{"id":20924,"date":"2018-06-14T00:15:13","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T04:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20924"},"modified":"2018-06-14T00:15:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T04:15:13","slug":"ontario-votes-2018-canada-will-allow-every-single-one-of-us-to-live-the-dream-says-parsa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/ontario-votes-2018-canada-will-allow-every-single-one-of-us-to-live-the-dream-says-parsa\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario Votes 2018: \u201cCanada will allow every single one of us to live the dream,\u201d says Parsa"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The first Member of Provincial Parliament for the newly-created Ontario riding of Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill will be Progressive Conservative Michael Parsa.
\nMr. Parsa, a Richmond Hill businessperson, secured the riding handily in Thursday night\u2019s Provincial Election, overcoming Liberal candidate Naheed Yaqubian by a wide margin.
\nMr. Parsa won 56 per cent of the vote \u2013 or 25,214 ballots \u2013 over Ms. Yaqubian, who came second with 9,178 votes.
\nShe was followed by third place finisher Katrina Sale of the Ontario NDP, who received 8,188 votes, and the ballot was rounded out by Serge Korovitsyn of the Libertarian Party, Santiago Amesh Desilva of the None of the Above Direct Democracy Party, Margarita Barksy of the Ontario Moderate Party, Janusz Bitlykin of the Freedom Party, and Abu Alam of the SRP.
\nAfter the results were clear, Mr. Parsa, accompanied by his family, including wife Valerie and their one-week-old niece, received a rock star reception from supporters at a packed Aw, Shucks restaurant.
\n\u201cThis journey, for me, started a few years ago,\u201d said the Iran-born Mr. Parsa. \u201cI joined the Conservative party in 1993 [and] never in my wildest dream did I think that a young immigrant to Canada would one day have the opportunity to run for office and be elected. The reason I get up every day in my campaign and I tell my team, \u2018win or lose, that we have won already,\u2019 is because of you, Canada, Ontario and all Canadians who gave me an opportunity. You have given every young immigrant who is in this room a chance to say, \u2018I can do it. I can make it. Canada will allow every single one of us to live the dream.\u2019\u201d
\nThere were plenty of thanks to go around as the room swelled full of people.
\nHe told them that as the duly elected MPP, he will work hard to represent the interests of everybody in the riding, across party lines.
\n\u201cWe talk about representation and with the help of my team we will be the best office that will serve every single constituent in the community and there will be absolutely no exceptions,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you supported for me and voted for me, thank you. If you didn\u2019t, please get to know me. I want to represent you, I want to serve you, I want to serve you from the bottom of my heart. It doesn\u2019t matter if you didn\u2019t believe in me. It doesn\u2019t matter if you didn\u2019t support me, I believe in you and I want to serve you.\u201d
\nAddressing his fellow candidates, he said it was \u201ca difficult night\u201d for the opposition and said he wanted to \u201cextend a hand\u201d to \u201clet them know we are here to serve the people.\u201d
\n\u201cThe race is over, it was a great race, [and] I want to congratulate all the candidates who ran here, from the Liberal party, to the New Democratic Party, from the green Party to the Libertarian party\u2026now the journey begins,\u201d he concluded. \u201cWe have to be humble, we have to work hard, we have to go out there and show the people of Ontario and the people of this riding association that we will earn their vote and their trust. They gave me a vote of confidence.
\n\u201cAs my good friend Costas [Menegakis, former Richmond Hill MP] said, they allowed me to borrow a chair that belongs to you for four years. Trust me, I will not forget that and every single day I will be sitting in Queen\u2019s Park \u2013 which I can\u2019t wait to do, to be honest with you! \u2013 I will be reminded of all of you, the hard work, the dedication, the many contributions that you made, because whether it was financial, whether it was in person, your heart, your love, your desire, you believed in us; you believed in our campaign and thank you for helping my campaign. Thank you for allowing me to be here tonight, thank you for helping me get elected. I can\u2019t wait to start the next four years of my life with all of you.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first Member of Provincial Parliament for the newly-created Ontario riding of Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill will be Progressive Conservative Michael Parsa. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20924","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\/2018-06-14-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5ru","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 00:41:10","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\/20924","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=20924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}