WELLINGTON-HALTON HILLS – A recently announced candidate for the Green Party of Ontario said smaller urban communities need more of a voice at Queen’s Park after being left behind by recent provincial policies.
Bronwynne Wilton was recently announced as the provincial Green candidate for Wellington-Halton Hills.
Wilton is the owner and lead consultant of Wilton Consulting Group which is focused on the agriculture and agri-food sector and is a current councillor for Centre Wellington’s Ward 5 in Fergus after first being elected in 2022. She has lived in Centre Wellington for more than 50 years.
In a phone interview, she said it is what she’s learned from her time as a councillor informing the decision to run provincially.
“A lot of the challenges and issues that I care about are actually coming from the provincial policy framework,” Wilton said. “So something like protecting farmland, we can try and do as much as we can locally but the policies that we are governed by come from the provincial level.”
“To really make a difference, it would be helpful to have somebody at Queen’s Park who can actually weigh in on those issues and advocate for better protection of things like prime farmland, wetlands and water protection.”
She said protections for farmland are inadequate under the current government and has noticed a lot of housing policies only benefit the Greater Toronto Area and other larger urban centres.
“Some of the housing programs only focus around mass transit areas and of course places like Fergus or Acton doesn’t have a subway hub to focus that kind of density of housing around,” Wilton said. “Those types of policies don’t really speak to the smaller urban centres we have in Wellington-Halton Hills.”
The approach to housing, she added, needs to change as well. She said she felt Centre Wellington council has done a good job at encouraging intensification to avoid building onto farmland when possible but feels the province needs to take a deep look into the policies to facilitate the type of housing that can get young people into their first home or allow others to downsize within existing urban boundaries.
“We need to kind of be looking at that from a standpoint of how do we get the economy and the environment to work together for healthier communities,” she said.
She also noted provincial and federal downloading of responsibilities has left municipalities with an unsustainable situation when it comes to homelessness.
Although the issue isn’t as visible in Wellington-Halton Hills as it is in larger cities, Wilton said it’s definitely happening.
“What’s likely happening is people who can’t find appropriate housing within our smaller urban centres are probably going to larger urban centres where there’s more services,” Wilton said. “We might just be displacing the problem into the larger urban centres. Locally that would be people finding themselves in Guelph or Kitchener-Waterloo.”
With longtime Progressive Conservative MPP Ted Arnott announcing he would not be seeking re-election, Wilton said it could present an opportunity for change in the riding.
“The ridings has been PC for a long time now and I think with seeing the work that Mike Schreiner has been able to do in Guelph, I think he’s been able to do an excellent job of bringing positive change to Guelph in that community as a leader of the Green Party,” Wilton said.
“I think there is an opportunity to take a closer look at what the riding wants from a representative at Queen’s Park.”
