Green candidate Kyle Hutton looking for 15% of the popular vote in Burlington

By Jason Octavo

May 12th 2022

BURLINGTON, ON

My task for the day was to interview Kyle Hutton, candidate for the Green Party in the upcoming election.

Kyle went to high school at M.M Robinson. He was there until Grade 10 before he dropped out due to circumstances as a teenager. However, he did complete a GED at Gary Allan High School. Afterwards, he went to Sheridan College at Oakville for the GAS program. He has lived in Brant Hills for about 20 years.

Kyle believes the key to a better economy is to lower taxes and gas prices. “Get down those costs, so that the next time we’re faced with a situation where our gas is going up to $2 a litre,” said Hutton. He also believes the amount of rental and housing laws that we’re facing is absurd. “For somebody just coming out of the pandemic, they can’t afford to live here,” said Hutton.

This is the first time that Kyle is being nominated as a leader of a party. So he may not have the experience as a candidate. However, as a full-time worker, he believes he can use his struggles in affording to live in this city to bring attention to these issues. And to finally have somebody in office who’s going to really talk about them and provide solutions.

Kyle believes the key to a better Ontario is by tackling the climate crisis. “Climate change is the crisis of the century,” said Hutton. “It’s killing our planet and its killing people. Kyle is worried that people are expecting future generations to deal with climate change; the time to deal with climate change is now.

“I love meeting people at their door, even if they’re just saying something like, oh, thank you very much and they just take the election literature.
said Hutton. “I think the interactions are good – people in Burlington are extremely polite”.

The Greens are focused on building a sustainable and renewable economy. “This economy that we’re living in right now, we have polluters continuing on their merry way, and we have a gas economy in the country that’s focused on propping up lots of new roads while everybody’s trying to get off to them,” said Hutton.

The Green Party is the only one right now that’s admitting ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) is actually in poverty. “The only solution we can do to lift people out of poverty is to double ODSP,” said Hutton. “They have laws around ODSP, if you make more than $200 for a job, ODSP gets clawed back.”

Kyle says that public transit is worked around poorly. “When I was going to college at Sheridan, I would have to get on the bus. Go down to the GO Station probably waited 15 minutes for the train to arrive. And then I’d go to Oakville, wait for the buses there to go to Sheridan College. Overall, that took me 45 minutes to an hour to get from Brant & Upper Middle to Trafalgar,” said Hutton.

Kyle is tired of receiving decades of empty promises from governments. He has been living long enough to be around all three parties in power in this province. He is confident that not much has changed.

Kyle is hoping to aim for between 15 and 20 percent of the votes. If his party begins to really catch fire, he’ll go as far as intending to win.

We’ll see if the Green Party can make deeper inroads as the election moves forward.