PERTH-WELLINGTON – The Green Party’s intended candidate for this riding will not be on the ballot for the Sept. 20 election as he was unable to acquire the necessary signatures supporting his candidacy by deadline.
Allen Hadley, who ran as an independent candidate in Ajax during the 2019 federal election, said the short time frame allowed between the dropping of the writ and the deadline made it impossible for him to get enough signatures this time out.
“When you call this type of election, right now, in our current situation, that means you only had a couple of weeks, not a couple of months, in order to gather what you needed in order to become a candidate,” Hadley stated in an Aug. 31 telephone interview.
Elections Canada requires candidates to obtain 100 signatures, but Hadley notes they recommend candidates provide 125 to 150 names in case some are disqualified (signatories must be over 18 and legally entitled to vote in the riding).
Hadley said he responded to a Green Party appeal for candidates and with a candidate already in place in his home riding, he agreed to run in Perth-Wellington.
“I said I would do it, but I just couldn’t get in done,” he told the Advertiser.
Without a spot on the ballot, Hadley said he has no plans to campaign in the weeks between now and the Sept. 20 vote, but his major concern is to seek Canadians “reaching out in the world.”
“If I asked you to name a Canadian global brand, could you do it?” he asked. “Canada needs to come up with something … what are we sowing the seeds on now that’s going to be paying dividends in the future?”
“Climate change is another forefront issue,” said Hadley. “Governments around the world keep banging the drum to the people on the issue of climate change, and the importance of it, but I wonder sometimes, is the public really worrying about it?
“Take the current pandemic we are coming out of. For the last year and a half, we’ve had to physically distance, queue up to get into stores, etcetera. But look at your community and see curbside pickup or drive-throughs. How many (extra) cars are idling away, because you haven’t been able to go into the store?
“Our recent heat wave begs the question, how many cars are running to keep the air conditioning going? Further, on city, suburban and rural streets, how much garbage do you see on storm water drains, most of them right in front of people’s houses, that are just lying there and eventually get swept into our water supply?” he asked.
While noting Canadians face serious concerns on issues such as housing, child care and increasing government revenue could be part of the solution.
“We need to create some much-needed revenue for the government in relation to our ever-increasing public debt,” he stated in an email. “How much money is Canada creating within its own borders? How much potential revenue leaves here, for elsewhere in world (namely a place south of us) every year?
“The government collects taxes on goods bought, sold and produced here, not somewhere else. How can we create more here, that provides the government some revenue, aside from regular taxation increases?”
