Local ridings to watch in the upcoming provincial election

Who will be running in your local riding? As Jeff Pickel tells us, parties are working on their final slate of candidates.

Ontario’s four major political parties are finalizing their nominations and kickstarting their campaigns.

“I think it’s been pretty frenetic, there will have been candidates nominated throughout the province, there will have been campaign managers contacted and hired,” said Simon Kiss, a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. “There will have been messaging developed and a platform put together, there will have been campaign offices rented and established.”

As of Thursday evening, no party had a full slate of candidates. Kiss anticipated many of those vacancies would fill up quickly.

“This weekend, I think you’ll see the lists filled and you’ll see the candidates nominated.”

Kiss said he will be keeping a close eye on two local races.

“I think Kitchener Centre is a constituency that is going to be watched by a lot of people, if only because, to a degree, the fate of the Green Party kind of hangs. It is a big difference going from two MMP’s down to one… [Green candidate Aislinn Clancy is] going up against a fairly well known sitting regional councillor [Liberal candidate Colleen James]. [The] Greens face a tremendous challenge that they likely will not have any chance to form the government.”

The NDP stronghold of Waterloo could also be interesting, Kiss said.

“We’re going to see, in some ways, a bellwether about the fate of the NDP,” he explained. “The NDP is the official opposition in the province… they’re behind in the polls and it’s not hard to see how voters might want to coalesce around the Liberals as an alternative to Doug Ford.”