NDP incumbent Catherine Fife holds onto riding
Incumbent’s seat remained safe during roller-coaster campaign
Waterloo New Democrat Catherine Fife rode an orange wave of support back to Queen’s Park Thursday night.
Fife, who has represented the newly-named riding of Waterloo (formerly Kitchener-Waterloo) since a byelection victory in 2012, fended off challenges from Conservative Dan Weber and Liberal Dorothy McCabe.
“We did it, we did it in this region,” Fife said just before 10 p.m. as she greeted the crowd in a ballroom at the Delta Hotel. “We showed them that we have the best plan and we have the best people, and we worked so hard.”
Supporters were slowly trickling in to a ballroom at the hotel as polls closed at 9 p.m. While the gathering was billed as a joint party for four of the region’s New Democrat candidates, Fife signs were front and centre as party faithful urged on their only local incumbent.
As the crowd swelled, the cheers and applause grew, too, as poll after poll gave Fife the edge over closest challenger Weber. “No candidate does this work by themselves,” Fife said, praising her family, her campaign team and a network of friends and supporters.
The riding was widely considered to be the safest seat in the region. Fife’s was the only local seat that Wilfrid Laurier University political science professor Barry Kay deemed safe in the final days of this run; other ridings remained too close to call, or were leaning toward a certain party, but not definitively so.
“This has been a really challenging election,” Fife said late Wednesday afternoon, as the four-week provincial campaign wound down. “Every single day, there was some kind of scandal or some kind of crisis.”
At the door — Fife says she and her team knocked on 15,000 of them — she heard a “visceral” reaction to the Liberals and a sense of “uncertainty” brought about by Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives.
“I think this election has been a roller-coaster,” she said. “We’ve tried to give people something positive to vote for.”
Redrawn boundaries mean the riding is a slightly-smaller version of its former self, having lost some of its territory in Kitchener to the neighbouring ridings of Kitchener Centre and Kitchener-Conestoga.
The riding of Waterloo now encompasses all of the city of Waterloo, plus a portion of Kitchener north of the Canadian National Railway tracks and east of the Conestoga Parkway. It spans an area of about 75 square kilometres and has a population of 110,135, according to the 2016 census. The wealthy, well-educated riding is home to two universities and a college campus.
Fife, a former chair of the Waterloo Region District School Board, first headed to Queen’s Park in 2012 after winning a byelection to replace longtime Conservative MPP and cabinet minister Elizabeth Witmer, who stepped down to chair the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Witmer represented the area for 22 years.
Fife has recently served as her party’s critic for LGBTQ issues, early years and child care, and economic development, employment, research and innovation.
Four other candidates contested the race in Waterloo.
Weber ran for the Ontario PC Party, having won the nomination against Mike Harris Jr., the son of the former premier who was later handpicked to run in Kitchener-Conestoga following the controversial ouster of incumbent Michael Harris’ (no relation).
McCabe, a senior executive at the KidsAbility Centre for Child Development, represented the Liberals. She previously worked as executive assistant to former Kitchener Centre MPP John Milloy, and was chief of staff to the mayor of Kitchener where she was a vocal advocate for two-way, all-day GO train service to the region.
Securing improved transit links such as two-way, all-day GO service and high-speed rail were top of mind for many people in the riding — especially among the high-tech community eager to see the Toronto-Waterloo Region Corridor reach its full potential.
With as many as 2,000 unfilled tech jobs in the region, transit could be a deciding factor in whether businesses grow here or look elsewhere, Communitech’s Chris Plunkett said recently. Transportation is an equallyimportant consideration for prospective employees thinking of commuting to the region for work.
Social issues came to the fore in the discussions Fife had with voters, she said.
“Mental health crosses all demographics and all neighbourhoods in Waterloo,” she said. “Long-term care, and having options that provide seniors with integrity and dignity.” Housing instability and health care were also top of mind.
Issues aside, it was certainly a unique campaign, Fife said. “It has been a strange election, to say the least .... It was a battleground.”