Nepean, Carleton among provincial riding changes
Seventeen new seats up for grabs in June election
Regardless of how Ottawa voters cast their ballots on June 7, there is guaranteed to be at least one new area MPP at Queen’s Park.
That politician will represent a new riding, Carleton, hived off as part of a redrawing of Ontario’s electoral boundaries that adds 17 new seats to the legislature. Most of the new ridings are in urban areas, mainly around Toronto, but two are in Northern Ontario. The new ridings mean Ontarians will elect 124 MPPs, up from 107 in the past session.
The split of the former Nepean-Carleton riding mirrors the changes that voters first saw in the 2015 federal election. The incumbent, Conservative Lisa MacLeod, will run in the new riding of Nepean, while three newcomers — Liberal Theresa Qadri, Conservative Goldie Ghamari and Gordon Kubanek of the Greens — are vying for Carleton. The NDP is expected to nominate its candidate this week.
Election 2018 is also the first to be held under strict new campaignfinancing laws that took effect in 2016. The new rules ban donations to political parties from corporations and unions, and are meant to limit the ability of third-party groups to mount ad campaigns targeting one issue or party.
The rules also target old “cashfor-access” events, prohibiting MPPs from appearing at fundraising events.
Individual campaign donations are now capped at $1,200, down from $9,975 under the former rules, in a bid to limit “big-money politics” and the influence of a few deep-pocketed donors.
To compensate, major political parties will receive funding based on the support they received in the previous election at a rate of $2.71 per vote. Based on the 2014 voting results, the Liberals will receive $5.06 million, the Conservatives $4.09 million, the New Democrats $3.1 million and the Greens $630,000.
That subsidy rate will be gradually reduced for future elections.
And there is, of course, the most obvious change of all: It’s the first provincial election for the Progressive Conservatives’ new leader, Doug Ford, who previously served one term on Toronto city council. Liberal Kathleen Wynne, who has been an MPP since 2003, leads the party into her second election as leader, having been elected premier with a majority in 2014. Andrea Horwath, who entered the legislature in 2004, will lead the NDP into her third election since becoming leader in 2009. It’s also the third election for Mike Schreiner, leader of Ontario’s Green party.