Scott Reid was re-elected for the fifth time as MP in Monday Nights election, the fourth time in the Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding.

This time he received his highest vote total, 33,756; highest percentage of the total vote, 57.25%; and highest margin of victory, 21,582.

He will serve for the first time in a majority government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Reid, who has never held a cabinet post in five years on the government benches, was the deputy house leader and chair of the Human Rights Committee in the most recent Parliament.

Doug Smyth, the NDP candidate, increased his party’s vote by 5,000 from the last election in 2008. He received 12,174 votes, 20.65%, which is the first second place finish for the NDP since the riding was created in 2003.

David Remington, running for the second time as a Liberal, fell to 3rd place, with 9,938 votes, 16.86%. In 2008 he received 11,827 votes, 21.8%.

Green Party candidate John Baranyi received 2,702 votes, 4.58% and Independent candidate Ralph Lee received 370 votes, 0.63%.

Editorial Jeff Green

Liberal candidate Bill MacDonald has been preparing for the provincial election campaign that is now underway for at least four years, and he is putting everything he has into it.

But in electoral politics the local campaign is usually limited in its impact on the election because people trend towards political parties based on the leaders’ campaigns and sometimes on crude but effective advertising.

There are a number of polling companies working on this campaign, and as well as tracking voter intentions regionally and province-wide, some riding-by-riding predictions have also been made.

Conservative MPP Randy Hillier received just under 2% more votes than Liberal Ian Wilson last time around (40.58% to 38.76%), a margin of 820 votes. So, as Bill MacDonald put it on the eve of the campaign, he only has to convince 411 Conservative voters to change their vote to him in order to win.

MacDonald has been out on the hustings throughout the summer at each and every event imaginable, talking to voter after voter, in search of those 411 votes.

There are other factors, however. One is the popularity of Randy Hillier himself, particularly in his home base of Lanark County, and another major one is the relative overall support for the parties. And this is where Randy Hillier has an advantage. In 2007 the Liberals received over 40% of the votes and the Conservatives 31%.

Even though the most recent polls show a change in favour of the Liberals, at best the two major parties are each about 35 or 36 per cent, which is the highest the Liberals have risen to in a couple of years. The Liberal surge of recent weeks has taken place in every region of the province, save one. In Eastern Ontario the Conservatives still hold a commanding lead, at 46%. The Liberals came into this election holding 70 of the 107 seats and the best they can realistically hope to do is retain as many as those as possible. Gaining seats anywhere in the province, particularly this part of the province, is a long shot for them at best.

There are, on the other hand, always local factors. Randy Hillier is not your average politician. He started in politics as an anti-government activist with a libertarian bent. If it was not Hillier who coined the Lanark Landowners’ slogan “Back off government, get off my land,” he certainly has personified it.

That makes him a bit of an odd fit for an MPP and a member of one of the political parties responsible for creating the bureaucratic structure that he has made his name by attacking and ridiculing.

As an MPP he has worked with constituents in their own battles with the bureaucracy and has been involved in a lot of the internal political struggles within his party. While he was the darling of the City of Ottawa newspapers when he was organizing tractor rallies at Parliament Hill or delivering manure to government offices with the Lanark Landowners, he has become the whipping boy of the Ottawa Citizen of late. There was an article attacking Hillier for the role he played in the selection of his Landowners colleague, Jack McLaren, as the Conservative candidate in the riding of Carleton-Mississippi Mills over long-serving incumbent and Hillier rival, Norm Stirling. This week there have been a number of pieces about a dispute between Randy Hillier’s wife and Revenue Canada over property taxes. These articles may have more of an impact on his party’s chances in Ottawa ridings than on Randy Hillier’s own campaign for re-election.

If the Conservatives happen to win power and Hillier is re-elected it will be interesting to see what kind of role he plays. He has said that if the Conservatives are elected a number of regulatory frameworks, including environmental regulations, will be streamlined or done away with, freeing up rural landowners to do more with their land. This is not the type of policy that his leader, Tim Hudak is talking about during the election campaign, although it is consistent with the smaller, less intrusive government that Hudak favours.

For his part, Bill MacDonald is promising to bring more of the province into the riding, in the way of government investments in local infrastructure and business.

