Ontario Liberals hold on to pair of seats in Ottawa byelections
By Charlie Pinkerton. Published on Feb 27, 2020 9:37 pm
The Ontario Liberals retained two of their traditional strongholds in byelections in Ottawa on Thursday.
Voters in Ottawa-Vanier elected lawyer and longtime school board trustee Lucille Collard as their MPP, while councillor Stephen Blais won the byelection in Orleans.
Collard graduated from the University of Ottawa in 1999 and has spent her career as a lawyer in the public service. According to her website, her work as a federal lawyer has touched areas including international trade administrative and regulatory law with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Collard was first elected to public office in 2010 as school trustee for the Ottawa-Rockcliffe seat on Eastern Ontario’s French school board. She won subsequent school board elections in 2014 and 2018 as well.
Blais is a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s political science program and previously worked in provincial politics as a ministerial staffer. He was first elected councillor of Cumberland in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014 and 2018. He’s most recently been the chair of city council’s transportation committee. Blais was previously a school trustee as well, but unlike Collard he sat on the city’s Catholic school board.
Collard and Blais’s victories bring the Liberals’ total number of seats at Queen’s Park to eight, which under the pre-Ford formula would have been enough MPPs to grant the party official party status. Official party status would qualify the party to receive funds for things like research, staff salaries and grant them the right to greater participation in the legislature, including in question period.
The Liberals are still four seats short under the new official party status metric. Shortly after they were elected, the Progressive Conservatives raised the required number of MPPs in the legislature necessary to qualify for official party status to 12, with then PC House Leader Todd Smith reasoning that it was to reflect 10 per cent of members of the expanded legislature. Interim Liberal leader John Fraser accused the government of changing the requirements intentionally to block the Liberals from qualifying.
However, the Liberals have been polling strongly as of late, and could get a boost from the conclusion of their leadership race in early March. Former provincial cabinet minister Steven Del Duca is expected to win the contest after the Liberals’ announced early this month that he had won 56 per cent of the elected delegates that will ultimately determine who becomes the next leader at the party’s convention in Mississauga on March 7.
The Ottawa-Vanier byelection was called after Nathalie Des Rosiers stepped down to become principal of Massey College at the University of Toronto. Des Rosiers herself was first elected in a byelection in 2016. Aside from a two-year period when it was represented by an independent Claudette Boyer – who earlier was a Liberal MPP) – the seat has not been out of the party’s control in close to half a century.
On the opposite side of the city, it was Marie-France Lalonde’s resignation as MPP to run for federal Parliament that brought about the byelection in the riding of Orleans. Lalonde had been elected for the first time to Queen’s Park in 2014. In the fall’s federal election, she won the overlapping seat that had previously been held by Liberal MP Andrew Leslie, who chose not to run again for the Liberals. Orleans has been red provincially since 2003.
Both Des Rosiers and Lalonde stepped down last year.
The Liberals recently added another MPP to their ranks, with Amanda Simard joining the party this year after splitting with the PCs. Simard, who represents the Eastern Ontario riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, fell out of favour with the governing party within months of the PCs forming government. The brunt of her beef with the party were focussed on the PCs dealings with French-language policy. She left the party shortly after it announced it would cease work on a French-language university (which the PCs later back-pedalled from), and also took issue with the PCs pledge to eliminate the position of French Language Services Commissioner.
https://ipolitics.ca/2020/02/27/ontario-liberals-hold-on-to-pair-of-seats-in-ottawa-byelections/
By Charlie Pinkerton. Published on Feb 27, 2020 9:37 pm
The Ontario Liberals retained two of their traditional strongholds in byelections in Ottawa on Thursday.
Voters in Ottawa-Vanier elected lawyer and longtime school board trustee Lucille Collard as their MPP, while councillor Stephen Blais won the byelection in Orleans.
Collard graduated from the University of Ottawa in 1999 and has spent her career as a lawyer in the public service. According to her website, her work as a federal lawyer has touched areas including international trade administrative and regulatory law with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Collard was first elected to public office in 2010 as school trustee for the Ottawa-Rockcliffe seat on Eastern Ontario’s French school board. She won subsequent school board elections in 2014 and 2018 as well.
Blais is a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s political science program and previously worked in provincial politics as a ministerial staffer. He was first elected councillor of Cumberland in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014 and 2018. He’s most recently been the chair of city council’s transportation committee. Blais was previously a school trustee as well, but unlike Collard he sat on the city’s Catholic school board.
Collard and Blais’s victories bring the Liberals’ total number of seats at Queen’s Park to eight, which under the pre-Ford formula would have been enough MPPs to grant the party official party status. Official party status would qualify the party to receive funds for things like research, staff salaries and grant them the right to greater participation in the legislature, including in question period.
The Liberals are still four seats short under the new official party status metric. Shortly after they were elected, the Progressive Conservatives raised the required number of MPPs in the legislature necessary to qualify for official party status to 12, with then PC House Leader Todd Smith reasoning that it was to reflect 10 per cent of members of the expanded legislature. Interim Liberal leader John Fraser accused the government of changing the requirements intentionally to block the Liberals from qualifying.
However, the Liberals have been polling strongly as of late, and could get a boost from the conclusion of their leadership race in early March. Former provincial cabinet minister Steven Del Duca is expected to win the contest after the Liberals’ announced early this month that he had won 56 per cent of the elected delegates that will ultimately determine who becomes the next leader at the party’s convention in Mississauga on March 7.
The Ottawa-Vanier byelection was called after Nathalie Des Rosiers stepped down to become principal of Massey College at the University of Toronto. Des Rosiers herself was first elected in a byelection in 2016. Aside from a two-year period when it was represented by an independent Claudette Boyer – who earlier was a Liberal MPP) – the seat has not been out of the party’s control in close to half a century.
On the opposite side of the city, it was Marie-France Lalonde’s resignation as MPP to run for federal Parliament that brought about the byelection in the riding of Orleans. Lalonde had been elected for the first time to Queen’s Park in 2014. In the fall’s federal election, she won the overlapping seat that had previously been held by Liberal MP Andrew Leslie, who chose not to run again for the Liberals. Orleans has been red provincially since 2003.
Both Des Rosiers and Lalonde stepped down last year.
The Liberals recently added another MPP to their ranks, with Amanda Simard joining the party this year after splitting with the PCs. Simard, who represents the Eastern Ontario riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, fell out of favour with the governing party within months of the PCs forming government. The brunt of her beef with the party were focussed on the PCs dealings with French-language policy. She left the party shortly after it announced it would cease work on a French-language university (which the PCs later back-pedalled from), and also took issue with the PCs pledge to eliminate the position of French Language Services Commissioner.
https://ipolitics.ca/2020/02/27/ontario-liberals-hold-on-to-pair-of-seats-in-ottawa-byelections/
