| Jan 24, 2018


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.

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