As the two men face off in all-candidates’ meetings, we can look for these differing views of the role of government to come to the fore.

The other factors in all this are the Green and NDP candidates, Nancy Matte and Dave Parkhill. The Greens have polled reasonably well in this riding at times; in 2007 Rolly Montpelier received 7% of the vote for the Greens and Ross Sutherland 12.3% for the NDP.

On a provincial level, the NDP are well up in the polls from where they were in 2007, which may give Dave Parkhill a leg up. But barring a huge increase, such as the orange wave that happened federally last April and May, the NDP will not win this riding.

This raises the possibility of a strategic voting initiative.

During the provincial election in 1999, in the former riding of Hastings Frontenac Lennox and Addington (HFL&A), Leona Dombrowsky was running for the Liberals. She campaigned as hard as she could and openly courted NDP and Green supporters, saying the only way to prevent a second majority for the Mike Harris Conservatives was to vote Liberal. The strategy failed on a province-wide level, but it worked in HFL&A, and Dombrowsky won handily.

For Bill MacDonald to win LFL&A on October 6, he will need to do more than pick up 411 votes because his party is not as popular now as it was in 2007. He will need to “borrow” some of the 5,000 plus NDP votes and 3,000 plus Green votes to prevent Randy Hillier from being re-elected.

If the Liberal party continues to rise in the polls at the expense of the Conservatives, and if that rise extends to Eastern Ontario, then a strong local campaign may give MacDonald a fighting chance to win the riding. But it will not be easy to unseat Randy Hillier, as controversial a figure as he may be, partly because there are more than a few people in this riding who kind of like the idea of sending a rogue to Queen’s Park.

The Frontenac News will be providing opportunities to meet, listen to, and question all the candidates.

Next Monday, September 19, we are presenting an all-candidates meeting, at 7 pm at the Verona Lions Hall on Verona Sand Road, (which runs west off of Main Street / Road 38 at the southern end of the village)

On Friday, September 23 also at 7:00 there is a meeting at the Kaladar Community Centre on Hwy. 7 just east of Hwy. 41 on the north side (next to Bence Motors).

A third meeting to discuss the candidates’ positions on Public Education, is being organized by the Limestone District School Board. It is scheduled for Monday, September 26 in Sydenham at Loughborough Public School, also at 7:00 pm.

I will be moderating all three meetings.

We will also be publishing profiles of the candidates in our September 29 issue.

In my view, we have four dynamic candidates with radically divergent views and ideas about what should be done in Ontario.

It will be interesting to hear what they have to say.

Dave Parkhill lives in Kingston, but he is a familiar face in rural Frontenac County, where he worked for 21 years as a paramedic out of the Parham and Ompah bases.

Parkhill is also the newly minted NDP candidate for LFL&A, and he said, “I may not live in the riding, but I’ve driven a lot of these back roads. I’ve delivered babies in this riding; I’ve started hearts in this riding. As we know, this is such a diverse riding. A young family in Carleton Place may not seem to have a lot in common with a Goodyear employee in Napanee, but I really think the NDP has a good way at looking at all these diverse needs.”

In addition to his work experience as a paramedic, Dave Parkhill made reference to his family life as providing the incentive to be active in politics. He is married to Heidi Penning, who deals with human rights issues on a daily basis as the Equity Officer at Queen’s University. They are also parents of four children, and Parkhill takes some of his political inspiration from all of them. He said one of his sons is 24 and has been holding numerous part-time jobs to get by.

“There is a lack of full-time employment in this region, which makes it hard for young people to get ahead,” he said.

Two of Parkhill’s and Penning’s sons have autism, and Dave Parkhill has learned quite a bit about how the political system in Ontario works by advocating for services for his sons.

“One of my sons could work and live independently with supports, but those supports are not available. My other son is in the school system, and has had some really good supports, but we have had to advocate for that. My wife and I know a lot of people and can navigate the system, but there are many people who don’t have that background, and as a consequence their children may not receive the same supports. I think that as a province we need to do a lot of work to make the public schools more pro-active in responding to needs,” he said.

“We also have a daughter who is likely headed into the university system,’ he added, “and there is an obvious need to make sure Ontario has a university system that is open, and does not leave graduates in grinding debt afterwards.”

