Ontario goes blue
Region’s ridings split between PCs and NDP
Waterloo Region votes for change Local voters kick out two cabinet ministers in provincial election centred around making change
WATERLOO REGION — Waterloo Region’s voters kicked out two cabinet ministers as part of a provincewide Liberal purge, while electing the son of a former premier, two other Conservative newcomers and a new NDP member.
One incumbent MPP, Waterloo’s Catherine Fife, held her seat. She’s headed back to Queen’s Park as part of a surging NDP that made significant gains and will become the Official Opposition for the first time.
Doug Ford and the Ontario PC Party were ushered into power for the first time since 2003, winning a strong majority that will be joined in the legislature by three new PC candidates from Waterloo Region.
In Kitchener-Conestoga, it’s Mike Harris Jr., the hand-picked candidate and son of the former premier, controversially appointed by Ford after former MPP Michael Harris was turfed over a flirty text exchange from 2012.
Former school board trustee Amy
PC 74 SEATS*
NDP 40 SEATS*
LIBERAL 7 SEATS*
GREEN 1 SEATS*
Fee will carry the banner in the new riding of Kitchener South-Hespler. She narrowly beat former boxer Fitz Vanderpool for the NDP to win the seat.
Progressive Conservative candidate Brenda Karahalios won in Cambridge, after a protracted and contentious battle within the party for the nomination.
For the Liberals, the election was a humiliating defeat. Cambridge’s Kathryn McGarry and Kitchener-Centre’s Daiene Vernile, both cabinet ministers, lost their seats as the Kathleen Wynne-led Grits went from the governing party to a thirdplace party narrowly clinging to official status.
Their collapse ends 15 years of Liberal governments, with the Liberal candidates all finishing a distant third in the region’s five ridings.
Vernille was upended by the NDP’s Laura Mae Lindo, who was the director of diversity and equity at Wilfrid Laurier University. It was the first time since 1985 that Kitchener Centre has not voted with the winning party.
The NDP took home nearly 35 per cent of the popular vote, but were outdone by the Tories’ 40 per cent of the total vote, which was more evenly spread around the province.
“I know that it was disappointing beyond words that Doug Ford is the premier of this province,” said Fife, as she greeted supporters at her victory party in the riding of Waterloo. “But I also know that we are going to fight his regressive policies at Queen’s Park. Doug Ford doesn’t know who he’s messing with.”
The Liberals had the lowest popular support since the 1920s — which some observers suggested could be linked to Wynne’s decision to concede defeat five days before the election.
“As soon as the election was called, the Liberals didn’t have any upward movement. They just went down and down as far as popular support is concerned,” said Anna Esselment, an assistant professor in the department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. “It’s really surprising to see how bad it was.”
It appears large swaths of voters stayed home and chose not to vote, which Esselment suggested was because the Liberals moved too far to the left.
“I’m here to congratulate her on a wellfought campaign,” McGarry said to Karahalios at the Argyle Arms in Preston, after the results became clear.
The voting results suggest there are deep divides within the province, particularly in southwestern Ontario where many urban areas went orange while rural areas went blue. That could make it tricky for Ford to select a representative cabinet.
“If you think about cabinet-making, if the cities outside of Toronto are mostly orange, what do you do in terms of making it representative?” Esselment said.
The Green party drew fewer votes across Waterloo Region compared to 2014, while voters in Guelph made history — making party leader Mike Schreiner the first Green MPP-elect in Ontario.
It was one of the strangest elections in recent memory, including the sudden departure of Patrick Brown, the former PC leader, who stepped down in January over accusations of sexual misconduct.
What’s clear is the region has four new MPP-elects. At the Edelweiss Tavern in Kitchener South-Hespeler, dozens of Fee supporters cheered as the lead shifted back and forth between their candidate and her NDP challenger.
An even louder cheer erupted when Ford was named as the premier-elect with a strong majority.
“We need a change,” said Fee supporter Ana Maria Ruiz. “This is an opportunity for something new.”
Elections Ontario said new voting technology introduced for this election was expected to keep lines to a minimum, and produce results sooner.
About half the polls had vote tabulators, which electronically counted each ballot and generated the results after polls close. Voters marked their ballot and placed it into a ‘secrecy folder’ before returning it to the poll official, who feeds the ballot into the tabulator.
The vast majority of voters — about 90 per cent — signed in electronically, skipping the old-fashioned paper-based list.
— With files from Record staff