Random Access

When the Mississauga South Liberals got together in 2003 to select a candidate to challenge the 18-year reign of MPP Margaret Marland, they had three contenders from which to choose.
Here we are four years after the fact, and two of those three would-be nominees will be running in this fall’s provincial election — but neither of them for the ruling Grits.
Tim Peterson, of course, won the nomination and went on to take the seat from Marland by a scant margin. Now he’s a Conservative.
On July 16, the man who finished second in the race, former Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board Chair Peter Ferreira was nominated to run as a candidate in the Toronto riding of Davenport — for the New Democratic Party.
(The third South candidate in 2003, for the record, was Stephen Wahl.)
“I fit their profile,” Ferreira the immigration paralegal said this morning in a call from his long-time offices which are located in Davenport, where he grew up and went to school in little Italy.
The long-time activist in the Portuguese community is running in a riding where more than 35 per cent of the constituency, which he describes as generally working class, share his ethnic heritage.
The NDP has held the riding before under former Cabinet Minister Tony Silipo. It’s strictly a two-party race in Davenport, where the Tory candidate only managed 7.46 per cent of the vote in ’03.
The seat is held by former Toronto Councillor Tony Ruprecht, who has been an MPP since 1981. He represented Parkdale from 1981-99. Then he moved to Davenport to accommodate the ambitions of star candidate Gerard Kennedy.
Ruprecht is one of those backbench MPPs who is never going to be a star, but is always going to be tough to beat.
“It’s not going to be easy,” admits Ferreira, a long-time Liberal who spent much of the past four years bashing his head against the Queen’s Park funding formula and publicly battling Education Ministers Kennedy and Kathleen Wynne. “It was difficult, to say the least, dealing with the Province and the press in Mississauga,” he laughs.
Ferreira became the defiant face, and voice, of the board as it refused to cut services to balance its budget and was ultimately had its finances taken over by a provincial supervisor. The former Catholic trustee notes gleefully that the supervisor has so far made relatively few cuts.
“I think part of my appeal will be that I stood up to the Liberals” when they didn’t revise the funding formula as they’d promised.
The riding is very winnable for the NDP because voters who want to send a message about their concern about downloading and school funding can hurt the government without directly electing a Tory.
Ferreira hopes John Tory runs a strong third in the riding though, because those votes will largely be drained from Ruprecht’s support.
“I don’t see myself as a parachute,” the Mississaugan says, because he is back in his old stomping grounds in a riding where he works and pays property taxes. The issue is largely moot, as Ruprecht doesn’t live there either.
Ferreira already feels a lot better about his chances than he did last November in Mississauga, when he challenged incumbent Ward 3 Councillor Maja Prentice for the second time.
“At least I won’t have the mayor campaigning against me – hint, hint, nudge, nudge,” says Ferreira, referring to Hazel McCallion’s obvious but unstated preference for Prentice.
In fact Toronto Mayor David Miller, a long-time NDPer, might even put a good word in for him.
Ironically, Ferreira’s chances of being elected an MPP are a lot better than his chances were of unseating a City councillor.