Dave Parkhill thinks that the NDP have “a good vision, a good platform, and the election will be a great opportunity to really start some conversations, have some fun, and make some changes.”

He said he will be campaigning actively, will be participating in all of the all-candidate meetings that are arranged. He says will also be using some new media, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to try and connect with disengaged young people during the campaign.

Jack Layton: A Tribute

This Guy Knew Jack

I didn’t know Jack By Jeff Green

Anyone who has gone through a cancer death in their own family - and that is almost everyone it seems - took a deep breath when Jack Layton appeared in public a few weeks ago to announce he was taking a leave of absence from his duties as NDP leader.

Although no one wanted to say it, even in the media, there was widespread fear that he was dying of cancer, and indeed it turned out that was the case.

Somehow the death of Jack Layton, who is a stranger to most of us, is being taken like the death of a relative, not a close relative, but like the death of a well-loved uncle or 2nd cousin.

All of the disdain that many people have felt for Jack Layton over the years, the accusation that he looked and sounded like a used car salesman, that he was full of talk and calculation, that he was always in your face, always talking, is long gone, and it seems to me it disappeared at the beginning of this spring's federal election campaign.

We all know that Layton was the biggest winner in the campaign.

Sure, Stephen Harper won his majority, and may go on to transform Canada over the next four or eight years, but Harper's victory was the result of years and years of effort, which resulted in grudging acceptance by the population.

Particularly in Quebec, but across the rest of the country as well, people decided they liked Jack; they could trust Jack.

We all knew about Jack Layton's prostate cancer, and we knew that he had recently undergone a hip operation. Although we did not know what his prognosis really was, though I expect he and those closest to him likely did at least know he was seriously ill, there was something in this campaign, either in his demeanour or in our collective perception of him, that was different this time around

During the two leaders’ debates last spring, it seemed, to me at least, that Jack Layton had a different tone than the others, and certainly a different persona than what he projected during previous campaigns.

He was a bit less jumpy, a bit less nervous. While the others were fighting for their political lives, he came across as someone who was more relaxed, someone who had taken a step back. Even the quips he delivered at the expense of the other candidates came off with a bit less bite.

Jack Layton, the bull dog, had developed a sardonic wit.

I forget the line, but at one point in the French language debate he delivered a pretty good dig at either Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff. It was a good line, it might even have been a line that he had prepared in advance, on the chance he could get it in, and it stopped the debate for a second. Layton smiled, but it was not the smile of someone who thought he had delivered a knock out punch and was going to win the debate and sway masses of voters. It was the smile of someone who had delivered a good line well. He was just enjoying the moment. While Michael Ignatieff was fighting desperately for his political life and losing, and Stephen Harper was simply showing nerves of steel and sticking to his well-rehearsed message, Jack Layton was just enjoying the moment.

Watching that debate, I remember thinking, maybe for the first time since he became leader of he NDP, that I liked Jack Layton. He had finally been humanized for me.

I might be wrong but I think part of what happened during this last election was that people across the country had a similar kind of reaction, and this feeling was tied in, at least partially, to the fact that Layton had cancer and had just had hip surgery. Quebec commentators have likened the “Layton effect” in Quebec to the electrifying referendum campaign led by Lucien Bouchard in 1990 just months after Bouchard lost his leg to necrotizing fasciitis.

This week “Smiling Jack”, or “Le Bon Jack”, is being remembered as the best loved politician in this country in a generation.

His political friends and foes seem equally moved at his passing. The funny thing is that the man that the Toronto Star is calling “Toronto’s gift to Canada” was not always a popular politician. He lost handily to June Rowlands in the race for mayor of Toronto in 1993 and finished well back twice in federal elections in the same part of Toronto where he served as a Toronto city councilor for over a decade.

When he ran for NDP leader he was greeted with mistrust. He was seen as a stunt politician from Toronto, but managed to win that campaign. He delayed running for a seat after winning the NDP leadership, and in 2004 he barely won his Toronto seat even with the cachet of being a national party leader. If he had lost that election, his federal career might have ended then and there.

While Layton, and the NDP, showed steady improvement between 2003 and 2009, the 2011 campaign began with the party low in the polls and Layton looking like an aging battler fighting his last, losing campaign.

