New northern Ontario riding buoys francophones: ‘Still fighting for our rights’

The creation of Mushkegowuk-James Bay has opened another door to the halls of power for Franco-Ontarians — one of the province’s oldest, largest and proudest minorities — while long-simmering resentment over the priorities of a distant Liberal government in the south has given Progressive Conservatives a new sense of mission in an otherwise heavily NDP region. (Photo By Government of Ontario, Office of Francophone Affairs: Franco-Ontarian Flag, Public Domain)

KAPUSKASING, Ont. — The heart of la francophonie in small town northern Ontario is beating a little faster these days as a newly minted riding gets set to elect its first representative to the legislature.

The creation of Mushkegowuk-James Bay has opened another door to the halls of power for Franco-Ontarians — one of the province’s oldest, largest and proudest minorities — while long-simmering resentment over the priorities of a distant Liberal government in the south has given Progressive Conservatives a new sense of mission in an otherwise heavily NDP region.

At a hair salon in Kapuskasing, Kimberly Kostecky, 58, launches into a full-throated tirade against the cost of electricity she blames on the Liberals.

“It’s astronomical what we pay for hydro. We live in an area that gets extremely cold, and when we’re struggling to pay our hydro bill and we hear that the CEO (of Hydro One) is making $6.2 million on our backs, that’s ludicrous,” Kostecky says.

“So when I hear (Tory Leader) Doug Ford say he’ll get rid of him and his other cronies, that’s a point. I’m not a real Ford fan, but that did catch my ear.”

Next door at the barber shop not far from the working paper mill that’s testament to the importance of forestry to the region, Claude Joncas, 70, makes it clear he’s fed up with the status quo — although he’s not sure how that might translate come election day on June 7.

“We’re all NDPs here. Me, I’m not too much in favour of that anymore because we need a change. (But) it never changes, nothing happens, nobody cares about us anyway,” Joncas says. “All we hear is Toronto, Toronto. People are fed up with that.”

In his floor and carpet store in the centre of Kapuskasing, Gilles Aubertin, 53, says it’s high time the riding had a politician who sits on the government benches.

“The main problem we’ve had in the north is that we’ve never matched the government (and) we’re not getting as much as we should,” Aubertin says. “If we were to elect a Conservative, I’m thinking that we would be a lot better off.”

That kind of talk is music to the ears of Andre Robichaud, 35, the Tory candidate hoping to capitalize on the winds of change polls suggest are blowing across much of the province. The new riding, he says, is a great opportunity.

“It gives northern Ontario another seat at Queen’s Park,” says Robichaud, whose background is in economic development. “It also gives us francophones another voice at Queen’s Park.”

Although carved from a bigger riding, the new Mushkegowuk-James Bay is still vast — about twice the area of the Maritimes, stretching 600 kilometres north to Hudson Bay. Its population numbers 30,000, roughly 60 per cent francophone and 27 per cent Indigenous.

Therein lies a conundrum.

Several hundred kilometres northeast of Kapuskasing on James Bay, smaller but politically vocal Indigenous communities such as Attawapiskat, Fort Albany and Moosonee had counted on the riding strengthening their voices. Instead, to their chagrin, the political centre of gravity shifted from the urban, southern end of the old riding to a point slightly less south.

“It’s a missed opportunity for our people, for our region,” Jonathan Solomon, grand chief of the Mushkegowuk Council, said when the new riding was announced in October. “What chances are there for a First Nation to be at the legislature when First Nations people (are) a minority?”

An hour west of Kapuskasing, Gaetan Baillargeon, a neophyte politician, is hoping to answer that question in a positive way. Originally from Constance Lake First Nation in the riding’s southwest, Baillargeon also counts himself as a proud Franco-Ontarian despite being raised anglophone. The new riding “created a lot of buzz,” spurring the business manager of a forestry operation to run for the Liberals — a party long shut out of the region but which has been good for Indigenous people and francophones, he says.

“The big issue is understanding each other,” Baillargeon says over coffee in a motel diner in Hearst, where he now lives.

“If we try to come together … we can both help each other.”

But Baillargeon is running in a riding where anti-Liberal sentiment is often visceral and — perhaps surprisingly from a southern viewpoint — where Conservative and New Democrat thinking converge on key issues. Both parties, for example, rail at what they see as misguided environmental policies from the south that put industry in the resource-dependent area at risk.

“We are environmentalists. It’s our own backyard and we take care of our forests. It’s our survival up here,” NDP candidate Guy Bourgouin says as he leans forward in his office chair. “A mill closes: It doesn’t affect just the workers, it affects the whole community. Some of these communities are single-industry towns.”

A Metis from northern Ontario, the old-school union leader says the region is ticking along economically just fine. Still, he hopes the added voice of the new riding will lead to improved roads, a re-established Northlander train system, and better availability of services — especially educational — in French.

“Even though Canada is supposed to be a bilingual country, we’re still fighting for our rights as francophones to maintain our language and hopefully our culture,” Bourgouin says.

Where New Democrats and Conservatives part ways, however, is over the larger ideological issues related to size of government, taxes and deficits.

“We definitely want more services. They’re looking at cutting in social services. They’re looking at cutting in education,” Bourgouin says. “Their solution to everything is no different from what (U.S. President Donald) Trump is doing in the U.S: Give big tax cuts, and we’re saying, ‘No, this is not the way to go.”’

In Kapuskasing, mayor Alan Spacek says antipathy over Liberal policies and their treatment of northern Ontario has reached a boiling point. Like Bourgouin, he cites environmental plans, including an attempt at protecting woodland caribou that would have devastated the regional economy.

“Today it’s caribou. Tomorrow it could be a bird or a fly or some other mammal,” Spacek says. “We have become very insulted at the implication or suggestion that we aren’t stewards of our own backyard.”

Spacek cites other evergreen issues: the price of electricity and gasoline, the red tape that makes mine development in the potentially bonanza-ripe region a long and iffy proposition.

While the New Democrats pose no threat to northern livelihoods and lifestyle, Spacek says, the Conservatives under Ford have a good crack in a region that has long forgotten the party.

“He is not sympathetic to the environmental bias. He is very much in favour of the working person. We are mostly blue-collar people. He’s talking about lowering energy costs,” Spacek says. “He’s very easy to speak with. He genuinely listens.”

In her daughter’s Kapuskasing store that sells yoga clothes and New Age paraphernalia, Lise Lallier, 60, a retired nurse and long-time Liberal, says none of the parties inspire her. They haven’t carried out their promises, she says, adding she’s “almost tempted” to vote Green just to make a point.

Lallier, however, says she does understand Indigenous disappointment at how the new riding shaped up.

“It reminds me of what francophones had to go through. We had to fight for our rights. Now we’re seeing the same thing happening with Indigenous people,” Lallier says. “I don’t blame them for not trusting the government.”

David Tabachnick, a political science professor at Nipissing University, pours water on all the talk of stronger northern voices — francophone or Indigenous — resulting from the creation of Mushkegowuk-James Bay and the First Nation-dominated Kiiwetinoong to its west.

“The (Toronto area) got 15 new ridings,” Tabachnick says. “The relative power of the north has declined all the more. There’s something disingenuous maybe about it.”