott Reid took issue with the premise of the questions, citing dollar amounts spent to address problems.

For example, when asked about health care funding, Reid pointed out that the federal transfer has been increasing by 6% per year over the last five years, and will be pegged to economic growth over the next five years, with a minimum increase of 3% per year if the Conservatives are re-elected.

By contrast, NDP candidate John Fenik said that the federal government has shown a lack of leadership by not sitting with the provincial premiers to talk about “innovative ways to deal with what is coming, issues such as the need for more clinics and more doctors.”

Phil Archambault of the Liberal Party, who has worked as a consultant in the heath care sector and currently works at Providence Care hospital in Kingston, said the “major problem is we have a system designed for the acute care needs of the past, not the chronic care needs of an aging population. It takes leadership at the federal level to manage this, and that starts with sitting down with the premiers.”

Anita Payne of the Green Party said that the Greens “would convene a council of Canadians so all levels of government would be involved.”

One of the issues that came up at the Sydenham meeting but not at the meeting in Sharbot Lake was the closure of the prison farms in Kingston.

On that issue, Phil Archambault said if elected he would meet with advocates for the return of the prison farm to talk about bringing it back. John Fenik said the NDP would bring back the prison farm program, and Anita Payne said she would also work on the issue.

Scott Reid, however, said that the research showed that the prison farm was not effective.

“In terms of preparing inmates for job placement once they are released, and since recidivism is greatly reduced when former inmates have employment once they leave prison, the focus has shifted to other programs.”

Anita Payne said that in her career as a teacher, “The reason for teaching many of the subjects was to prepare students to live in the world, not always to get a job. The healing effect of working with soil for people in institutions cannot be tossed out so easily,” she said.

This issue also had an airing at a candidates’ meeting in Kingston on Thursday, October 2, which was attended by three of the four Lanark-Frontenac-Kington candidates but not Scott Reid, who had a prior commitment. The four candidates in the Kingston and the Islands meeting also attended that meeting. The prison farm issue strikes a chord in that riding and even the Conservative candidate Andy Brooke, a retired RCMP officer, said he supports the reinstatement of the prison farms.

Another issue that surfaced in Sharbot Lake and Sydenham was climate change. There again the three opposition party candidates talked about what their parties’ plans were to reverse what they all saw as a dismal track record under the Harper regime.

Scott responded that emissions decreased by 3.1% between 2005 and 2013, while the economy grew by 12%, which he said “came about as the result of the sector by sector regulatory approach that the government has undertaken” (see sidebar).

When the fact that Canada has not signed the UN declaration of Aboriginal rights was raised by a questioner, Phil Archambault talked about the lack of action on the Kelowna accord and said the Liberals are willing to take the issues on, pointing out as well that he is one of 15 Aboriginal candidates running for the Liberal Party in this election (he is a registered Métis, a Micmac descendent on his mother’s side)

John Fenik said the NDP would form a cabinet level committee to look at all of the infrastructure issues on reserves.

“It's tragic how a prime minister can refuse to meet with the chiefs and how a government can neglect such an important issue,” said Fenik.

Scott Reid said that the government has spent $400 million over 2 years on social housing on reserves; built 18 water and waste water facilities benefiting 44,000 people; invested $500 million in 2014 building new schools; and invested $200 million over five years supporting First Nations students in post-secondary programs.

The candidates have one more all-candidates’ meeting scheduled, in Almonte. Advance polling for the election is set for this weekend, and Election Day is October 19.

(Editor’s note: We have conducted interviews with the candidates for profiles that will appear in next week's edition of the Frontenac News. We also plan to post those interviews at Frontenacnews.ca early this weekend to benefit those who are planning to vote in the advance polls.)

Fact Check on Climate Change

Environment Canada data confirms Reid's assertion of a 3.1% decrease, although the reason it came about is another matter. The province that drove the national decrease is Ontario, and the electricity and transportation sectors are those that drove the Ontario decrease.

(In 2005, emissions in Ontario were 211 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. By 2013, Ontario was down to 170. By contrast Alberta's output was 234 in 2005 and 267 in 2013)

While federal regulations affect the transportation sector, the decrease in the electricity sector is attributed to the closure of coal-fired plants, which was a provincial initiative alone.