Jamie Schmale Pushes Back against the Liberal Red Tide

Karen Graham

Voters in our riding of Haliburton Kawartha Lakes Brock turned out in droves to cast their votes, following the national trend of high voter turnout with almost 68% of registered voters showing up at the polls, slightly higher than the national average. Unlike the majority of Canadians, however, our riding remained blue, with PC candidate Jamie Schmale scooping 44.9% of votes cast, followed by Liberal Candidate David Marquis with 31.7%, NDP hopeful Mike Perry with 19.5% and Bill McCallum attracting 4%. Schmale replaces outgoing MP Barry Devolin for whom he has worked as Executive Assistant for more than a decade, as Devolin retires from politics to take a professor position in South Korea in the next few months. While Schmale has many years of experience helping Devolin represent our riding, the landscape he will face in Ottawa will be very different in his tenure as part of the Official Opposition. He hopes to keep the Conservative message on the table as he steps into the House of Commons as an elected member, voting on our behalf, which for him is a dream come true.

The seat in our riding was held by the Liberals under Chretien from 1993 to 2004, but beyond that period it has always been a conservative stronghold. Perhaps one of the reasons we did not jump on the Trudeau wagon is our demographics: the population in our riding has a median age of 48.8, which is the second highest in the province. We also have the second highest percentage of people listing English as their first language, 94.1 percent.

Ours is a sprawling, rural riding that sits in between northern and southern Ontario and centres around Kawartha Lakes and includes the Victoria region, rural areas of Peterborough, and the southern part of Algonquin Park. The size of the riding did not deter local candidates from taking a traditional approach to their campaigns, going door-to-door to solicit voter support, and the extended length of the campaign gave them time to do so. NDP candidate Mike Perry was particularly visible in our area, beginning his campaign even before the election was announced. Throughout the campaign, our local candidates kept their messages positive, respectful and focused on the issue, and all should be congratulated on their sincere and professional efforts to become our voice in Parliament and help steer our country into the future.

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