Editor's note: The author writes in response to Villeneuve resigns as local Conservative candidate and Nipissing-Timiskaming Conservatives nominate Keller as new candidate
-----
To the editor:
What in the world is the Nipissing-Timiskaming Conservative Party thinking?!
They virtually kick Cassidy Villeneuve out for not living in the riding, then go and nominate Garry Keller who also does not live in Nipissing—Timiskaming but owns a house in the riding.
Why kick someone out who has been door-knocking for close to a year, and making her name known in the riding? Showing good promise as a candidate, especially with the election nearing to compete against two females who both have good records and are known locally well.
For people unfamiliar with this riding, federally it has gone Liberal with Anthony Rota since 2004, with Rota losing to Jay Aspin in 2011 by 18 votes but later reclaiming the seat in 2015 in a landslide, and holding the seat since then.
Rota is stepping away after this election. Now you may be thinking, "This is just a Liberal seat," and as much as it has been for some time, I feel like we need to take a look at this riding provincially. In provincial elections, this seat has gone Conservative since 2011 and the party has only lost two provincial elections since 1981.
There are 12,000 more eligible voters in the federal election than in the provincial. These are mostly rural (which most likely would vote conservative).
In the most recent federal election (2021) Rota beat out Steven Trahan (Conservative) by 3,101 votes. The reason why this is important is the PPC had a very strong turnout with 3,494 votes. Not saying that if people had voted the Conservative over PPC, Trahan could have won, and this message is not about vote splitting at all, because I was one of those PPC voters, but about the messaging from the parties during that election, and the messaging we are getting from the parties today.
During this election cycle, the Conservatives are talking about “Canada First” and as much as that sounds great, that is what the People's Party of Canada and Maxime Bernier have been preaching since its inception. But the issue with the Conservatives' “Canada First” narrative is they aren't practicing what they are preaching. Take a look at new candidate Garry Keller’s X (formerly Twitter) bio. I’m sorry but I don’t know how you are going to preach “Canada First” and try to pull some PPC voters to vote Conservative by having Ukraine and Israel flags in your bio, and it seems more like his views and party views will align with the Liberals and NDP on foreign policy. We have roughly sent $8.7 billion to Ukraine when we are $1.2 trillion in debt and have crisis after crisis in this country.
As someone who is becoming more and more Libertarian and voted PPC last time I’d love to know if the Conservative party just likes shooting itself in the foot because with a Candidate like Garry Keller, I don’t see him getting much if any support from people who are on the fence about the Conservatives but just want the Liberals gone. I know I can’t pull myself together to vote for him.
Micah Crewson
North Bay
