All NDP eyes will be focused on Ford
Horwath gives critic roles to all 39 of party’s MPPs to keep tabs on cabinet
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is setting her sights on boosting support from the 905 and rural areas by naming deputy leaders from Brampton and northeastern Ontario farm country.
As the New Democrats prepare for the fall session of the legislature beginning Sept. 24, Horwath has also taken the unusual step of giving all 39 of her MPPs a critic role to keep tabs on Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet.
“It is up to us to be the voice of the over 3 million Ontarians who voted against Doug Ford,” Horwath, now leader of the Official Opposition, told a news conference Thursday.
She appointed veteran MPP and farmer John Vanthof (Timiskaming-Cochrane) and first-time member Sara Singh — who won Brampton Centre by just 89 votes over her Progressive Conservative challenger in the June 7 election — as her deputies.
Singh, founder of the not-forprofit social agency Broadening Horizons that works with youth in Brampton, is tasked with reaching out to voters in the Greater Toronto Area, while Vanthof will look to make bigger inroads in farming and rural communities.
“We know that we connected very strongly with residents in the GTA as well as in rural Ontario ... but we also know that we need to become more familiar to families in those communities and those areas,” Horwath said of the spring election campaign, which saw former premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals reduced to seven seats.
About two weeks before voting day, some polls had Horwath neck-and-neck with or leading Ford’s Progressive Conservatives, before support fell away as the PCs hammered a handful of NDP candidates — including one who opposed poppies on Remembrance Day, another who held anti-police views and a third who mentioned Adolf Hitler in a Facebook post.
“In the GTA, we know that there are folks that were looking at us closely as an alternative, but perhaps didn’t feel that we were familiar enough with them or they were familiar enough with us,” Horwath said.
Vanthof will also serve as critic for the ministry of agriculture, food and rural development.
Singh will becritic for the attorney general’s ministry, which is headed by another political newcomer, Caroline Mulroney.
Although Ford has a 21-member cabinet, including himself, he gave some ministers more than one portfolio — such as Greg Rickford in energy, northern development and mines, and Indigenous affairs.
Horwath split up shadow cabinet duties to allow her MPPs to focus more tightly on some areas, such as newcomer Sol Mamakwa, who represents the new northwest Ontario riding of Kiiwetinoong that includes Grassy Narrows, as critic of Indigenous relations and reconciliation.