It’s been a busy week for candidates being acclaimed for next year’s election. The 2022 Ontario General Election is a little over nine months away, but Guelph now has three officially declared candidates with the addition of the Liberal candidate earlier this week, and now a Progressive Conservative candidate. Will either of them have the electoral clout to defeat the incumbent Guelph Member of Provincial Parliament?

The PC candidate for 2022 is Peter McSherry, an employment lawyer with a Guelph practice that also focuses on real estate issues and estate planning. He’s also the vice-president of the Guelph Police Services Board of Directors, and a board member at Bracelet of Hope, and the Rotary Club of Guelph. His past community and volunteer experience also includes acting as secretary for Torchlight Industries and being the past-president of the Kiwanis Club of Guelph.

If McSherry’s name is familiar to you in a political sense, it’s because he tried earlier this year to become the Conservative Party candidate for the current Federal Election. He would lose that race to Dr. Ashish Sachan.

“Peter brings a wealth of experience and commitment to what we stand for: honesty, integrity and a belief that he can make a difference in the lives of the people of Guelph,” said Robert Coole, president of the PC riding association in a social media post.

A McSherry victory next June will require him to get past the incumbent Mike Schreiner, who has already been acclaimed by the local Green Party to run for re-election in 2022. In the 2018 election, Schreiner won Guelph with just over 45 per cent popular support, which was more than the second and third place candidates secured combined.

In 2018, PC nominee Ray Ferraro finished the race with 21.8 per cent, which was about two-tenths of a per cent more that the third-place NDP candidate, Agnieszka Mlynarz. No Progressive Conservative candidate has finished with more than 25 per cent support of the vote in a Provincial election since 2003, when Brenda Elliott won 37.1 per cent support but still lost to Liberal Liz Sandals who secured 42.25 per cent of the vote.

Earlier this week, Guelph Community Health Centre CEO Raechelle Devereaux was acclaimed as the Ontario Liberal Party candidate for Guelph in next year’s election.