Nolan Quinn re-elected;
Another victory for Doug Ford
MPP Nolan Quinn was re-elected on February 27
by Brandon Mayer
Local MPP Nolan Quinn gets to keep his job following the February 27 election, which also saw Premier Doug Ford cruise to a historic third-in-a-row majority government victory. As MPP, Quinn represents the entirety of Stormont, Dundas, & South Glengarry (which includes North Dundas, the City of Cornwall, and four other municipalities) at Queen’s Park.
The local SDSG riding has been a conservative stronghold ever since the retirement of former local liberal MPP, Jim Brownell. Quinn took a staggering 23,846 votes for the Ontario PC Party, or just over 62% of the popular vote. By comparison, the next highest vote counts were 7,346 for Devon Monkhouse of the Liberal Party, and 4,760 for Jeremy Rose of the NDP. Less than 44% of eligible voters took the time to cast a ballot.
Winchester local Stefan Kohut threw his hat in the ring this election, nearly three years after an unsuccessful bid to run for North Dundas Council in 2022. He earned 812 votes for the New Blue Party, which was just under Nicholas Lapierre’s 969 votes as the Green Party candidate. The lowest number of votes went to Brigitte Sugrue of the heavily Christian leaning Ontario Party, with just 710 votes.
Both the PC Party and the NDP campaigned on protecting Ontario from any future hostile actions of USA president Donald Trump, including tariffs, or attempts to make Canada the 51st state. Headlines credit Premier Ford’s “tariff rallying cry” for this most recent win. It is a logical assumption that the province and SDSG will “stay the course”, with no change in leadership on either front. The historic election shows that so-called “scandals” such as the Greenbelt affair do not always deal a heavy blow during future elections. This is especially true considering that Steve Clark – Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing at the time of the Greenbelt affair – was also re-elected as the MPP of SDSG’s neighbouring riding to the west.
Nolan Quinn has been a relatively quiet MPP, which is common with an MPP whose government is in power. He drew some public attention during the CUPE education worker strikes in late 2022, when social media depictions of him dressed as Waldo from the “Where’s Waldo” book series became commonplace as the union members struggled to get in touch with him. Besides that, he has more or less stayed off the radar, likely letting his party’s majority government policies speak for themselves.
On a province wide scale, the PC Party took just under 43% of the popular vote, winning 80 seats. Just 63 seats are needed for a majority government, meaning that the ruling party can pass legislation easily, since its members cast more than half of the votes in the Legislative Assembly. The NDP remains as the opposition party, while the Liberal Party keeps its place as the third choice for Ontarians, still struggling to recover from the unpopularity of former premiers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne. The liberals improved their performance compared to the 2022 election, winning enough seats to regain party status, although party leader Bonnie Crombie failed to win her own seat.
Here in SDSG, the two runner up parties are switched in relation to the results province wide. Liberal candidate Devon Monkhouse was the second choice for locals, despite not being a local himself. The Toronto resident got more votes than Cornwall native Jeremy Rose, who was running on the NDP ticket.
The underwhelming vote counts for the other three local candidates fits well with the province-wide results. Provincially, the Green Party won only two seats, while neither the New Blue Party nor the Ontario Party managed to win a single seat. The only other seat to be won was by independent candidate Bobbi Ann Brady for the rural riding of Haldimand-Norfolk, south of Hamilton.
As is common following an election, a “buzz” of disappointment could be felt from those who supported the losing parties, with many lamenting the state of education and healthcare in Ontario. However, the will of the majority has been done, and the PC Party was democratically elected to serve for the next four years. Only time will tell whether Ontario chose correctly.