CKMS News – 2023-09-06 – GreenFest Aislinn Clancy
By: dan kellar
Through the afternoon on Saturday September 9th, the Green Party of Ontario will be hosting a “GreenFest” in the Kitchener Centre riding that they say will feature “music, food, a group bike parade, and bouncy castle!”
The event follows a summer of campaigning for local Green Party candidate Aislinn Clancy ahead of a byelection to be held in January of 2024 to fill the seat vacated by NDP MPP Laura Mae Lindo. GreenFest is also a direct response to the “FordFest” event PC premier Doug Ford is hosting in the evening on September 8th at Bingemans in Kitchener. Of FordFest, Clancy told CKMS News “there are lots of parts of the campaign that are missing that I don’t think any amount of hot dogs and text messages can offset.”
There is currently no candidate for the Conservative Party in the aforementioned byelection, while the NDP are running Debbie Chapman, and the Liberal Party is represented by Kelly Steiss. All of the parties have been calling for accountability from the Conservative Party over the growing Greenbelt scandal which has now led to the resignation of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark, along with his assistant.
Candidate Clancy and the Green Party had called for Clark’s resignation in an August 30th statement also saying “The report from Integrity Commissioner David J. Wake confirms that the minister contravened the Members’ Integrity Act when he failed to oversee the process by which Greenbelt lands were selected for development.
Minister Clark was responsible for the corrupt process that allowed a handful of wealthy well-connected insiders to make $8.3 billion on the removal of their lands from Greenbelt.”
Previous to the 2018 election Doug Ford repeatedly promised he would not develop housing on the Green Belt, now with the Auditor General’s report, the Integrity Commissioner’s report, an RCMP investigation, and now calls for a public inquiry, keeping that promise may be forced upon the beleaguered premier. On September 5th Ford announced the lands that were removed from the Green Belt will be re-reviewed in a process under new Housing minister Paul Calandra.
CKMS news spoke with Kitchener Centre Green Party candidate, Aislinn Clancy about Greenfest, FordFest, a bit about the GreenBelt fiasco.
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