In the news today: Foreign interference inquiry resumes, Indigenous artist recognized

TORONTO – Voters in an eastern Ontario riding head to the polls Thursday in a provincial byelection that may end up being a tighter race than its recent electoral history would suggest.

The Bay of Quinte riding has only been vacant for a month, since cabinet minister Todd Smith resigned, but Premier Doug Ford called the byelection just five days after Smith announced his abrupt departure.

Smith had represented the Bay of Quinte riding since 2018 — as well as one of the two ridings it was created from since 2011 — and won with nearly 50 per cent of the vote in the last two elections.

But the Bay of Quinte’s predecessor ridings have also elected Liberals in the recent past, and Smith’s stronghold on the riding through four elections was at least partly due to his status as a very well-liked representative, said Mitch Heimpel, director of policy at strategic communications firm Enterprise Canada and a former staffer for Smith.

“I think there’s probably a misconception about how safe a Conservative seat it is, in part because Todd just won so overwhelmingly,” he said.

Heimpel, who helped lead voter contact and get-out-the-vote efforts in three of Smith’s election campaigns, said different areas of the riding have some distinct characteristics – there are a lot of Toronto expats in Prince Edward County, while many rural parts of the riding are quite conservative, and residents in the city of Belleville tend to vote Liberal.

“There will be people that pointed out that Todd Smith won every poll in the city of Belleville in the last election, which is true, but that’s the first time that happened,” he said.

“And that took a generational election, in terms of conservatives elected to Queen’s Park, plus an incredibly popular local MPP.”

A recent poll by Liaison Strategies in the riding suggested a very close race between the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals, though the margin of error was 4.21 per cent, 19 times out of 20 with a sample size of 541 people.

The Progressive Conservatives did not make candidate Tyler Allsopp available for an interview, but a press release announcing him as the candidate said he is a Belleville councillor who has also co-founded several community initiatives.

Liberal candidate Sean Kelly is a councillor alongside Allsopp and as a radio broadcaster he also shares a key piece of employment history with Smith, who worked at the local station for many years.

“There must be something in the water at Quinte Broadcasting — or it tells you the quality of people they hire,” Kelly joked.

The top issue Kelly said he has been hearing about at the doors is health care.

“It seemed like every second, third door I was knocking on, they don’t have a family doctor, they don’t have a nurse practitioner,” he said.

NDP candidate Amanda Robertson, a school board trustee, also said she has been hearing about health care the most while she is canvassing, though people are also clamoring for more affordable housing and rent controls.

“I think the number one issue across the board, regardless of who we’re talking to, whether they’re Conservative or Liberal or NDP leaning, is around the family doctor shortage and a lack of access to primary care here in the Bay of Quinte,” she said.

Robertson notes that the NDP has finished second in the riding in the last two provincial elections, so the New Democrats shouldn’t be counted out in this race.

“While we have flipped red to blue, and then we’ve been blue for 13 years, I would say that we have a really strong base of support here for the NDP in our area,” she said.

Respiratory therapist Lori Borthwick is running for the Greens.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

OTTAWA – A federal inquiry into foreign interference is slated to hear today from current and former politicians who have been singled out by meddlers.

Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, Conservative MP Michael Chong and New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan have all been identified publicly as targets of interference by China.

The inquiry’s latest hearings are focusing on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign meddling.

The hearings, scheduled to continue through Oct. 16, will be somewhat broad in scope, examining democratic institutions and the experiences of diaspora communities.

Beginning Oct. 21, the commission will then hold a week of policy consultations, including a series of roundtable discussions featuring experts, to encourage recommendations.

The inquiry’s final report is due by the end of the year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

FREDERICTON – Grant Jordan was driving to a friend’s house on Aug. 31 when he started feeling tightness in his chest. He immediately returned home and asked his wife, Naomi, to take him to the hospital, a five-minute drive away.

They arrived at the Sussex Health Centre at 8:48 p.m., but the hospital in southern New Brunswick had closed 18 minutes earlier — the result of a “temporary” change made two years ago. Using an intercom, Jordan told a hospital employee that he thought he was having a heart attack.

“And they said, ‘Well, we’re closed. So if you want, I can call 911 for you,'” Jordan, 49, said in a recent interview from his home in Piccadilly, N.B., recalling how he had to retreat to the parking lot, pain radiating through his jaw, elbows and ears.

It was 9:24 p.m. by the time an ambulance arrived. At the hospital in Saint John, 75 kilometres away, Jordan was immediately taken to an operating room where two stents were inserted into arteries leading from his heart.

The couple is now calling on the provincial government to do something about hospitals that are having to close early.

Horizon Health Network, which oversees the Sussex Health Centre, did not respond to a request for comment.

“I was just lying there on the sidewalk in the parking lot,” Jordan said. “I was just in a lot of pain, and I wanted it to stop.”

He confirmed that two hospital employees in Sussex eventually offered him some nitroglycerine — a drug used to relieve chest pain during a heart attack. But they told him they could lose their jobs for helping someone after the emergency room had closed, he said.

“It was pretty close to a widow-maker,” his wife said, adding that her husband’s chance of survival was pegged at 20 per cent. “It’s pretty bad when the malls and coffee shops are open later than the hospital is.”

New Brunswick’s health-care system has come under intense scrutiny as the province prepares for a election on Oct. 21.

Critics have taken aim at Premier Blaine Higgs’s majority government for responding to health-care labour shortages by hiring private companies that offer travel nurses, who work on temporary assignments across the health network.

The government spent almost $174 million on travel nurse contracts between Jan. 1, 2022, and Feb. 29, 2024.

Hospitals were given the go-ahead to sign these contracts after the death of a patient in a Fredericton hospital emergency room in July 2022.

Paula Doucet, president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union, has said the money should have been used to hire more than 1,000 nurses, which would ease shortages in hospitals and other parts of the health-care system.

The provincial government needs to make health care a priority, Jordan said.

“Why can’t we pay (doctors and nurses) to stay and work here?” he asked. “It shouldn’t really be that big a deal.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.