Luisa D’Amato

Nancy Wallace knows there are two Kitcheners.

One is a bright new city of light rail lines, freshly built condo towers, and imaginative technology startups.

The other Kitchener is struggling, a blue-collar town still coming to terms with the massive loss of manufacturing jobs.

Wallace, who works as a superintendent for an apartment building in a low-income neighbourhood, thinks there is now more poverty than ever in central Kitchener.

“There’s a lot of hurting people in this city.”

Wallace had just voted in Thursday’s provincial election.

She knew the Liberals were finished, long before Ontario Liberal party leader Kathleen Wynne admitted last weekend that there wouldn’t be another Liberal government.

As goes Kitchener Centre, so goes Ontario, or so it has been for three decades.

The central Kitchener riding is a microcosm of the province. From 1985 to 2014 it voted the same way as the Ontario government voted. This time, it broke with tradition.

For the past 15 years in Waterloo Region, the Liberal government invested in light rail transit and in Communitech, the hub for tech startup companies. It gave money to successful high-tech companies and for research at the universities. It brought GO trains between here and Toronto, and was making plans to start a high-speed rail line to Toronto, which tech companies were asking for.

But “they forgot about the middle guy,” Wallace said. “They forgot about the guys that are below the middle guy.”

Liberals will tell you that’s an unfair assessment. They brought in all-day kindergarten, which they say helped families with child-care costs. Late in their 15-year rule, they raised minimum wage substantially

But they never brought social assistance levels back up after the Mike Harris Conservative government cut them to humiliating levels in the 1990s. They started talking about a basic minimum income, but not until very late in their mandate.

They allowed hydro bills to soar to unsustainable levels, especially in rural areas. Wynne sold Hydro One to pay for infrastructure and now Hydro’s CEO earns more than $6 million. After too long, she lowered hydro rates, but with borrowed money.

Wallace worried about the government’s spiralling debt under the Liberals.

She knows that money spent on interest is money that can’t be spent on health care for people like her.

Now in her 60s, she worries about her own future. “I’m OK as long as I’m working,” she said.

But “once I go on my pension full-time, I am going to struggle.”

And when her health fails, “I can’t afford to go in a nursing home,” she said.

Yes, Ontario’s unemployment rate is at historic lows and the economy is doing well. Wynne told us that all the time. Her unspoken question was: Why am I so unpopular when I accomplished this for you?

Voters understand the robust economy doesn’t include everyone. It’s there for people with high skills, not for people with low skills. Soon, robots invented by those clever startups will be cleaning offices. Cars will be driving themselves. Fear turns into anger at the blink of an eye.