Tory incumbent Brock prevails in Brantford-Brant
As a lawyer, persuasion is Larry Brock’s stock in trade. On Monday, the longtime assistant Crown attorney persuaded the voters of Brantford-Brant to send him to Ottawa.
The Conservative candidate prevailed in a three-way race with Liberal Alison Macdonald, a Brantford-based lawyer from Six Nations, and NDP hopeful Adrienne Roberts, a high school teacher active in the local labour movement.
Brock claimed 40.2 per cent of the vote with 241 of 242 polls reporting and as many as 3,120 mail-in ballots still to be counted.
“Just pure elation. I’m humbled. I feel privileged,” Brock said.
“Just an unbelievable feeling to have the trust of people who voted for me, and obviously the people who didn’t vote for me are still going to have a very effective and loyal representative in Ottawa.”
The race became wide open once Conservative incumbent Phil McColeman — who had held the seat since 2008 — decided not to seek re-election.
Brock said he was inspired to seek public office for the first time after working on “numerous” campaigns at all levels of government over the past 15 years because he was “troubled by the state of affairs in my local community here in Brantford-Brant. I want to be an instrument of change.”
Brock said he has a “passion” for “forming a much more harmonious, peaceful economic union with Six Nations of the Grand River and the Mississaugas of the Credit,” the two Indigenous communities within Brantford-Brant. He said the presence of so many Indigenous offenders in the criminal justice system can be traced back to “the failures of the residential school system and the decades worth of intergenerational trauma."
Brock pledged to push the Liberals to implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission “to give effect to a true nation-to-nation genous neighbours.”