Andrea Horwath visits the Burlington NDP office.

News 100 yellowBy Pepper Parr

June 5th, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

This article has been slightly revised.

It wasn’t a stop in the original plan for the campaign.

Burlington wasn’t seen as a major opportunity for the New Democrats in this provincial election. The party had a base in the 20% range and never got above that count.

2018 had two things that were different – the NDP was doing much better across the province and Burlington had a much better candidate.

Andrea in a crowd

Andrea Horwath – she wades into a crowd and touches people – they love it.

That’s what brought the Horwath “A Change for the Better” bus rolling into the Mountainside office late in the day.

Andrea finger on cheek

Andrea Horwath – animating a small crowd outside the Burlington NDP office.

Andrea Horwath is on the short side – sharp eyes that hold their gaze with no problem wading into a crowd. She doesn’t need a lectern or a sign in front of her.

She delivers the message, is very friendly with people – she doesn’t just come across as sincere – she is. Some stuff can be faked – this wasn’t fake.

She isn’t the kind of speaker that you would call an orator. She just tells you what she thinks. Asked during the media scrum what the first thing she was going to do if she found herself having the Office of the Premier? Find out where the washroom is was the reply. And it wasn’t a smart ass answer.

Has she begun to think about how she would form a Cabinet? No decisions have been made but there have been conversations.

Intensification is a big Burlington issue: what does Horwath think about regional growth? It has to be sustainable and we have to ensure that the services we have now are kept in place and improved upon.

The decisions being made in the United States and the tariff talk that is taking place are top of mind for Horwath – what is this going to do to our steel industry.

Her opponent – and there is now just the one – has more than enough of his own problems to deal with said Horwath – police investigations, law suits involving family members. “If Doug Ford is being sued by his sister-in-law for failing to give her what she thinks she is due how can we depend on him to take care of the people of Ontario? was the question Horwath had.

In the final days of an election campaign everyone is in scramble mode – reaching out for every possible vote.

McMahon with 2014 numbers

The data in the graph is from the 2014 election.

Burlington’s MPP Eleanor McMahon published a call for canvassers to keep at it – used a graph showing just how far ahead the Liberals were – in 2014. 2018 is a much different situation.

Tedjo talking

Alvin Tedjo – Liberal candidate in Oakville North Burlington

Premier Wynn is going to be in Burlington on Friday but she is not scheduled to drop by the McMahon office on Fairview – instead she will be calling on Alvin Tedjo’s office on Appleby Line where a combination of a politically attractive candidate and weak PC candidate plus a New Democrat who isn’t much more than a place holder. Nice but not a contender this time around.

graphic03

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4 comments to Andrea Horwath visits the Burlington NDP office.

  • Lonely Taxpayer

    “Premier Wynne is going to be in Burlington on Friday.. calling on Alvin Tedjo’s office on Appleby Line.” OK??? The election will be over by then.
    Editor’s note: The last few days of this election were so hectic we sometimes were’t certain just what day it was. The error was ours – we apologize.

  • Tom Muir

    No matter who wins, the idea of “sustainable” will soon be turned into putty and mush, just like “intensification” was and is. In fact, for the most part it already has been.

    Does anybody know, in practical policy terms, what it means?

    We should be asking the provincial bureaucrats in charge of the Places to Grow Plan, that local politicians are telling us they have to obey, how doubling the population of Halton Region, by adding 500,000 people, by 2041, which is only 23 years, is “sustainable”?

    It can’t be done. Just think about it. It took about 150 years to get to the 500,000 we have now.

    It is obvious from the election debate that we can’t afford what we already have, and to get to where we are has required an accumulated debt burden of almost $400 billion, more than half grown in the last 20 years.

    The clamor for more money for Hydro, health care, roads and transit, education, and other big buck items, is still just a catch-up ballgame of pass the hat to pay for past sins of previous growth plans.

    And we are supposed to double down? The future on this path is same old, same old, indeed.

    If the present provincial finances are not penciling out as “sustainable”, what does any thinking person presume doubling most everything that is now problematic, but that took more than 100 years to build, and at an increasingly frantic and exponential rate, is going to do?

    Even today, we see that our leaders don’t have a clue as to what “sustainable” means. It’s already putty and mush. They can’t even do the arithmetic.

    Where we are is not sustainable, never mind where the Growth Plan says we must go.

    It won’t work to create the world everyone is talking about, and one that we will recognize and would choose to live in when we get there.

    Beware the silver tongues. And the dutiful bureaucrats delivering the Plan.

  • Greg Laws

    “instead she will be calling on Alvin Tedjo’s office on Appleby Line where a combination of an attractive candidate and week PC candidate and a New Democrat who isn’t much more than a place holder. Nice but not a contender this time around.” Pepper is nice, but not a contender for a Pulitzer, anytime soon. We will see who is “relevant” when the Liberals are reduced to non-official party status. It appears attractiveness is this “political analyst’s” guideline for success but the real fault with this puff piece is the editor’s.

  • Eve St Clair

    Oakville north Burlington candidate is not weak !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Terrible biased article Nice description too of an”attractive candidate” Low blow