NDP up in Mushkegowuk— James Bay
Northern Ontario voters casting ballots in new riding for first time
OTTAWA— Voters in Ontario’s vast north cast their ballots Thursday in two new ridings tt that were redrawn to amplify their voices at Queen’s Park. Early returns from Mushkegowuk— James Bay put New Democrat Guy Bourgouin in the lead, while polls in neighbouring Kiiwetinoong were delayed until early Friday morning.
Bourgouin, president of a local chapter of the United Steelworkers ww union, was up against Progressive Conservative candidate André Robichaud, a municipal economic development officer in Kapuskasing. The Liberal candidate, Gaëtan Baillargeon, trailed in third place aa after votes were counted from four f of the riding’s 30 polling stations.
Results in the riding of Kiiwetinoong, a massive region in northwestern Ontario that covers almost a third of the province’s land mass, were delayed several hours after Elections Ontario decided to extend voting hours at a single polling station on the Grassy Narrows First Nation.
The contest in Kiiwetinoong pitted New Democrat Sol Mamakwa, a health adviser for a large Indigenous organization in the region, against Sioux Lookout Mayor Doug Lawrance, the Liberal candidate, and Lac Seul First Nation Chief Clifford Bull, who ran under the Progressive Conservative banner. Christine Penner Polle was the candidate for the Green Party.
An official with Elections Ontario said results from Kiiwetinoong were expected after 1 a. m. Friday, when the delayed polling station was slated to close.
Both northern ridings were created for this election on the recommendation of a non- partisan panel, which advised clipping off urban centres from the large and sparsely populated north to create four ridings out of the previous two in this remote part of the province.
The result was the establishment of two ridings where minority populations represent the majority of voters. For Kiiwetinoong, which means “the north” in Ojibwe, at least 68 per cent of the 33,000 people in the region are Indigenous, while in Mushkegowuk— James Bay, 60 per cent of the 30,000 residents are francophone and 27 per cent are Indigenous.
Given these particularities, the electoral dynamics in these northernmost ridings differed from the rest of Ontario. Candidates in Kiiwetinoong told the Star they cumulatively travelled thousands of kilometres, often by small charter plane.