That it all turned around was remarkable, the orange crush, the orange wave, the rally in Montreal, the victory speech, all of it. And that he would be dead less then three months after suddenly becoming the most loved figure in Canadian politics for a generation is nothing less than stunning.

What we have learned this week, from hearing from his friends and political colleagues, was that Jack Layton was the real deal; that he really did have boundless energy and he really did try to help people when he could; that he worked behind the scenes with people who did not want to be seen in public with him to make political change happen.

He was a politician who, underneath all the bravado, was fighting for years and years on some of the great causes of our times: AIDS and homophobia, homelessness, Aboriginal rights and environmental causes.

And for all those years I thought Jack Layton was too cocky, too showy, too aggressive, too much of a salesman and not enough of a statesman.

Maybe it was just the moustache, or maybe I just really didn’t know Jack.

Michael Leibson: This guy knew Jack By Jeff Green

Michael Leibson is a composer and music teacher who lives on the Bennett Road near Maberly.

In the 1990s he was living in the Beaches region of Toronto, near Lake Ontario, and he found out that someone had applied for a permit from the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), to extract aggregate from the bottom of Lake Ontario right near his home.

The plan was to suck the aggregate into a vacuum tube and load it onto barges day and night. The permit would have been good for 20 years.

Leibson had not been a political activist before, but he started organizing his neighbours to fight against the proposed industry, which would be within sight, and hearing range of their houses.

After doing a bit of research, Michel Leibson found out that the water intake for most of Toronto’s drinking water was less than 500 metres from the location where the extraction was slated to take place. He also found out that a host of potential environmental impacts to the project had not been looked at by the company that was planning to extract the resource, or by the MNR.

The citizens’ group went to an environmental committee of Toronto City Council, and Leibson laid out their concerns. That’s when he met Jack Layton, who was a member of Toronto City Council at the time.

“The next thing I knew, he was giving me political advice, and he would invite me into his home, where there were always people coming and going. The place was like a village. With his wife Olivia, he opened up his house, all his resources, to whoever needed something.”

It took time for Micheal Leibson to get used to Jack Layton’s personality, however.

“His positivity irritated me a little bit at first, but in the end he charmed me. There was something likeable about him. I do think Jack had a very healthy ego and there certainly was showman in him, but he also really enjoyed people.”

As the political campaign that Michael Leibson found himself at the centre of gained steam, and Toronto City Council and Mayor Barbara Hall, and the Public Health Unit all came on side, Leibson realised that Layton, although not calling the shots, was gently pushing in to carry out the campaign in a certain way.

“He didn’t tell me what to do, but I realised that he had a management style. I was not doing his bidding but I was coming to learn from his experience with political struggles. It was really something.”

One anecdote that Michel Leibson recalled from that time bears repeating.

“I had set up a press conference to talk about what was being proposed and what the implications might be if it went ahead. Jack suggested we hold the press conference outside the water treatment plant on the lake. Just before it started he said ‘I’m going to do something a little unorthodox. I hope it’s ok’. So we started the press conference. I had a music stand set up as a podium and I spoke, then I introduced some scientists who talked, and then it was time to introduce the politicians.

It was not a summer day, but Jack came out wearing only a bathing suit. He walked out into the water carrying a glass container and filled it with water. He came back on shore and, still in his bathing suit, he waved the container in the faces of the reporters and the cameras, and said ‘This is what we are talking about, folks - your drinking water’.”

The citizens’ group eventually won the battle and the project was halted, but not before Leibson, again at Layton’s urging, met with a number of Ontario Conservative party politicians to explain the issues involved.

“I really didn’t want to meet with Conservatives; they were the enemy, but Jack said I really should. In the end it was the Conservatives who cancelled the project,”

Michael Leibson also gave Jack Layton guitar lessons for a time. He intends to go to Toronto for Layton’s funeral on Saturday.

“Jack was a guy who thrived on being around people, and he really walked the walk. I would like to honour him as a person. He was just a beautiful guy.”

Photo: Scott Reid and Randy Hillier at Oso Hall

“One way to guarantee a beautiful Sunday is to schedule an NDP meeting,” said Kathy Hutchins of the Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington (LFL&A) NDP Riding Association as she introduced the candidate who will contest the federal election in the riding on May 2.

