{"id":20850,"date":"2018-06-06T20:02:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T00:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20850"},"modified":"2018-06-06T20:02:32","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T00:02:32","slug":"we-knew-this-was-going-to-be-a-tough-election-and-it-hasnt-disappointed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/we-knew-this-was-going-to-be-a-tough-election-and-it-hasnt-disappointed\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe knew this was going to be a tough election \u2013 and it hasn\u2019t disappointed\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

It ends almost as it began, but now the outcome is almost certain.
\nLiberal leader Kathleen Wynne began her election campaign in Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill last month in it to win it. A lot has changed over the past four weeks and, with just three campaigning days left before what she admits is the end of her premiership, Ms. Wynne started the week in Newmarket-Aurora to shore up support for Liberal candidate Chris Ballard.
\nMs. Wynne spoke to a room full of supporters at Newmarket\u2019s Cache Restaurant on Monday afternoon.
\nFlanked by Mr. Ballard and surrounded by party faithful, she defended her decision to concede the election on Saturday afternoon but said she\u2019s determined to cross the finish line spending her energy to support her local candidates.
\nShe dismissed claims from opponents her early concession was a \u201cploy\u201d as \u201ccynical.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat I was saying on the weekend was, to everyone who wants to vote Liberal but was worried because they also want change, there is going to be a different government,\u201d said Ms. Wynne. \u201cI am not going to be Premier, so it is really important that people vote locally, vote for the candidate, that voice at Queen\u2019s Park, who will be the representative that they want at Queen\u2019s Park [to] ensure that we won\u2019t have a majority Doug Ford or majority NDP government. But, I\u2019m not giving up. The opposite. I am working so hard, right up until we get to that finish line, because we need people like Chris Ballard at Queen\u2019s Park.\u201d
\nIndeed, Monday\u2019s mini-rally was very much a mutual admiration society, with Mr. Ballard noting Ms. Wynne\u2019s leadership was what inspired him to make the leap from Aurora Council to the Ontario legislature.
\n\u201cI thought to myself, \u2018I want to aspire to the vision Kathleen Wynne has before me,\u2019\u201d said Mr. Ballard. \u201cI had in those days no aspirations to be any thing but a Town Councillor and really enjoy myself, then people started asking me if I would run and I thought to myself, \u2018I will run because Kathleen Wynne is a fantastic leader and has laid out a vision for Ontario, a vision for Newmarket and Aurora that is the best way forward\u2019 and I have not for a second regretted that decision to throw my hat into the ring. And, Premier, thank you so much for that.\u201d
\nMr. Ballard dubbed Ms. Wynne \u201cmy leader, my teacher, and in many ways my mentor\u201d who inspired him \u201cto be better every day.\u201d
\nIn turn, Ms. Wynne said Mr. Ballard was a \u201cchampion for people who haven\u2019t got as much as others,\u201d and this was reflected in her appointment of him as Minister of Housing and the Minister Responsible for Poverty Reduction and, later, as a promoter of protecting Ontario\u2019s Greenbelt, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change.
\n\u201cDoug Ford we know went into a closed door room and was willing to open up a chunk of the Greenbelt and give it away, and only stopped and changed his mind on that because he got caught,\u201d said Ms. Wynne. \u201cThere are so many reasons that Chris Ballard is absolutely the right person to represent this community, to continue to represent it at Queen\u2019s Park. We knew this was going to be a tough election. We came into it knowing it was going to be a tough election and it has not disappointed. It has been a tough election, thank you very much. I hate it when you get disappointed by these things!
\n\u201cWe know as Liberals that people want change, we get that, and that is what we said on Saturday. Because people want change, we need to say that change is coming. But we need strong Liberal voices at Queen\u2019s Park, strong Liberal voices who want to solve problems in a practical way, who understand their communities, and understand what the solutions need to be in their communities. We need those people at Queen\u2019s Park because an unfettered Doug Ford majority government will not act in the interests of the People of this Province and that is clear.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Premier begins home stretch of campaign in Newmarket-Aurora to shore up support for Liberal candidate Chris Ballard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/2018-06-07-13.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5qi","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-05 22:18:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}