This election, I’m doing more than voting

Spec columnist announces she intends to run against Andrea Horwath

I have voted in every election I could since I turned 18 in 1980. I have never bought a membership in any political party until now, but it has always been the New Democratic Party that received my vote in provincial and federal elections.

In the beginning, my only question when candidates came to speak to student gatherings at university or later knocked on my first apartment door, pertained to their support for “gay rights.” Only the NDP ever said they would fight for us. Only they deserved my vote.

Naturally, as my world became larger, so did my questions, seeking justice and inclusion for people who are trans, Indigenous, racialized, newcomers, differently abled, older, younger, living in poverty, all.

One area in which I have been asking many questions, and receiving very few good answers until lately, is income inequality, particularly in Ontario and more precisely in Hamilton.

How is it possible in a province with so much wealth that First Ontario Place (Copps Coliseum to traditionalists) could be filled almost five times with the number of people who live in poverty across this city? That translates to one in five Hamiltonians, one in four of our children, living below the poverty line.

Since I retired from parish ministry in the Catholic Church and took up my role as a social planner in 2001, much of my work has been about undoing the nonsensical “Common Sense Revolution” of former premier Mike Harris and the so-called “Progressive” Conservatives.

From 2003 - 13, I was among provincial poverty activists petitioning the Liberal government under Premier Dalton McGuinty to undo the destruction done by Harris with the creation of a punitive social assistance system and a rate cut of nearly 22% in 1995. We didn’t get very far.

However, MPPs like Deb Matthews, who eventually became responsible for the new Ontario Poverty Reduction Strategy in 2008, gave us hope when she started listening to the voices of people with the lived experience of poverty; people trying to make ends meet on Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program. Many people sensed her compassion and knew she was pushing for better from the inside.

Then Kathleen Wynne was chosen to lead the governing party in 2013. She pledged to be the social justice premier. It seemed slow in coming. After her first year I was a witness at a mock trial in which a stand-in for Wynne was tried for misleading the public with a commitment to social justice.

I wrote a column about the trial saying, “Kathleen Wynne started her premiership with bold words in which she identified herself as the ‘social justice premier.’ With social assistance rates leaving people in the most extreme depths of poverty, she's not living up to her chosen identity.”

Now I have seen action that aligns with that identity and a commitment for more to come.

A new Income Security Roadmap is on the table with recommendations for significant increases in social assistance rates among other essential system changes. On top of increased minimum wage, changes under Bill 148 will mean less precarity for Ontario workers. The Basic Income Pilot Project is well underway, lifting people out of deep poverty, with no other party mentioning plans to continue this landmark work should they be elected. More than 200,000 students accessed free tuition this year through a program that covers fees for those from lowerincome families. OHIP+ is providing a comprehensive drug plan to people under 25.

Over the last year, I have been part of a “kitchen cabinet” gathering stories and data on rural poverty under the leadership of Premier Wynne’s parliamentary secretary, Ted McMeekin. He assured the people in our conversations across the province their voices would be heard by the premier. I was a witness to the meeting where that happened. It changed me.

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” That’s the first line my dad taught me to type. I could type it quickly and accurately, but I never understood it the way I do today.

This is my last column as a freelance columnist for the Hamilton Spectator for now.

I am declaring my intention to seek the nomination as the Liberal candidate in Hamilton Centre. I would be running against Andrea Horwath. It would not be easy, but I feel compelled.

I have stood beside Andrea in solidarity at many rallies over the years as we were on the same side of so many issues. Now our paths have diverged. Her silence on poverty is disheartening. In 2014, an election was triggered because Andrea led her party to vote against a Liberal budget, in part, in protest of the $14 minimum wage.

That same year, longtime Ontario NDP members including Michele Landsberg, partner of former ONDP party leader Stephen Lewis, and Toronto public health nurse and former NDP candidate Cathy Crowe were among many signatories to a letter to Andrea which stated, “If the NDP does not stand with working people, poor people, with women, with immigrants, then what does it stand for? We urge you to change course.”

That course didn’t change so I am. I have been pushing Premier Wynne and her party from the outside to move on a fairer agenda for all Ontarians and she has listened. Now is the time for me to try and join her to do that work from the inside.