Greater Sudbury’s two incumbent NDP candidates have accused Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario Leader Doug Ford of lying about their Queen’s Park attendance records.
While speaking with local journalists on Sunday, Ford dismissed Greater Sudbury’s two NDP candidates as having “zero voice down at Queen’s Park.”
“They sit there, they don’t show up half the time, they vote against everything to do with this town,” Ford said of Sudbury NDP candidate Jamie West and Nickel Belt NDP candidate France Gélinas. “I love the mayor, I can’t say anything about their MPPs. They don’t represent the people.”
Although whether politicians “represent the people" is up for subjective interpretation, Ford’s statement that they “don’t show up half the time” is a testable claim that doesn’t appear to pass muster.
“At Queen’s Park, I can’t call Doug Ford a liar, but he’s lying,” West said. “What he said, flatly, was a lie.”
“He made me laugh, and during an election you don’t get too many opportunities to laugh,” Gélinas said. “To hear him say lies, blatant lies like this, made me laugh. … Most of the time, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Of the 28 days that made up the latest fall session between October and December 2024, Gélinas spoke at Queen’s Park during 22 days, West spoke during 19 and Ford spoke during 12.
This doesn’t encompass all days they were in attendance, which is difficult to verify. It’s considered “out of order” for those in the legislature to point out member absences, and recorded votes don’t take place every day.
(Sudbury.com reviewed fall session Hansards to clarify meeting attendance and determine when members spoke. These documents prove that West attended at least 21 of the 28 days of the fall session, Gélinas attended at least 22 and Ford attended at least 12.)
West told Sudbury.com that he attended 24 of the 28 days, missing four to attend a Council of State Governments conference, for which he serves as co-chair of the Eastern Regional Conference.
Gélinas attended 22 days of the fall session, missing five days to attend a Conference of French Parliamentarians (she is vice-president for Ontario) and one additional day to attend an appearance by Ford in her constituency (Gélinas said she headed back to Toronto as soon as it wrapped up and caught the end of the day’s meetings).
Sudbury.com reached out to Ford’s office for clarification on what data Ford used to claim that West and Gélinas “don’t show up half the time,” but the response by Media Relations director Grace Lee did not address this part of the question.
Ford’s claim there’s “no voice for Sudbury, there’s no voice down at Queen’s Park,” is another point both NDP candidates challenged.
(Lee did clarify this point, noting, “What the Leader meant was that there is no elected PC Member of Provincial Parliament in Sudbury to be a voice at the table of the governing party.”)
Chuckling at the notion that he’s voiceless, West said, “If people feel like I haven’t spoken, they can visit my Facebook page and go to the video section and just scroll through all the clips of when I’ve brought their voices forward.”
The fall session included numerous points of advocacy on the part of both NDP members, during which West sponsored eight bills and Gélinas sponsored 21.
During the latest day at Queen’s Park West spoke up at (the final meeting of the fall session on Dec. 12), he delivered wide-ranging remarks, including improving cancer coverage for wildland firefighters, the province declining to fund Sudbury’s supervised consumption site, and a “terrible landlord” in Sudbury who exemplifies the needs for stronger tenant rights and rent control.
During the latest day at Queen’s Park Gélinas weighed in (Dec. 11), she spoke in favour of heart valve disease awareness and developing a framework to improve dementia care and improving the professional environment for PSWs to make it easier for them to get permanent full-time jobs.
On Sunday, Ford also alleged that NDP members “vote against mining.”
“I’ve never understood how Sudbury elects two NDPers that are dead against mining, vote against every mining that we do, votes against anything we do to support the people of Sudbury, and that’s why it’s critical we get Max elected,” Ford said, in reference to Sudbury Progressive Conservative candidate Max Massimiliano.
Although context wasn’t provided behind the mining comments, West said the comments were likely in reference to the NDP’s opposition to the Building More Mines Act a couple of years ago.
“We’re in agreement with 99 per cent of the bill," he said. “The part we were against is, they wanted to remove the right to free, prior and informed consent for Indigenous communities,” West said, flagging this as going against the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 calls to action.
“You recognize that the bill is going to go through no matter how you vote, but on principle we voted against it because we believe that free, prior and informed consent for First Nations communities is not just the right thing to do, but it’s the way that mining business moves forward more quickly.”
Gélinas said the bill’s shift to make it easier for companies to leave abandoned mine sites without doing a proper cleanup also prompted her to vote against it.
Nickel Belt has close to half of all abandoned mines in Ontario, she said, including a historic gold mine leaching arsenic into Long Lake south of Sudbury.
“I represent the people of Nickel Belt, I have to bring their voices forward, and their voices were very clear,” she said. “They want mining operators to clean up their act once they’re finished mining.”
This isn’t the first time Ford has taken pot-shots at Greater Sudbury’s NDP representatives.
In October 2024, Ford said, “we need a voice down at Queen’s Park for Sudbury, because the guy you have down there is sitting in the corner playing cards. He is not voicing the concerns of the people of Sudbury.”
In response to this, West said he attempted to give Ford a pack of playing cards for Christmas, but the gift was rejected.
West also took aim at the idea that Sudbury needs a Progressive Conservative voice at the table to receive its fair share of provincial funding, given that Ford’s October 2024 appearance was to announce $34.9 million toward water/wastewater infrastructure in the Lively/Walden area.
“If part of the game is that he wants to insult me, I grew up in the Donovan, it takes a lot to get under my skin,” West said. “An old man yelling at me is not going to make me lose sleep. As long as he’s leaving money behind for the community, that’s my job to bring their voices forward and make sure we get our fair share of the pie.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.