WELLINGTON-HALTON HILLS POLITICAST - Dr. Lesley Barron, Liberal Party

The history of Wellington-Halton Hills as a riding, is the history of Michael Chong. The riding was created in 2004, which was Chong’s first electoral victory, and he has been victorious ever since. Is it possible that a Liberal could come up now, and unseat a well-liked, and well-known member of the opposition party in a non-change election?

Dr. Lesley Barron hopes so, and it's not impossible. The main urban area of the riding, Halton Hills, was represented for 10 years by Liberal Julian Reed from 1993 to 2004. Halton Hills is the kind of community in the GTHA that typically makes or breaks an election for a governing party, but even as the red wave swept the GTHA in 2015, Wellington-Halton Hills stayed firmly blue by nearly 10,000 votes.

What Dr. Barron has been asking on the hustings is what do the people of Wellington-Halton Hills get for this devotion? Chong’s reputation as a maverick and iconoclast didn’t do much for the riding during the Harper years, and Chong spent a good portion of the last mandate running to be Conservative Party leader. Have the needs of Wellington-Halton Hills been ignored?

Fair question, but can Barron make a case for Team Trudeau in Chong country, or will the people of Wellington-Halton Hills stay the course with a familiar incumbent?

That's one of the queries that Barron will answer on this edition of the podcast. We also discuss why she wanted to run for office, and how her experience as a doctor and a surgeon helped give her the push. Barron also talks about environmental policy, why she’s running as a Liberal, and why you can’t separate social policy from healthcare and other issues. Plus, Barron will reveal what she would like to do as an MP, and what she hopes to get out of the campaign aside from victory.

So let’s hear Dr. Barron operate on politics on this edition of the Wellington Halton-Hills Politicast!

To find out more about Dr. Lesley Barron and her campaign, you can visit her website. The Wellington-Halton Hills Politicast will hopefully squeeze out more more edition with another profile of one of the riding’s Federal candidates.

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