Facing a number of experienced political hands in that election, the riding association has chosen a fresh face, Carleton Place-based manager Doug Smyth, to carry their message.

At a candidate selection meeting in Sharbot Lake on Sunday, April 3, Smyth was the only candidate and was acclaimed to the position.

A rarity among candidates for the New Democrats, Smyth has worked for a number of large corporations during his working life, including Procter and Gamble, and is currently working for a smaller company in the auto parts industry, based at his home on Mississippi Lake. He is married and has three grown-up daughters, one of whom, Kaitlyn, was in attendance at the meeting with him.

Smyth brings a conciliatory approach to issues, saying that in his working life he has found that “if people sit together and take a practical approach to problems or negotiations, they can come to a win-win solution. All it requires is two parties that are willing to negotiate.”

He also said that his experience in large corporations has had the effect of making him supportive of the NDP policies that don't favour handouts to corporations.

“Corporations will take anything they can get. If the government is offering money, they will take it, and they

will not be shy about asking for money, but they will make money whether they get support or not. They are very strong.”

An issue in this election that Smyth focussed on in his remarks was the proposed purchase of fighter jets, which will cost about $15 billion, according to the government, and up to $30 billion, according to Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer.

“The plan is to purchase 65 fighter jets, which are really bombers. We don’t need 65 bombers; maybe we need 5 or 10, but not 65. That's a waste of money. We could use that money to house seniors. A lot of seniors could find housing for the cost of the wing on one of those jets,” he said.

During a question and answer period, one audience member asked Smyth whether a person who is concerned about the environment should vote Green instead of NDP

“The Green Party spends a lot of time focusing on those issues,” he said, “but there are lots of other concerns as well. If that is 100% of your concern, then it is probably a place you should be, but the NDP has a set of social policies as well as environmental policies and others. Don't forget we were talking about the environment before the Greens even existed.”

Christine Patterson, of Sharbot Lake, brought up Aboriginal issues. She said that on the NDP election website there were only four lines about Aboriginal issues.

It so happens that Dan Wilson, a member of the LFL&A Riding Association, is a co-chair of the NDP Aboriginal Commission. He said there is a separate website ndpac.ndp.ca that is devoted to the work of the commission and the NDP’s Aboriginal policy (see Aboriginal Issues hidden in election campaign)

After such a long wait, the cry “hurry up” rang out in phone calls among riding associations in Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington last week. Predictions of a spring “011” election, have been rampant for at least six months. However, the fact that an election has predicted almost continuously for at least two years has led many party activists, never mind the general public, to think that the politicians would once again manage to step back from the brink.

For the two largest vote-getting parties from LFL&A in the 2008 election, the candidates have been in place all along. Incumbent Scott Reid (Conservative) is seeking his 5th term in office, having started as the Reform Party MP in the former Lanark-Carleton Riding, and Liberal Dave Remington (photo right), the one-time mayor of Napanee and a former parliamentary assistant, has been in place almost ever since he finished second to Scott Reid in 2008.

The other parties were not as prepared. The Green Party selected John Baranyi as their candidate last Sunday. Baranyi, a native of Lanark village, has been a candidate in previous elections, both federal and provincial. He is coming back this time around, he told the News, out of a commitment to the vision of the Green Party.

“The other parties are stuck on the endless growth spiral. We need to figure out how to get conservative voters to realise that the party that they have been voting for is more committed to concentrating wealth on a global basis than in the conservative values of their supporters,” he said.

John Baranyi (photo right) ran for the provincial Green Party in 2003 and federally in 2004. He lives in Middleville, in Lanark County, where with his wife Christine Kilgour he runs Pulse foods, a vegetarian frozen food company that uses locally Ontario grown vegetables, organic where possible.

The NDP is having their candidate selection meeting in Sharbot Lake on Sunday, April 3. Doug Smyth, a resident of Beckwith township near Carleton Place, is the only declared candidate and will likely be selected at that meeting. Smyth is a business development/marketing manager for an automotive technology company, and previously owned a small construction company. In a release from the local riding association, Smyth is described as someone who “is very aware of the economic challenges resulting from recessions and economic downturns,” which have hit LFL&A residents hard, particularly in the Smiths Falls area.

