Caroline Mulroney announces her jump into Ontario politics
With the son of one former prime minister already holding the highest political office in the country, the daughter of another is making her entrance into politics.
Caroline Mulroney, who spent a decade of her childhood at 24 Sussex Drive, announced Wednesday she’s seeking the Ontario Progressive Conservative nomination in the Toronto-area riding of York-Simcoe.
The 43-year-old daughter of Brian Mulroney, Canada’s Prime Minister from 1984 to 1993, would be a star candidate for the Ontario PCs as the party aims to end a decade and a half of Liberal rule. Not only raised by a political family, she boasts a lengthy resume as a lawyer, an investment adviser and a philanthropist.
The PCs have been leading provincial polls since Patrick Brown was elected leader in 2015, though Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals have narrowed the gap recently.
“As a working mother of four, I know we need change,” the 43-yearold Mulroney said in a video announcing her candidacy. “Government needs to get out of the way, focus more on affordability, manage taxes properly so we get the services we expect.”
Mulroney has been making herself more visible in party politics recently, including a stint co-hosting the federal Conservative leadership convention in May. Last fall, she introduced Brown at a fundraising dinner.
“I have great confidence in Patrick Brown,” Mulroney told Postmedia’s Bradford Times in an interview on Wednesday. “He understands what people here want and care about.”
Mulroney, who is married to Andrew Lapham, has a home in Georgina, which is in the riding. She said in the interview she’s getting a sense of what local voters are looking for in the election scheduled for June 2018.
“From all the people I’ve spoken with, the people of York-Simcoe want change. People tell me that what matters to them is the rising cost of living — the cost of housing, hydro rates, taxes ... the affordability.”
The Ontario PCs have already gotten some advice from her father, who dropped by the Ontario legislature in April 2016 at Brown’s request to give some advice to the caucus on winning the next election.
Brown has previously said that he first decided he was a Conservative when, during grade school, he wrote a letter to then-Prime Minister Mulroney about acid rain and got a response back. “I told my parents, ‘I think I agree with the Conservative party,’ ” he said in a 2015 Toronto Life interview.
Caroline studied at Harvard College, has a law degree from New York University, and experience at investment firms and philanthropic organizations. She is currently a vice president at BloombergSen, a Toronto investment counselling firm, a member of the board for the Sickkids Foundation, a Governor of the National Theatre School of Canada, and the co-founder and chair of the Shoebox Project for Shelters charity, which collects gifts for women and girls in shelters or facing homelessness.
If she wins the nomination, she’ll be running in a riding vacated by long-time PC MPP Julia Munro, who is retiring. York-Simcoe, located just north of Toronto, has been easily won by Munro in each election since the riding was created in 2007, and Munro has held a seat in the legislature since 1995.The nomination meeting for York-Simcoe isn’t scheduled until Sept. 10.