Mississauga gets a new MPP Oct. 10 when boundaries for federal and provincial ridings are brought into alignment for the first time. New boundaries and new riding names will match the current federal seats.
The five incumbent Liberals have already finished their game of musical chairs to figure out who is running where, although Tim Peterson found a way to throw a real wringer into the works after the deck was shuffled.
Since Mississauga Centre virtually disappears in the redrawing, the only real question was where Harinder Takhar and Bob Delaney would run. The Cabinet minister took Mississauga-Erindale and Delaney is running in Mississauga-Streetsville where he used to live. Wonder if he regrets moving out of Meadowvale a couple of years ago?
The new seat will be Brampton-Mississauga South, the vast preponderance of which is in Mississauga. You can check out the shape of the riding at
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/pss/Map.aspx?L=e&ED=35047&EV=99&EV_TYPE=6&PC=&Prov=&ProvID=&MapID=35047&QID=-1&PageID=27&TPageID=
You would expect the possibility of a new, open seat would create a lot of interest from would-be candidates but things have been strangely quiet in the run-up to the campaign.
Now we know why.
The provincial party has decided it will exercise its right to appoint a candidate there, one of the half-dozen or so ridings where it can unilaterally impose its will under the Constitution.
One of those who had already declared her interest in the nomination was Norma Nicholson, who was in the news just last week when she was profiled in The Toronto Star as one of 125 nominees for the Florence Nightingale Award — for the third consecutive year.
Nicholson is a senior nursing manager at Toronto’s West Park Healthcare Centre.
She would seem to have done everything right in preparing to run, taking political action courses through the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, winning its prestigious “leadership in nursing administration” award, co-chairing Peel’s RNAO chapter and involving herself in the broader community in numerous ways, including serving as chair of the Peel Alzheimer’s Society.
Nicholson sent a letter of interest to the party, was one of a dozen women who went through the screening process, began selling memberships and hoped for an open nomination to test her mettle. Instead she got a letter earlier this month thanking her for her interest and announcing that an appointment would be made and she would not be the chosen one.
“I think all of us are a bit disappointed,” she said of the local field, “because it’s not the democratic process.”
Now she will wait like everyone else to see who will be showered with Dalton’s pixie dust. “I’m just hoping that person lives in the riding,” says Nicholson who adds that, “if this is someone who lives in Mississauga and knows us, I would be quite happy to be of help in running a winning campaign.”
She has lived in Mississauga since 1978 and in the Cawthra-Rathburn Rd. area of Brampton-Mississauga South for the past four years.
We will have to withhold judgement, as Nicholson has, until we see the appointee but this continues the very disturbing pattern of parties pulling the strings from afar and dictating the choice of candidates to local riding associations and communities.
There are at least two more nominations coming up quickly.
The Mississauga South Green Party will acclaim its federal candidate Wednesday night at 7 p.m. in the Texaco Room at Port Credit Library. Richard Laushway is a banking executive who lives in the riding and runs a solar energy power company on the side.
The Conservatives will elect a candidate to challenge Delaney in Mississauga-Streetsville next Tuesday evening, May 22, at the Mississauga Convention Centre.
Nina Tangri, an insurance company co-owner and manager who lost to Delaney in Mississauga West last time around and has also run federally, faces chiropractor Carlan Stants, a resident of the City since 1988.
Both think Delaney is potentially vulnerable in his new territory.