Councillor Rivard running for Green Party
Rivard announces third bid to represent Greens and Timiskaming-Cochrane at Queens Park.
The Green Party of Ontario announced last week that councillor Kris Rivard will be their candidate for the Timiskaming-Cochrane riding in the next provincial election.
Rivard has run for the provincial Greens twice and is seeking to unseat longtime MPP John Vanthof who is running once again for the NDP.
Rivard isn’t the only local politician on the Green team this time around. The Green Party also lists school board trustee Julie Bertram as the constituency president for the campaign. Bertram is also known as the spouse of former councillor Chris Fisher and as a reporter for the West Nipissing Tribune.
Last month, Rivard attended the Green Party’s annual conference held in Kingston where leader Mike Schreiner announced once again that “environment and the climate crisis” would remain top of mind in the upcoming election.
The Green Party’s latest election platform highlights plans for a “New Climate Economy” which aims to “phase out the sale of new gas and diesel-fueled passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks, and buses by 2030”.
Other priorities in their platform include lowering the voting age to 16.
Although a provincial election must be called by the spring of 2026, many are expecting Doug Ford to announce an early election in 2025. Locally, the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and the New Blue Party have not yet announced their nominations.
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I am totally for the use of electric vehicles. Will they be suitably priced by 2030 and what are your plans to make charging stations available? This is a concern for us here with distances between cities.
Personally I would like to see more focus on unnecessary packaging and disposables from restaurants and especially the huge amount of disposable diapers going to the landfills.
And I do not wish to discriminate based on age but I seriously do not think 16 year olds understand the health and welfare issues of the older generations. Nor should they.
I would certainly like the opportunity to discuss this and more with Mr. Rivard.
I hope if he runs he will quit as councillor.