
Jane Philpott stood in white at a food store in her riding of Markham-Stoufville and proclaimed the revolution.
“I didn’t lose my voice,” the former minister of health, and then of Indigenous Services, and then President of the Treasury Board, and then of nothing but her will, told a crowd of supporters and journalists. “I found my voice.”
She’ll run for re-election as an independent this fall, she said. She will take donations immediately and start door-knocking this weekend. She will not run as a candidate for the Green Party, though she sure is impressed by Green leader Elizabeth May. She cannot run as a Liberal, by order of the party’s leader, Justin Trudeau, though she said the Liberals have, in many ways, “an awesome platform.” Basically there is nobody she is running against, it’s just that there is nobody she is running with either.
Actually, scratch that. She’s kind of running with Jody Wilson-Raybould, who had scooped Philpott by delivering substantially the same announcement a few minutes earlier in her riding of Vancouver Grenville. The former Minister of Justice and Attorney General—once upon a time it felt stuffy to say the whole title, but given the recent SNC-Lavalin unpleasantness it seems germane—and then of Veterans Affairs, and then of nothing much, will also run as an independent. Like Philpott, Wilson-Raybould proclaimed her admiration for Elizabeth May while insisting she will not join May’s party.
Philpott, whom I like because she does not Stouffville talk like a politician, was talking like a politician while insisting she no longer needs to sound like a politician.
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See Also:
(1) JWR and Jane Philpott bet big that politics has changed (spoiler: it hasn’t)
(2) Wilson-Raybould and Philpott choose independence, but the odds are stacked against them