Piccini promises to 'deliver a hospital'

Provincial race in our riding is just three-person fight at this point

Piccini and Max, a Nova Scotia duck toller.

I thought this story was going to be longer. After writing a story the other day that mentioned the provincial election, I thought it would be a good idea to pull together a list of who is running in our riding and brief bios of the candidates.

However, after a few minutes of searching I learned that there are only three candidates at this point – David Piccini for the Progressive Conservatives, Dorothy Noronha for the Liberals, and Maxwell Groves for the Green Party. Groves was acclaimed as the party’s candidate on Jan. 29. The New Democratic Party does not have a candidate yet.

The election is earlier than it was scheduled to be, but Premier Doug Ford has made it clear for the past year that he wanted to take advantage of his huge lead in the polls and hold an election before new Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie gets in gear and before any fallout from the police investigations into the Greenbelt development scandal that enveloped the senior levels of his government.

The fact that the NDP doesn’t have a candidate doesn’t augur well for its chances of attracting voters in the 24 days remaining before the Feb. 27 vote.

Let’s look at the three candidates vying for your vote.

David Piccini, 36, was first elected 2018. He’s been Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development since 2023.

Piccini grew up in Port Hope. His father is an architect, and his mother was a teacher at Trinity College School, which Piccini attended. He went to the University of Ottawa and played soccer. He first jobs were in the federal civil service before he jumped to a minister’s office, then ran for the Conservative Party of Canada in Ottawa-Vanier in 2015, finishing third.

Piccini lives in Port Hope with his wife and two dogs, Max and Lena. His official biography names the dogs but not his wife.

You can read a good profile of Piccini written by Emma McIntosh of The Narwhal back in 2022 when he was environment minister. In it he says he wasn’t political growing up but became involved in university when he felt the administration was shutting out conservative voices.

In a recent email to supporters asking them to put up signs, donate money, and vote for him, Piccini said: “I will keep your taxes low, deliver a new hospital in Campbellford this year, build a new school in Newcastle, create good-paying jobs, and protect Ontario.”

One of the government’s flurry of pre-election announcements was the new school in Newcastle and a new wastewater plant in Brighton.

Residents will be glad to hear the hospital promise but have lots of reasons to be skeptical. It’s not clear what he means by “deliver a hospital”, since at this point, the hospital administration is just looking for a planning grant of $2-3 million that will let it get to the stage of asking the health ministry to put it in the queue for a new facility.

The start of construction is at best years off.

For some reason, his pledge reminds me of Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau’s famous line: “The Olympics can no more run a deficit than a man can have a baby.” (Of course, the 1976 games had a deficit of $1.5 billion.)

Dorothy Noronha

Dorothy Noronha, who is a business teacher at Cobourg Collegiate Institute, grew up in Gravenhurst, then attended the University of Toronto getting a B.A. in commerce and labour studies, graduating in 1989. She worked in the insurance and wealth management industries before turning to education in 2006 when she joined the Kawartha Pine Ridge School Board. She also went back to school and received a B.Ed. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and later received an M.Ed.

From 2006 to 2012 she also owned Curves of Campbellford and was vice-president of the Trent Hills Chamber of Commerce from 2008-10.

“I currently teach business and leadership to students at Cobourg Collegiate Institute, as well as being part of the CCI senior boys basketball coaching team,” she says. “My greatest joy is welcoming CCI grads to share their business successes with my current students.”

In 2022 she ran for council in Township of Alnwick/Haldimand, where she now lives, but did not get elected.

Maxwell Groves

Maxwell Groves attended Port Hope High School then went to Seneca Polytechnic, where he studied computer networking and IT support. He was the IT support co-ordinator for the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.

A Green Party news release says Groves is pleased to have returned to his home county and wants to be a strong voice for rural residents.

In the last provincial election in 2022, Piccini received 26,209 votes, 51 per cent of the total. Liberal Jeff Kawenzuk was a distant second with 12,861, or 25 per cent. NDP candidate Kim McArthur-Jackson came third with 6,721 votes, 13.1 per cent, while Green candidate Lisa Francis garnered 2,918 votes, 5.7 per cent.

The battleground.

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