As part of our ongoing coverage of the campaign, the News will cover the NDP nomination meeting and will look at all the candidates more closely as the election approaches. For the benefit of the population in our corner of the riding, we will be presenting two all-candidates meetings, on Monday April 11 at the Kaladar Community Centre at 7 p.m. and on Wednesday, April 20 at the Verona Lions Hall, also starting at 7 p.m.

We have invited the candidates from the four major parties, and we will be inviting candidates from other parties and independent candidates as well, as they come forward.

In 2008, Scott Reid received 30,280 votes (55.9%) and Dave Remington 11,827 (21.8%). The NDP candidate received 13.2% of the vote, and Green Party candidate 8.6%.

Paul Dewar, NDP federal leadership candidate, held an event in Perth on January 8.

In what was more a concert than political rally, Fireweed and Jacob Moon performed for over 100 people at St. Paul's United Church. The numbers are significant, because the local NDP riding association rarely draws more than a handful of executive members for candidate selection meetings when federal elections are called.

When the votes were counted at last spring’s federal election, the NDP had reached a historic high of over 20,000 votes in the Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding, a result that is hard to attribute to anything other than the effect of the late Jack Layton on the campaign.

While Paul Dewar has not received that many endorsements from NDP MPs, he has focused his campaign on bringing in grassroots support. Events such as the one in Perth can make a difference in the campaign because the NDP are using a one-member, one-vote system to select their leader.

But even through the vote is not slated until a convention on March 24, individuals must join the party 45 days before the vote to be eligible. So candidates will be working hard to sign up members by the cut off date of February 8.

After the entertainment ended, Ross Sutherland, the riding association president and a former election candidate, introduced Dewar.

“For me, what leadership is all about is connecting with Canadians, saying there is a better way. People are looking for hope and inspiration, and find that the people who are making the decisions in government are not accountable,” Dewar said.

He pulled two examples out of recent headlines to illustrate his point.

“I went to London last week to visit the picket line at the Electro-Motive Diesel motor plant. The prime minister will not visit that plant, but he did in 2008, when he was flanked by many of the same workers to announce a $5 million inducement, on top of corporate tax cuts, for Caterpillar. The plant makes money and the workers helped bring in efficiencies, but now they are locked out after rejecting a 55% wage cut. We gave this company millions of dollars, and right now you can't get the prime minister to say a word about this. I'm not asking for the prime minister to negotiate the contract, but I'm asking for the leadership to stand up for everyday Canadians.”

He also talked about the living conditions in First Nations communities, which has come into focus in Attwapiskat in Northern Ontario. “Getting into the blame game doesn't solve problems. What I think we need to do is to say that within 10 years every reserve will have clean water, housing, energy security and access to schools, and that we start immediately to make the changes that are necessary to bring this about”.

He also said that under him the NDP would develop rural and small town agendas that “instead of taking apart support systems such as the Wheat Board, would build on supports that are in place and bring new ones forward.”

Although he is seeking the leadership of the NDP, Dewar focused most of his attacks on the Conservative Party and the prime minister.

He also poured cold water on any indication that the NDP should consider any kind of merger, either with the Liberal Party or the Green Party. To a question about a merger with the Greens, Dewar said he preferred to talk about democratic reform.

“My concern when we talk about mergers,” he said, “is that they are all about formulas to get a certain outcome. A lot of people look at that as elites talking to each other. I'm of the belief that our job is to put the best ideas forward. I think this is really about democratic reform; we need to see proportionality in our system. New Zealand has a mixed member system, and they just ratified it through referendum. I'm committed to this kind of solution rather than party mergers.”

Summing up his position, Paul Dewar said that he recalls something that Jack Layton said at the press conference in July when he announced he was fighting a new cancer.

“It was a simple point, but it struck home with me. He said 'Let’s take better care of each other', and that's really what motivates me in this race.”

Dave Parkhill says that in his first run for provincial office under the NDP banner he was basically “like a lamb to the slaughter” but this time will be different.

“This time I feel I will be more like a soldier falling on my sword,” he said earlier this week after taking on the role of NDP candidate in Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington for the next Ontario election, whenever that may be.

