Sarnia-Lambton Liberals, NDP, New Blue launch campaigns

Heather Wright/The Independent

As the race for the job of MPP for Sarnia-Lambton is gets clearer, the Bob Bailey is defending the PC Party’s early election call.

Both the NDP and Liberals now have candidates running against New Blue candidate Keith Benn and incumbent Bob Bailey of the PC Party of Ontario in the Feb. 27th election.

Bailey is running for his fifth term as MPP. His leader, Doug Ford, called the election with a year and three months left on the mandate the PC’s won with 83-seat majority. Ford said he needs a new mandate to provide costly programs to counteract what’s expected to be a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods from the US.

Monday, the US president gave a month reprieve from the punishing plan after talking with the Prime Minister.

Opposition parties have criticized Ford for the call saying it was opportunistic. But Bailey defends the move.

“It’s about protecting Ontario’s workers and businesses, and Premier Ford wants a full four-year mandate to outlast – actually be (in power) longer than President Trump’s campaign period. He will be gone in four years, less than four years, election day of November 2028, I guess, right down the road. So, we need a mandate … because who knows, today we’re looking at tariffs, you know, who knows what could happen in a year from now?”

Bailey says the province may have to spend “billions” to help workers deal with the effects of tariffs. 

“We’d have to spend the money for the election … whether it’s now or a year and six months. So, to me, … it’s all relative. 

“We’ll have to maybe make major changes in supporting businesses people, support payments similar, hopefully nothing like we spent during COVID, but there’ll be major, major changes.”

The Ontario Liberals are making health care the cornerstone of their election campaign. The Ontario Medical Association says 2,500 new family physicians are needed in the next 10 years to replace those who are retiring. About 2.3 million people in the province don’t have a family doctor.

Bailey says the PC Party has made “historic” investments into health care, building more hospital beds for Ontarians. “We’re spending $85 billion a year. We made many changes to it, many improvements,” he said citing the province’s plan to allow pharmacists to treat minor illnesses. Bailey says “four or 500,000, people have been diverted from emergencies by going to the pharmacies for treatment.”

In Sarnia-Lambton, the Liberals have chosen Rachel Willsie, a nurse and educator.

She recently went back to school to pursue a degree in psychology and political science.

“I believe, personally, that Sarnia has been at a status quo for quite some time, and even at some point in decline in certain areas of the city and the rural community, and I feel that we need to bring fresh eyes to the table and new initiatives to the table and collaborate with our community partners to have a healthier and more inviting city,” Willsie tells The Independent.

Willsie didn’t want to talk about specifics of her platform until her official launch this weekend. But she pointed to health care as one of the issues in the riding, saying Sarnia-Lambton needs to work together to build a city people want to come to live.

“We need to have a city where physicians want to not just come as a locum practice, where they want to come and stay. 

“We have emergency departments that are temporarily closing because we do not have the staff that we need. We need retention of … the current and existing staff, but we also need to be able to attract the positions that are required, so that we’re not sending individuals out of the city, or we don’t have people sitting on long term wait lists. And when I say long term, services that they could pay privately for and access within a matter of weeks to a month, they’re waiting years for, and that’s just not an acceptable standard of care for Sarnia Lambton.”

Keith Benn, the candidate for the New Blue Party, agrees there are health care issues in the province.

“I think we’re way too top heavy with administration and not investing enough in personnel who actually offer health care services. 

“I think we should proceed with allowing more private clinics to offer testing and diagnosis in the province, to give people greater access to that, which is, you know, it’s sorely needed, being able to have X rays and MRIs and CT scans in relatively short order.” Those clinics, he said should provide a service paid by the provincial government.

Benn, a geological consultant in the minerals industry, calls the Feb. 27 vote “totally unnecessary, unwarranted.

“Doug Ford called it because Doug Ford is in a complete panic, because he sees his major political allies, which are the Liberals in Ottawa, circling the drain and it’s just getting worse and worse for them. And I think he understands that as it gets worse for them, it’s going to drive his party and his government down as well in the public opinion polls.”

He vows the New Blue Party would bring common sense and conservative values back to Queen’s Park including dealing with the “overload of wokeness” by allowing parents to access the private school system easier.

Candace Young, a math professor and union leader at Lambton College, who is running for the NDP, wants to see an investment in education, particularly at the college level. She says it is chronically underfunded and in financial trouble after the federal government reduced the number International students colleges may accept.

Young says “faculty is a little worried” about their future as Lambton figures out how to deal with the lower enrolment.

A boost of provincial funding would help. “Ontario is the lowest funded (province in Canada) for its colleges.”

Young says the partnerships colleges formed with private colleges to educate International students became a low-cost way of providing education because they didn’t have to hire unionized employees. 

The former Liberal government stopped the practice for a time, but when Ford was elected, colleges were “open for business” again. 

“Privatization is definitely a threat in this government and this government is actively allowing it to happen,” she says noting the same is happening in health care. 

“If you’re not going to fund education and you’re not going to fund health care, that just opens the door to privatization and people don’t have the services that they need.

Young adds Sarnia-Lambton “needs a strong voice at Queen’s Park…I haven’t seen a party that advocates the needs of the community like the NDP does.

“I want to show Sarnia-Lambton what is possible when they have a provincial government that will work with them and for them.”

The New Democrats also have chosen its candidate in Lambton-Kent-Middlesex. Kathryn Shailer, a retired educator from Alvinston, will be carrying the party’s standard in the provincial election. It will be her third run at politics, the second provincially.

She joins incumbent Steve Pinsonneault of the Progressive Conservatives who won the May 2024 by election to replace Monte McNaughton and Lucan-Biddulph Mayor Cathy Burghardt Jesson, the Liberal candidate in both the by-election and this race.

Andreaena Tilgner will be the Green Party’s candidate in Lambton-Kent-Middlesex. She also ran in the May 2024 by-election.