CALEB NICKERSON
PONTIAC July 31, 2019
With the 2019 election fast approaching, the federal NDP have announced their candidate for the Pontiac riding.
Denise Giroux is a . . .
lawyer by trade, working as an employment relations officer for a public sector union and representing employees facing discrimination and harassment in the workplace.
“My record, historically is representing people, usually the underdogs in situations and persisting, speaking out and speaking up, speaking truth to power to urge and encourage claimants to the end of their situation so that they can obtain justice,” she said. “That is what I’m doing now, that’s what I’d like to continue doing in the capacity of a member of parliament.”
Having grown up in Hamilton, Ont. Giroux moved to Cantley 14 years ago for work and to be able to converse in her native language.
“I was raised in the city of Hamilton where Franco-Ontarians have got schools and some social services since the late 90s but, as a minority in an Anglophone community I wasn’t able to speak French often enough,” she explained. “Now I’m here living in the hills of Gatineau where there’s a significant Anglophone community as well as a Francophone community so it’s the best of both worlds.”
Giroux has been involved with the NDP for 30 years, and has been a part of the Pontiac riding association, where she sits as president, since the “Orange Wave” of 2011. She ran in the now-abolished riding of Hamilton West in 1993, placing fourth with 3,143 votes, or 8.16 per cent.
She said she decided to run this year due to the disappointment she and other have felt during the four year tenure of the Trudeau Liberals.
“Everything that I hear, from talking to people in the region, suggests that people are disillusioned with … all the broken promises and half-measures on the environment, their kowtowing and service to big corporations, their subsidies in the billions annually to the oil industry, which they promised to end,” she said. “That’s what’s motivating me to run for the party at this stage, because [the NDP] truly offer a progressive vision that puts people at the heart of their economic and environmental platforms.”
She was also concerned about the proposed low-level nuclear waste facility at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories property in Chalk River, Ont. and participated in a protest on the river on July 27, along with Pontiac Green Party hopeful Claude Bertrand.
Giroux said that when the Liberals kyboshed their promises of electoral reform left her disheartened. She criticized Pontiac MP Will Amos for holding consultations after the deadline for input specified by then-Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef. At the time, Amos dismissed the deadline as “bureaucratic”.
“Will Amos may have believed Trudeau, his leader, when he said that every vote would count henceforth, that 2015’s election was the last one that voters opinions were completely discounted and a party with 35, 38 or 40 per cent of votes gains all the power,” she said. “Maybe he believed that, but when they held consultations around electoral reform, Mr. Amos was very late to consult in his riding. In fact, when he consulted, his leader had already decided that the current system served the Liberal party very well, thank you very much. To me that was a bad indicator … a kind of false pretence of consultation.”
Giroux said she favours a proportional representation system, which was also recommended by the bipartisan committee that the government appointed to study the issue.
She also brought up Amos’ record on the environment, criticising his vote on the private member’s Bill C-291, which would mandate labelling of genetically modified foods, as well as the government’s purchase of the Trans-Mountain pipeline in May 2018.
“Mr. Amos is an environmental lawyer. He nevertheless voted against the ability to label genetically modified organisms in the food which we eat. He voted against that,” she said. “He also voted in favour of buying this $4.5 billion pipeline that Kinder Morgan was so glad to offload onto the Canadian taxpayer. Why and how can an environmental lawyer in good conscious accept that?”
“How can they pretend and hold out the fantasy that we can declare an environmental crisis in the same week that we are about to spend billions and approve building of additional pipelines to bring oil to the west coast against the informed consent and approvals of many communities who will be directly affected?” she continued. “It’s fantasy thinking and it’s a sad statement. I would hope that we can have a voice at the House of Commons that’s more progressive and more courageous about speaking up for what needs to be done to protect the environment.”
She said that her party differentiates itself from the Greens, who also occupy the left-wing, by offering more robust plans for the economy.
“Right now the environmental crisis and weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels is key and I think our plan meets more needs and makes more sense than the Green platform does,” she said. “The Green plan is a good one in many ways, but it’s not as realistic, perhaps, and not as diverse in its overall approach to putting people in the middle of its platform.”
One of the priorities she mentioned for the Pontiac riding specifically is the need for high-speed internet and cell service in rural areas. She said that increased regulation was needed in the telecom industry, which is monopolized by Bell and Rogers, to better serve the population.
“If it requires removing those monopolies or simply regulating those monopolies and limiting their gouging of Candians, we’re prepared to look at those options,” she said. “There’s also the whole issue of high-speed service and in the Pontiac, that’s very much an issue … That promise by the Liberals, to bring it about, and that’s one of Mr. Amos’ private motions, it’s too little too late. They really haven’t addressed it and simply haven’t had the courage to tackle the big corporations who are dictating [the] conditions.”
