Ontario Liberal Party candidates tour the northeast

Two Liberal leadership hopefuls pitch northern solutions: Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Lee Fairclough & policy strategist Dylan Marando face two others in the race.

Two candidates vying to be the leader of Ontario’s Liberal Party were touring northeastern Ontario recently.

Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Lee Fairclough was in Sudbury hosting a meet-and-greet July 2 to kick off a nine-day tour of the north.

Fairclough has almost two decades of experience in the health-care sector and is the former president of St. Mary’s hospital in Kitchener.

“I’ve had 18 years of executive experience in health care and I can see where we need to go,” she said.

“Politics is a team sport. I’ve been fortunate to represent Canada on the Canadian women’s rugby team … Some people say that that means I’m tough enough to take on Doug Ford, but I believe it’s what we need right now.”

Candidate Dylan Marando, who has been travelling the region for the last three weeks, said he will be bringing his experience at Queen’s Park and Ottawa to the role.

“I was a special assistant to Premier McGuinty, and I was a senior vice to Premier (Kathleen) Wynne, and I was the deputy director of policy to Prime Minister (Justin) Trudeau,” Marando said.

“I have been in the rooms where the big decisions get made and now I want to use those tools to get the big stuff done at Queen’s Park.”

If selected party leader, Marando said infrastructure would be a major focus, something that he’s heard that is a big concern for northerners.

“We need to twin every major highway in the north,” he said.

“Highway 69,11/17 and I would not be putting a single dollar in major highway expansion in the GTA until all those highways are twinned. It is a major public safety issue. It is a barrier to accessing health care and education and it is an economic development constraint. So that needs to be fixed.”

Marando said his second priority would be ensuring the wealth generated in the north stays there.

“There are going to be a lot of companies making a lot of money in the north over the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years,” he said.

Health care, infrastructure

“Every dollar of that needs to be reinvested in the north, in infrastructure, in health care, in education, in economic development.”

Fairclough said she’s also heard infrastructure is a big concern in the region, as well as health care.

“When I talk to people here in the northeast, it’s difficult to access specialists,” she said.

“When I ask health-care workers, what do they need? Again, keeping the highways open is important so that people can access the care they need, or we can get high-risk deliveries through and things like that.”

Fairclough said she’s also heard concerns about the highways.

“I’ve heard right away about the highways here and the, you know, the safety worries that people have and the importance of those highways actually as part of our economy,” she said.

Fairclough and Marando are in a wider race that includes former federal cabinet minister Navdeep Bains and tech entrepreneur Eric Lombardi.

Lombardi has an event planned at Sudbury’s Science North on July 21. Bains does not have any publicly posted events.

The race narrowed recently after Ajax MPP Rob Cerjanec stepped out of the running.

The deadline for candidates to officially enter the race is July 31, with Liberal members selecting their new leader this November.