The local NDP riding association held a meeting in Amherstview on Sunday to choose a candidate, timing the event so that if NDP Leader Andrea Horwath decides not to support the budget of Premier Kathleen Wynne, the local association will be ready.

“Not that I have any say in any of those decisions,” Parkhill said after the meeting, “but I think there won’t be an election this spring. Nonetheless I am looking forward to getting out to festivals and events this summer and talking to people in the riding about what they think about politics and the future they would like to see for themselves.”

Parkhill says he prefers minority governments because they can lead to a spirit of compromise, something he would like to see more of in provincial politics.

“We aren’t going to get anywhere in eastern Ontario by simply trying to knock stuff down. It’s time we stop throwing darts and started to advance an agenda for ourselves,” he said.

Dave Parkhill has been a paramedic for 23 years. He currently works for Frontenac Paramedic Services in Kingston, where he lives with his family. He previously worked in Frontenac County for the Parham Ambulance Service.

“I have always had an interest in social justice issues,” he said, “and stuff around Ontario Works is close to my heart. There are so many people stuck in the system who are just on the edge of being able to start working and get clear of it, but the system is not set up to help them take that step.”

If and when the next election comes, he said that he will use the experience from last time to help focus his campaign around positive issues.

“Whenever an election comes, the NDP will be ready in LFL&A. We have built a strong team throughout the riding over the years,” he said.

A 270-bed hospital being built in Kingston by Providence Care to providerehabilitation, complex continuing care, specialized geriatrics, palliative care and mental health services to South Eastern Ontario residents, has been universally welcomed by health care workers, patients and community partners.

However, the construction project itself has been the subject of some controversy. The opposition has been led by the Kingston and Area Health Coalition (KAHC)

The huge (estimated cost $360 million) project on the shores of Lake Ontario is being contracted out on the basis of what is commonly called a Public-Private-Partnership (P3) basis. Three multi-national consortia are eligible to answer a Request for Proposal (RFP) that has been set out for the project.

This, according to Ross Sutherland, former NDP candidate in Frontenac County and currently the president of the KAHC, will inevitably lead to higher costs than a traditional public tendering process.

“The vague claim is that there will be savings of 10% - 25% in construction and long term maintenance costs, but at the same it has been acknowledged that the standard return in investment for the winning consortium will be 12%. On a project that could well reach $400 million, that’s a lot of profit,” said Sutherland.

Although Sutherland’s group has opposed the construction model from the start, the RFP process is now underway and the KAHC is now focussing their efforts on the maintenance aspects of the contract.

“We were very concerned that all of the soft services in the building, from supply of linens to cleaning to food service, were going to be included in the contract, but fortunately that is now off the table,” Sutherland said. “Still, as it stands the RFP includes maintenance for things like the roof, elevators, walls, etc. for 30 years. The public purse will be the source of private sector profit for a long, long, time if the maintenance provisions are not removed from the RFP, which is something that can be done at no cost.”

Providence Care has taken exception to the KAHC assertion that the new hospital was ever slated to be managed by the private sector.

"The private sector has always been engaged in infrastructure projects and will not own or run the hospital. They are being contracted to design, build, finance and maintain the hospital," said Glen Wood, chair of Providence Care’s Board of Directors, in a letter to Kingston City Council. Wood added that critics of the project have been “actively spreading misinformation” about the project.

For their part, the KAHC continues to maintain that the P3 will just add costs to the project.

“P3s have been well-studied and are found to be more expensive, less accountable and disruptive of hospital functioning. The new regional hospital will cost $100 million more than using public financing and non-profit maintenance and administration. All that extra money for profits has to come from somewhere. In our area it is coming from funding cuts to rural health care services,” Sutherland said.

“International researchers have coined this ‘the P3 effect’”, he said. “It’s like a black hole: the high costs of financing the P3 suck money out of the regional health system, resulting in continual erosions of services in the surrounding hospitals and community health care.”

To focus public attention on the issue, the Kingston Area Health Coalition is organizing a sort of citizens’ referendum to ask the public if they want a “public not for profit hospital or a for profit P3 hospital”.

