ST. ANDREW’S WEST, Ontario – Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry Green Party candidate Dr. Jeanie Warnock watched the results come in for the 2021 federal election with a group of supporters at Quinn’s Inn in St. Andrews West on Monday night, Sept. 20, 2021.
Despite coming in fourth, with 1,156 votes out of 50,599 ballots cast with 99.6 per cent of votes counted as of Tuesday morning, Sept. 21.
Warnock said that she enjoyed the campaign experience and hoped to continue to advocate for local issues after the election. In particular, she felt strongly that issues relevant to the Mohawk people’s of Akwesasne needed to be addressed, such as the location of the Cornwall Port of Entry and the toll booth.
Residents of Akwesasne, who live in Canada and are Canadian citizens, must cross through the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) checkpoint when travelling to and from Cornwall.
“It does seem like systemic racism,” Warnock said.
Seaway News asked Warnock what she heard from riding constituents as she campaigned door-to-door.
“Many were concerned about their voice being heard,” she said. “Some felt that voting was futile because they weren’t Conservatives.”
Warnock said that she hoped to increase the capacity of the Green Party in the riding of Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry. Unfortunately for Warnock, she gained fewer votes than Raheem Aman, who represented the Greens in the 2019 campaign. In 2019, Aman garnered 2,126 votes, with Warnock getting just 1,156 this election.
Much of the Green vote seemed to transfer to the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) with their candidate David Anber getting 2,800 more votes than the PPC managed to gain in 2019 for a total of 3,874.
Elaine Kennedy, a former Green candidate in Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry was at Quinn’s Inn on Monday night and gave her take on the election that was prophetic even before the polls closed.
“I have not been able to decide how it is going to go,” she said. “But I think that Maxime Bernier and the PPC have put a monstrous wrench in the works.”
Warnock did state that she felt that tensions were running higher in this campaign, and she said that many of her signs had been tampered with or stolen, and that she was aware that similar things had happened to other candidates in the riding.
“There is a lack of common courtesy that is epitomized by the slogan on PPC signs,” she said,
Some PPC signs encouraged voters to vote PPC because “The other options suck.”
“We should all refrain from using such juvenile language,” she said.
While her signs are not recyclable, they are designed to be reusable and Warnock said that they can and will be reused by other candidates in future elections.
