Laura Mae Lindo knocks off Liberal cabinet minister
NDP bucks riding’s reputation as a bellweather
Kitchener Centre has gone orange.
Cheers erupted at the Delta Hotel in Waterloo as it was announced Thursday evening that Laura Mae Lindo, 42, was projected to win the riding.
“I am honoured and humbled by the show of support in Kitchener Centre,” said Lindo. “It’s clear that change for the better is what Kitchener Centre wants and I’m ready to get to work.”
Lindo, originally from Scarborough, has lived in Kitchener Centre since 2014. She has a PhD in education and is currently on leave from her position as director of diversity and equity at Wilfrid Laurier University.
She unseats Daiene Vernile, the former Liberal cabinet minister of tourism, culture and sport, who won the riding in 2014.
“The campaign was brilliant,” said Lindo. “I have not had so much fun.”
With a laugh, she added that the first thing she plans to do when she gets to Queen’s Park is locate the bathroom.
Kitchener Centre has shed its bellwether status.Wilfrid Laurier University political science professor Barry Kay said previously that the riding has served as a good bellwether, traditionally electing a member of the governing party, because its neither big city nor rural. But this time around, it has elected a member of the opposition.
Up until the last minute, Vernile was working hard to keep her seat. She got an early 5:45 a.m. start on election day, gave her husband a hug and “bolted” out the door to do some last minute canvassing. Her campaign team knocked on an estimated 27,000 doors throughout the campaign.
Liberal candidates faced a tough reality when their leader Kathleen Wynne conceded her party would lose just days before the election.
“Our campaign team sat down and asked ourselves, how does this affect us and how’s it going to change our approach?” she said, early Thursday. “The consensus was it’s not.” So they continued to focus on what was most important — the riding.
Mary Henein Thorn was the candidate for the PC Party. Previously she worked as a constituency agent for former Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Michael Harris. She also worked for federal MP Diane Finley as a special assistant.
Stacey Danckert, co-director of the Waterloo Region Environment Network, ran for the Green Party. The other candidates were Chris Carr for the None of the Above Direct Democracy Party, Jason Erb for the Libertarian Party and Martin Suter for the Communist Party.
The new Kitchener Centre representative takes on a riding adjacent to Kitchener-Conestoga, Kitchener South-Hespeler and Waterloo. Of the five Waterloo Region ridings it’s the most compact at 42 square kilometres. It has the lowest median household income at $60,091, the highest poverty rate at 16.5 per cent, and a population of 105,260, according to the 2016 census.
The riding is geographically small in comparison to other ridings in the region. It runs east to the Grand River, as north as Breithaupt Park and southwest to where Fischer-Hallman Road and the Conestoga Parkway meet. It includes Kitchener’s downtown along with outlying neighbourhoods such as Forest Hills, Breithaupt Park area, and Stanley Park.
The riding has a booming tech sector with a number of startups and tech firms such as Google, Sortable, Thalmic Labs, Alert Labs and Vidyard.
Kitchener’s downtown is also home to big employers such as Manulife Financial, Rogers Communications and the Canada Revenue Agency.
The riding also has two major hospitals — Grand River and St. Mary’s — a Go Train stop, and it has been a magnet for new condo developments.
But prosperity and growth have put pressure on public services. The local business community along with regional municipalities have been long advocating for two-way, all-day GO Train service, which is expected by 2024.
There are also a number of social challenges, including the need for more affordable housing and a drug addiction crisis downtown that is mirrored in cities across the country, John Neufeld, executive director of the House of Friendship, said recently.