NEW ONTARIO PARTY CANDIDATE
Joel Charbonneau of the Ontario Party is the youngest candidate among those seeking to become the next MPP for Glengarry-PrescottRussell in the June 7 provincial election.
Charbonneau, 20, lives in Limoges and is a business administration college student at La Cité in Orléans. He also runs a home-based direct sales and supply business.
“I am running so Glengarry-PrescottRussell can have a representative at
Queen’s Park,” Charbonneau said during a
May 20 phone interview, “and not a Queens
Park representative at Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.”
Charbonneau used to be a Progressive Conservative partisan but quit the party a couple of years ago because, he said, “it was becoming another Liberal Party” under the leadership of then leader Patrick Brown.
The Ontario Party is one of the newest additions to the province’s political scene. Charbonneau described himself and other party members as people “with principles in common” with a focus on local representation.
“My job is to be the representative of the riding in Queen’s Park and vote on what the constituents want,” he said, adding that the Ontario Party’s principles include free voting by its members in the legislature.
Charbonneau declared his opposition to “unwanted wind turbine projects” in the riding and said he wants the Green Energy Act abolished. He also wants the “carbon tax” scrapped, describing it as “a money grab” with rural residents. —Gregg Chamberlain