tl;dr - Longfield's Still the MP!
By all means, still read the newsletter because I stayed up late finishing it.
Welcome to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet, a twice-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 Tuesdays and Fridays.
Lloyd Longfield is still the Member of Parliament for Guelph, but he’s going back to Ottawa to a smaller Liberal government.
At 12:45 am on Tuesday, with 210 of 239 polls reporting, Longfield sits secure at first place with 40.6 per cent of the vote. That’s a nearly 10-point loss in support from 2015, but Longfield will still extend Guelph’s Liberal dynasty to the 30-year mark if the Liberal minority fills a complete mandate. (More on that in a minute.)
Green Party candidate Steve Dyck rode a wave of momentum that brought him to a strong second place finish with 25.1 per cent. Dyck improved the fortunes of Guelph Greens by 14 per cent over their fourth-place finish in 2015, and is the single best showing by a Federal Green candidate in Guelph ever.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ashish Sachan’s third place finish with 19.6 per cent is a loss of nearly seven per cent over 2015, and is the worst showing for a Conservative candidate since 2000 when Progressive Conservative candidate Marie Adsett came in third place with 18.6 per cent.
NDP candidate Aisha Jahangir finished in fourth place with 12.1 per cent of the vote, which puts her on par with Andrew Seagram in 2015 who also secured 12 per cent of the vote.
The rest of candidates came out as follows: Mark Paralovos of the People’s Party with 1.5 per cent, the Christian Heritage Party’s Gordon Truscott with 0.7 per cent, the Communist Party’s Junita Burnett with 0.2 per cent, Independent Michael Wassilyn with 0.2 per cent, and Independent Kornelis Klevering with 0.1 per cent.
Meanwhile in Wellington-Halton Hills, Conservative Michael Chong sailed to an easy re-election with 48.2 per cent of the vote. It’s not Chong’s best showing (that was 63.7 per cent in 2011), but it was not his worst either (that was his first election in 2004 with 42.81 per cent). Liberal candidate Dr. Lesley Barron was a distant second with 28.3 per cent, which was nearly eight points less than Chong’s Liberal opponent in 2015.
So how did both the Conservative and Liberal candidates do worse in 2019? Blame Green Party candidate Ralph Martin who secured 12.3 per cent of the vote, which is an eight-point improvement over the finish of the Green candidate in 2015. That candidate was Brent Allan Bouteiller, who ran in every election in Wellington-Halton Hills for the Greens until this year. Bouteiller’s best showing was 9.84 per cent in 2008.
So the 43rd Parliament of Canada looks like this: Liberals with the minority government of 155 seats. The opposition Conservatives with 123 seats, then the Bloc Quebecois with a strong third place showing of 32 seats, followed by the NDP with 24. The Green Party has three seats, and Jody Wilson-Raybould will return to the House as an Independent.
The voter turnout looks to be somewhere between 60 to 61 per cent, which is comparable to voter turnout in 2011, but is a fall of about eight per cent from 2015. Elections Canada’s initial turnout numbers though do not take into account the people who registered on Election Day so it will change as they update the rolls in the days to come.
Also in the News…
Did you see one of these signs on Monday morning? They seemed to come and go so mysteriously…
Another Robocall Red Alert on Election Day as Election Canada confirmed reports of misleading robocalls in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec that told voters to go to the polls the day *after* Election Day.
The CBC is reporting that Waterloo Region and Guelph area kept pace with the national average of increased participation during early voting this election. On average, about 3,000 to 4,000 more people voted in 2019 versus the 2015 election according to the number crunchers at Elections Canada. Nearly 3,400 more people voted in Guelph over the Thanksgiving weekend then they did in early polls in 2015. Interestingly Wellington-Halton Hills saw 18,369 people vote early, which is not only almost 4,400 more than 2015, but nearly 1,400 more people that voted in Guelph.
Up the road in Kitchener, MPP Amy Fee is facing some legal concerns unrelated to her day job. On the weekend, it was reported that Fee, who’s the parliamentary assistant to the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, had been accused of assaulting her husband in two incidents this fall. In a statement, Fee said that she and her husband are in the midst of ending their 20-year relationship and acknowledges her involvement in “a number of active legal cases." Fee will appear in court on November 7.
