Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
In English, or French, this is the one sentence pitch for this election.
Welcome to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet, a thrice-a-week newsletter meant to “tip” you off about some of the important stuff going on in the Royal City. It arrives directly in your inbox on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings.
As of 12:30 am on Tuesday, here’s the break down of the election results:
Here in Guelph, Liberal Lloyd Longfield secured re-election with 41 per cent of the vote with 183 out of 247 polls reporting. Conservative Ashish Sachan finished in second place with 23 per cent, and Aisha Jahangir followed closely behind with 22 per cent.
Next door in Wellington-Halton Hills Michael Chong secured his seventh straight victory with 51 per cent of the vote according to 195 out of 240 polls reporting. Liberal Melanie Lang was a distant second with 27 per cent, but the surprise here was the fourth-place finish of People’s Party candidate Syl Carle with 7 per cent.
Liberal minister Bardish Chager secured an early victory in Waterloo with 44 per cent of the vote with 175 out of 212 polls reporting.
History was made in Kitchener Centre as Green Party candidate Mike Morrice has been declared the winner with 33 per of the vote with 188 out of 216 polls reporting. This tight race, which was created after incumbent Liberal Raj Saini had to bow out, saw Conservative candidate Mary Henein Thorn finish second with 24 per cent, and NDP Beisan Zubi with 19 per cent. Saini held on to 17 per cent.
In Kitchener-South Hespeler, Liberal Valerie Bradford was leading Conservative Tyler Calver by a little over 500 votes in the riding once held by another disgraced Liberal MP, Marwan Tabbara.
Liberal Bryan May was breathing a little easier in Cambridge with a nearly 1,100 vote difference between him and his nearest competitor, Conservative Connie Cody.
The race in Kitchener-Conestoga between Liberal Tim Louis and Conservative challenger Carlene Hawley remains too close to call with more than three quarters of the polls reporting.
Former Olympian and Liberal candidate Adam van Koeverden holds on to Milton beating Conservative candidate Nadeem Akbar 51 per cent to 33 per cent.
All told, the Liberals hold on to control of Parliament having been elected, or leading, in 157 seats versus the Conservatives with 121, but the Conservatives get the bragging rights about having won the biggest share of the vote with 34 per cent compared to the Liberals with 31.7 per cent.
Important note: There were some lines at various Guelph polls, but none more profoundly felt that the very long line at the Delta Hotel and Conference Centre, which is where many University of Guelph students were directed to vote. Some waited in line for two hours.
Since there was no city council meeting last night, here’s a snapshot of upcoming meetings:
Special Meeting of City Council – September 22, 6 pm.
In a special Wednesday meeting, council will consider the draft Official Plan Amendment for Clair-Maltby. You can see the Politico preview here.
Regular Meeting of City Council – September 27, 6:30 pm.
Council will ratify decisions made at Committee of the Whole and will select the five members of the City Council Remuneration and Support Advisory Committee. You can see the Politico preview here, and you have until Friday September 24 at 10 am to register with the clerks office as a delegate or to send a correspondence.
Committee of the Whole Meeting – October 4, 2021.
The agenda for this meeting will be posted on the City of Guelph’s website on Thursday September 23.
Planning Meeting of City Council – September 13, 6:30 pm.
The agenda for this meeting will be posted on the City of Guelph’s website on Thursday September 30.
For more information on Guelph City Council meetings, from agendas to live-tweets to recaps, you can visit that page on Guelph Politico here.
REMINDER: The Province’s Vaccine Certification program begins on Wednesday, and that includes many City-run facilities.
There have been a handful of cases where University of Guelph students have reported a strange substance being put in their drinks in four separate instances that happened weeks apart. Police are investigating, and the U of G is telling students to keep an eye on their drinks when socializing.
There have been COVID-19 outbreaks at three Guelph schools with three cases each at June Avenue Public School and Resurrection Christian Academy, and then seven cases at École Élémentaire Catholique Saint-René-Goupil.
In numbers not seen since the end of May, the region is now up to 201 active cases of COVID-19 after 70 total new cases over the weekend. Unless something went wrong (or right), Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph crossed 9,000 total cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic yesterday, and right now, Guelph alone has almost 130 confirmed cases. The 7-day moving rate of confirmed cases is 50.6 per 100,000 and the test positivity rate is an even 4 per cent.
People are still adding themselves to the rolls of the vaccinated in our region. Now 81.3 per cent of people in the region have been fully vaccinated with 86.2 per cent having had one shot; in Guelph alone those numbers are 86.9 per cent and 91.8 per cent.
In the rest of Ontario, things seemed a little bit brighter on Monday with just 610 new cases in the province, which is a little better than when those daily numbers came close to 900 at least a couple of times last week. The total number of active cases continues to hover around 6,200 and was 6,239 as of Monday night. Once again, three-quarters of the new cases on Monday, around 458, were in individuals who were not vaccinated, are partially vaccinated, or have an unknown vaccination status.
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The Rotary Club of Guelph is planning a number of activities to mark the first annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The University of Waterloo thinks that they will be able to return to pre-pandemic class levels starting with this coming Winter semester.
Wellington County is looking at adopting a bylaw that will allow off-road vehicles on county roads, but they may have to wait and see if Erin’s council will take away that right on their town’s roadways.
The University of Guelph finally got those 1,400 rapid tests they ordered for the start of the school year.
Coming up this week on the Guelph Politicast, we will re-run some of the highlights from CFRU’s Election Night coverage! Hear great discussions with podcaster Nora Loreto, Ontarion political reporter Lidia Rajcan, and freelance journalist Jack Fisher. Plus hear the regular election team including me, Scotty Hertz and Christopher Currie as we try and squeeze in as much election news as possible before midnight. (Results may vary.)
Get the latest edition of the Guelph Politicast on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, tune in to CFRU at 3 pm for another episode of End Credits. This week, Tim Phillips co-hosts as we tackle a 9/11 story involving the real and untold tale of the government lawyers charged with allocating settlement funds to victims’ families. No, it’s better than it sounds! We will also rank the filmography of the great Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve in advance of the release of Dune.
Listen to all these shows any time by subscribing to the Guelph Politicast channel on your favourite podcast app at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
Tuesday thoughts:
And finally, feel free to reach out to me by email at adamadonaldson [at] gmail [dot] com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, GuelphPolitico.ca!