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TORONTO — Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives hope to make history Thursday in two byelections, with a teenage candidate in the Niagara area and a former provincial ombudsman trying to take an Ottawa seat from the Liberals.
The Tories are expected to hold Niagara West-Glanbrook even with an upstart 19-year-old candidate stirring up controversy by taking social conservative stances that run contrary to PC leader Patrick Brown’s attempts at modernizing the party.
But the Tories are also taking a hard run at Ottawa-Vanier, which has elected only Liberals since 1971.
Former ombudsman Andre Marin is running under the PC banner there and is trying to capitalize on anger over rising electricity rates and the declining popularity of Premier Kathleen Wynne.
When he mentions Wynne’s name while campaigning, people “bristle,” Marin said. “They have a physical reaction.”
The Liberal candidate, civil liberties lawyer Nathalie Des Rosiers, acknowledged that hydro prices are a hurdle for her in the campaign.
“It’s normal at mid-mandate that one issue becomes a catalyst for disappointment on a variety of points of view, so in a byelection that usually is the case — there’s one issue that becomes the symbol of discontent,” she said.
The Liberal government announced an eight-per-cent rebate on electricity bills will come into effect Jan. 1, but it remains to be seen whether it is enough to satisfy the 94 per cent of Ontarians that government-commissioned polling shows are eager for hydro price relief.
The Liberal candidate in Niagara West-Glanbrook, Vicki Ringuette, was booed and jeered at a recent all candidates meeting when she talked about the rebate.
“It is not the kind of reaction I’m getting at the doors,” said Ringuette. “They want to talk about the issues that are important to this community, health care, schools, the fact that we’re getting increased day care spaces.”
But PC candidate Sam Oosterhoff — who would be the youngest person elected to the legislature — said rising electricity bills and anger over the installation of giant wind turbines in the riding are the top issues people bring up with him.
“People are upset and are worried about the direction the Liberals are taking Ontario,” he said. “People want a voice of change and I’m excited to be that voice.”
Oosterhoff, who describes himself as “100 per cent pro life,” said he agrees that Ontario’s sex-education curriculum needed to be updated, but he wouldn’t say if he’d work to repeal the changes if the Tories win the 2018 election.
“I think we need to ensure that we have a curriculum that was crafted in consultation with parents, and the Liberals have done a really bad job on that,” he said.
Oosterhoff, who beat out PC party president Rick Dykstra and a party vice-president to win the nomination, also refused to say where he stands on same-sex marriage, insisting it’s not an issue in the byelection.
The teenage candidate believes he can vote against his party’s positions in the legislature.
“I’m very proud of the PC party having a long-standing tradition of allowing open votes on matters of deeply held conscience,” he said.
The Liberals claim Oosterhoff started “sanitizing” his Twitter account to delete posts about his social conservative views, while some Conservatives accused Brown’s office of “muzzling” their candidate.
In Ottawa-Vanier, the Liberals took a screen capture of a now-deleted tweet showing Marin’s campaign manager holding a pro-Trump sign, and planned to use it to say the Tories’ values are not in line with the community’s.
Marin said he doesn’t perform “mind control” on his staff, who are free to do what they want.
“Listen, I’m just about as far from a Trump supporter as you could possibly imagine,” Marin said.
“(The Liberals) should look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘You know, we’re a lot like Trump’ because in many ways he won the election by being a slimy, sleazy smearer and Nathalie Des Rosiers should think twice before she embarks on that course of action.”
The NDP candidate in Ottawa-Vanier is Claude Bisson, brother of the party’s house leader in the legislature, Gilles Bisson. The New Democrat running in Niagara is former Hamilton police officer Mike Thomas, who signed a five-year membership in the Ontario PC party in September.