Polling booths are being set up on Saturday, April 13 throughout the City of Kingston, at the Foodland store in Sydenham, and at the Oso Hall in Sharbot Lake, for a vote on whether the 30-year contracts should stay in the RFP for the project. Polls will be open from 9-5 and anyone seeking to set up another polling location can call 613-507-6673.

Another group who opposes the way the project is being structured is the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, which has set up an online letter writing campaign at http://rnao.ca/policy/action-alerts/no-p3-minister.

Why was there a steamroll to Kathleen Wynne after the second ballot of last weekend's Ontario Liberal leadership convention?

The results of the ballot demonstrated two things. Sandra Pupatello had gained more support than Kathleen Wynne after they were almost even after the first, and all the other candidates were so far back that they had to get out of the way. Pupatello, with 817 votes, was on a roll. She had gained 218 votes in the second ballot, while Kathleen Wynne, at 750, had only gained 153. The separation between the two front runners was growing.

But the real drama was yet to unfold. Charles Sousa, with 203 votes, and Gerard Kennedy, with 285, had the opportunity to become Queen-makers, and they took it.  Sousa, who is from the right wing of the party, moved to Kathleen Wynne, the left-leaning candidate, leaving Pupatello in the lurch. Soon after, Gerard Kennedy, who is on the left wing of the party himself, joined with Sousa at Kathleen Wynne's side.

Even though Sandra Pupatello had the support of the majority of the caucus, she suddenly looked lonely in her box, while a jubilant Wynne was surrounded by three of the four also-ran candidates. In a surprise move, last-ranked Eric Hoskins had joined Wynne after the first ballot.

It was all over but the voting at that point. The headlines had already been written; only the tense had to be changed when the tally came in, from Wynne will win, to Wynne wins.

So, why Kathleen Wynne?

This is where the old school politics come in, and this is what those 2,000 delegates were thinking, at least as far as I see it from a distance.

Both candidates said they were conciliators; both said they were more willing to work with the other parties. But Pupatello is more to the right of the party than Wynne and was a more natural fit to talk to the Conservative Party about shifting the government to the right, offering more cuts in government programs and cutting the deficit quickly, etc.

However, the Conservatives have only one goal in mind: bringing down the government. They want to fight an election as soon as possible while the ORNGE air ambulance scandal, the revelations about the horrendous cost of two aborted gas plants, and the anti-democratic prorogation manoeuvring of McGuinty are still fresh in the minds of a forgetful public.

Those 2,000 delegates knew very well that Conservative leader Tim Hudak was not going to do anything the help the Liberals stay in power.

As loyal Liberals, the delegates did what all party members do when their party is in power, they voted for the candidate with the best chance of keeping them in power. And that is some task, since in most polls, the Liberals now rank third in popularity.

The best case scenario for the Liberals is to remain in power as long as possible because they could be wiped out in an election this spring, and the only way for them to remain in power was to elect the candidate of the left, Kathleen Wynne, so she can make overtures to the NDP.

Andrea Horwath, the NDP leader, will be making her own calculations.

Does she make a deal, and in doing so enable the NDP to exert major influence on public policy? Or does she say no, and force an election, which could bring the NDP to the mainstream of Ontario politics at the expense of the Liberals?

There are risks either way. If the NDP props up the Liberals they will be propping up an unpopular party and may pay a price for that at the polls whenever an election does come. They also might be giving Kathleen Wynne an opportunity to recover some of the support her party has lost to the NDP and enable the Liberals to control the timing and circumstances of the next election.

If Horwath pulls the plug on the Liberals, however, the ensuing election could also turn against the NDP big time, if the voters in swing ridings abandon them and vote for the Liberals to try and keep the Conservatives from forming a majority government.

The coming few weeks will reveal how willing the Wynne Liberals are to adopt the NDP agenda, and how willing the NDP is to prop up the Liberals. It should make for an interesting dance.

Rural Ontario will not be a significant part of these negotiations, unfortunately, because no one is challenging the gutting of the MNR, the fall in tourism, the slow death of the agriculture and forestry industries that have been a feature of rural life for decades now.

And no one, Conservatives included, has a comprehensive policy in place to replace the toothless Rural Ontario Plan that the Liberals put forward several years ago and revamped for the 2011 election.