When I speak to other people from across Canada, I always ask them about the political situation in their riding. For the most part they tell me that not much happens unless it's around election time. Well Simcoe-Grey has had it's share of excitment over the past several years.
Just to re-cap we had the husband of former Conservative MP, Helena Guergis, Rahim Jaffer arrested for driving under the influence and drug related charges. These charges were later dismissed. We then had our MP have a series of bad judgement calls, like a meltdown at an airport, having her assistant write in letters to the local papers prasing the great job her boss is doing, but under a different name. Then she was booted out of the Conservative party and now sits as an independant MP.
We had a municipal election with my town of Wasaga Beach having the lowest voter turnout in Simcoe County with only 27% of registered voters showing up to vote on election day. Speaking of election day the Town of Wasaga Beach which uses electronic voting machines had the longest line-ups in all of Simcoe County with people waiting for over an hour to vote. Then the results were the last to come in as it took the town clerk nearly 90 minutes to put the results together. In 2006 the results were known within 30 minutes of the polling station closing. To this day I still feel that something fishy took place on election day with the long line-ups and the delay in the results. All other towns in our riding had no long line-ups, the voter turnout was up by 30-40% from the 2006 election, and most of them had a good turnover in elected members, but not in Wasaga Beach it was for the most part the same.
Now we move into the area of nominations on the Federal side. With Helena Guergis not being allowed to run as a Conservative, the party started the process of selecting a new candidate. Dr. Kellie Leitch was first out of the gate, then we had former Mayor of Collingwood and Twitter blocker, Chris Carrier. Next up is Paul Throop who for the most part is an unknown in our riding, but he was Defence Minister, Peter MacKay's Director of Communications. Rounding off the Conservative candidates is Wasaga Beach resident, failed Real Estate agent, but a pilot for I believe Air Canada is Steve Wallace. Wallace has been going around telling people that he was asked by the PMO to run as a candidate.
As far as Dr. Leitch is concerned she's had her fair share of issues during this nonimation process. First she had to deal with the whole "Lettergate" issue between her and Wasaga Beach Mayor and County Warden, Cal Patterson. She claims that Patterson gave her permission to use his name and title on an endorsement letter that went out to local Conservatives and was on her website. She even had Patterson's signature stamp, but when things got hot, Patterson denied the whole endorsement issue, and now it seems he'll be backing Helena Guergis as he had nothing but praise for Helena at a recent awards event in Wasaga Beach. Also on the topic of Dr. Leitch, she got into a pissing match with Wasaga Beach resident and founder of Wasaga Cares, Amy MacPherson. MacPherson was invited to an event down in Alliston to meet with Dr. Leitch and talk about how to help the poor in our riding, but according to MacPherson, all Leitch was interested in was selling her a membership and one for her son. I'm not going to get into the she said, she said of what took place, but it did get nasty with MacPherson attacking Leitch via Facebook, and local blogs, and the same from the Leitch camp.
Chris Carrier is running on a platform as a fiscal Conservative, yet when he was Mayor of Collingwood he took the towns debt from 18 million to over 50 million in 4 short years, and was known to have 5-6 hour council meetings, and for creating an bad environment around the council table. Maybe that's why he decided not to run for Mayor again because he knew he was toast.
The Greens, NDP, and Liberals have yet to select a candidate, but local businessman Alex Smardenka, who along with his wife Sandy own the Boston Pizza in Wasaga and Collingwood, and the Swiss Chalet in Wasaga Beach. With a Federal election most likely to occur this spring the other parties need to get their act together.
On the Provincial side, we are slated to have an election on October 6th, 2011. For the PC's we have long time MPP, Jim Wilson, for the Greens we have the leader of the party, Mike Schreiner running. The NDP I believe have Katy Austin, and the Liberals have yet to name a candidate, but going from past experiences, I suspect they won't have anybody local and will need to bring someone in from the outside.
So politics in Simcoe Grey has been very exciting, and I'm looking forward to both a Federal and Provincial election this year.
Until next time!
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