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In an odd move, Premier Doug Ford took the occasion of Election Day to give his cabinet some renovation. Monte McNaughton is now the Minister of Labour, Training and Skills Development, which takes the “Training and Skills Development” responsibilities off the plate of Ross Romano who will now just be Minister of Colleges and Universities. Lisa McLeod, meanwhile, will now handle heritage as the Minister of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries. Ford says, “These changes will enhance our government's focus on strengthening Ontario's tourism, culture and sport sectors, and prepare Ontario's workforce for the jobs of the future.” We’ll see when the Legislature returns on October 28.
This is a big week for weeks:
*The City of Guelph is marking Waste Reduction Week, and you can learn more about it here.
*The University of Guelph is marking Queer Identities Week, which you can learn about here, *and* Aboriginal Awareness Week, and you can find those events listed here.
October 23 – The first meeting for the 2020 Budget. Presentation and Public Delegations for the Capital Budget and Forecast. You can read the Politico preview here, and the live blog will begin when the meeting does at 6 pm. Go to @adamadonaldson on Twitter, or follow the live blog page on Guelph Politico.
October 28 – Regular meeting of council. Council will just vote again for the items brought to Committee of the Whole, but there is an additional memo about the Natural Heritage Advisory Committee, and those details are broke down in the Politico preview here.
October 30 – Budget Meeting, Public Delegations for Non-tax Supported Operating Budget. This is the budget that covers Court Services, Building Permits, Parking Services, Stormwater, Wastewater and Water Services. Check out the Politico preview here.
If you want to delegate on any of the items, at either of these meetings, you have until 10 am on Friday October 25 to get in touch with the Clerk’s Office. Here’s how.
Also coming up at City Council:
November 4 – Committee of the Whole. The agenda for this meeting will be posted on the City’s website on Thursday afternoon.
November 12 – Planning Meeting.
November 13 – Deliberations on the 2020 Capital Budget and 10-Year Forecast, and Non-tax Supported Operating Budget.
November 18 – Budget Meeting, Tax Supported Operating Budget.
November 20 – Budget Meeting, Presentation of Local Boards and Shared Services Budget.
The 13th annual Giant Used Book Sale hosted by the Friends of the Guelph Public Library begins at 6 pm on Friday. The site is the old Woods warehouse beside Sacred Heart School and it runs all weekend long.
On Saturday, the Market Parkade will official open downtown with music and other festivities starting at 10 am. Technically, the parkade, Wilson Street, and the pedestrian bridge will be open on Wednesday, but the official ribbon cutting will be Saturday.
Also on Saturday, the Downtown trick or treat will see kids in costumes roaming around the core from 12 to 3 pm. Then, later in the evening, the bigger kids will be heading downtown to party in Halloween celebrations for the local night life. Safe Semester rules will be back for the “holiday” weekend.
Next Tuesday, the City of Guelph will be holding it it’s first two open houses on the deal to shut down the Dolime Quarry. One will be held at 2 pm, and the other will be held at 6 pm, More details here.
Coming up this week on the GuelphPoliticast, we’ll recap Election Night with the amended version of the live coverage from Monday on CFRU. Who won, who lost, who gained, and what does it all mean? Not sure, I wrote this part of the newsletter before hand, so tune in this week to get all the answers you might not have already gotten.
Get the latest edition of the GuelphPoliticast on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, tune in to CFRU at 2 pm for another episode of End Credits. This week, Candice Lepage co-hosts as we take another trip to Zombieland for Double Tap. We’ll review the zombie goodness there, and we’ll talk about the future of The Matrix franchise, and three new trailers, plus, we’ll hear from Candice about her Top 5 of 1999.
Then, Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU, it will be a repeat of Open Sources Guelph as Scotty Hertz and I will be taking respite from Election Day. In the place of a new episode, we’ll replay two interviews we did earlier this year with Lloyd Longfield, who may or may not still be our MP.
Listen to all these shows any time by subscribing to the Guelph Politicast channel on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.
I’m working on a very specific election postscript that will hopefully go up on Politico either today or tomorrow.
We’re going to be following up with the dedicated bus lane project and see how the City and the people feel about it.
Also, we’re creeping up on the 200th episode of the Guelph Politicast. If you have any ideas for a special guest, or a special celebration, feel free to let me know.
And finally, feel free to reach out to be by email at adamadonaldson [at] gmail [dot] com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, GuelphPolitico.ca!