Long time local labour activist Janice Folk-Dawson was acclaimed as a federal election candidate by the NDP riding association at a nomination meeting on Friday night at the Guelph Youth Music Centre. The president of CUPE local 1334 and executive vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Labour is making a play to fill the new and open seat in Guelph, and getting ahead of the other area parties to do it.

“We have the opportunity to change and influence the political landscape in Guelph; we have the opportunity to change and influence Canada’s labour party, the NDP, and we need to boldly claim ourselves as the workers’ party,” Dawson said in her acceptance speech. “Workers are rising at the bargaining table, and in the streets, and we need to rise now at the ballot boxes.”

Folk-Dawson touted her 37 years of labour activism in Guelph, and a long record of participating with the NDP that started when she was 16 in North Bay knocking on doors. She called on the party that she’s now representing to develop a worker-friendly platform and to galvanize the energy seen in labour activism over the last few years and turn it into a political movement.

“I want to use my organizing skills and passion for justice to help co-ordinate workers’ power at the ballot box and then to create legislative change that improves the lives of all workers,” Folk-Dawson said. “We need a representative in Ottawa who listens and represents Guelph’s needs with viable solutions. We need a candidate who creates opportunities to listen to each other, and to understand a vision for a future we collectively need, and deserve to implement.”

Folk-Dawson also said that she would like to prioritize the creation of affordable housing, take broader climate action, increase labour protections, fix the immigration system, protect the constitution, and implement all 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

CUPE President Fred Hahn was on hand to lend Folk-Dawson support, and he said that it’s his intention to help her out on the campaign trail as much as possible whenever the election is called.

“I’ve worked with Janice for many years, and I know, as many of you know, that she is a fierce defender for working people, for justice, and for fairness. Just what the people of Guelph deserve,” Hahn said. “You also know that this is such an opportune time. I mean, there’s no incumbent in this riding this time, and there’s been a boundary change that works in our favour.”

It was announced back in July that Guelph would be split between two ridings in the next election with the southern portion of the city folded into the new riding of Wellington-Halton Hills North along with much of the current riding of Wellington-Halton Hills; everywhere else in the city will remain in the riding called Guelph.

Earlier this year, Guelph’s current Member of Parliament, Liberal Lloyd Longfield, announced his intention to stand down from public office in the next election, which could technically be called anytime between now and September 2025.

In the 2021 federal election NDP candidate Aisha Jahangir, a mental health nurse and labour activist, came in third place, but she was only 2,000 votes behind Conservative candidate Ashish Sachan. With 14,713 votes, Jahangir had the best showing of any federal NDP candidate running in Guelph since 1979.