Liberal candidate for Bay of Quinte MP, Chris Malette, is raring to go after a slow start to his campaign.

The Liberal Party’s confirmation of its slate of candidates wasn’t official until Monday 7 April — three weeks before election day, April 28. Lawn signs, posters, advertising, and funds were all held up as the party worked through the process.

Nonetheless, a red wave is sweeping the Bay of Quinte, making for a close contest. Polls show the Liberals and the Conservatives nearly matched, the Greens and NDP far behind.

Cooperate for Canada movements, which ask progressive voters to think carefully about splitting the vote, may also be having an effect. It’s the same story across the Country, with just the PCs and the Liberals in the competition, the Liberals mostly buoyed by support drawn from the NDP and in Quebec the Bloc Quebecois.

Low Visibility 

Also lucky for Mr. Malette, the interim Prime Minister is emerging as a superstar statesman, able at once to back President Trump into a corner, and mobilize European allies in a common purpose. Last week, former central banker Mr. Carney initiated a global selloff of U.S. Treasury bonds strong enough to sink the U.S. dollar — and force President Trump to put his tariff threats on “pause.”

“At the door, we are hearing, not just from people who usually vote Green or NDP, and who are now backing Carney as the leader to unite the country in the face of Trump, but we are hearing similar things from Conservatives,” says Mr. Malette.

“They say, ‘I’ve voted Conservative all my life, but I’m voting for you because of Carney.’

“But they won’t put a sign on the lawn. That’s going a bit too far. They don’t necessarily want their family members and neighbours to know.”

From Local to National Politics

The newly confirmed candidate was in Picton last week to knock on doors. He inquired about the Queen Elizabeth school project before he headed off to the neighbourhood around Barker Street.

The Belleville councillor is well versed in the development divide in smaller communities. A journalist for 36 years, primarily at the Intelligencer, he ran for election after leaving a news industry in precipitous decline.

“I took a buyout in 2013 from my position as City Editor. By that time, the Intelligencer was on its fifth owner, Sun Media,” he recounts.

Once newspapers fell prey to chain ownership, they lost their stability. Profits are pulled out of newsrooms and sent, not just to head office, but, often, out of the country.

Mr. Malette enjoyed a front row seat to the decline of the political conversation in Canada and around the world. 

“Watching people fall for the garbage on social media is hard.

“And it’s also hard to watch the way the Conservatives treat the media.”

He recalls a viral video in 2023, which showed Mr. Poilievre in an apple orchard, chomping on an apple while issuing one-word denials to a journalist asking questions.

The video was celebrated by Poilievre supporters as a demonstration of the PC leader’s power and control, evidenced, in this case, in his contempt for the media.

“That journalist was a reporter from a small, local weekly,” says Mr. Malette, incredulous. For his part, Mr. Poilievre used the video to denounce journalists who ask questions as “activists.”

“But that’s only appropriate,” says Mr. Malette. “The role of the media is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” 

In response to Mr. Poilievre’s promise to defund the CBC — he has committed to retain only the Francophone Radio Canada — Mr. Malette said, “anybody who gives a rational thought to that has never been in a remote or a small, rural community. Often, CBC radio and television are the only cultural link those places have.”

“It might need to be overhauled, streamlined, explore a new business model, but we are seeing every day now that reliable sources of news and information are an essential service.”

Mr. Carney has said his government would increase support for the CBC and Radio-Canada, beginning with $150 million this year, to bring its per capita funding in line with that of other public news agencies, such as the BBC.

The Liberals created a number of programs to support local journalism, including the Local Journalism Initiative in 2019, which supports 400 journalists across Canada, including two reporters in this community, one at the Gazette and another at 99.3 CountyFM.

The Picton Terminals File

Mr. Malette is familiar with Picton Terminals from his role as the Chair of Quinte Conservation Authority.

As a Belleville councillor, Mr. Malette was perhaps most invested in the protection of the environment. He chaired the city’s Green Task Force for six years.

When asked why the Conservation Authority was not able to do more to rein in the company’s blasting of the cliff face on Picton Bay, the drinking water supply for 7000 people, he is emphatic.

“I don’t want you to think QC just rolled over on that one.”

“That was a case of, they had already done what they had done, and they asked for a permit after the fact,” he explains.

The company began blasting the cliff face on Picton Bay without a permit in October 2024.

“The maximum fine we would have been able to levy in that case was $1 million. And they warned us. Had we imposed the fine, they would have taken us to court, and that would have cost the province twice as much.”

Cases like that, he suggests, could be tackled from a federal perch.

A deep water intake in the open water of Lake Ontario is anyone’s definition of the best way to go for Picton’s drinking water.
But until we get there, if there’s a polluter right there on the Bay you need to be able to rein them in, to regulate them effectively.

—Chris Malette, Liberal candidate for the Bay of Quinte

“A deep water intake in the open water of Lake Ontario is anyone’s definition of the best way to go for Picton’s drinking water,” he notes.

“But until we get there, if there’s a polluter right there on the Bay you need to be able to rein them in, to regulate them effectively.”

The same goes for development. Mr. Malette is opposed to the Conservative proposal of “shovel ready zones.”

“We don’t want to stifle development, but it needs regulation for environmental and a host of other concerns, and it must be equitable.”

Creeping Privatization

When asked about the fate of Crown Corporation Canada Post, which faces lowered revenues, private sector competition from companies like Amazon, and  apparently unresolvable contract negotiations with its union, he recounts a campaign trail interaction with a letter carrier.

“You show me a civilized nation on this earth that doesn’t have a national postal service and I’ll show you a banana republic.”

Likewise, the quiet but steady movement toward private health care in Ontario may need federal intervention.

Mr. Malette, who had two knees replaced within 14 months, is in favour of a robust public healthcare system.

Privatization, he said, gets traction by underfunding the public system. “Screw down the system and make it cumbersome from a public standpoint, long lines, waiting lists, that sort of thing.”

“Then all of a sudden people go ‘damn it, open a private clinic! I’ll pay whatever it takes to get my knee or hip done.’

“It’s not a conspiracy theory to say that is happening right now.”

Mr. Poilievre has been quiet about the public health care system, but has pledged to maintain new national pharmacare and dental care programs, the result of a partnership between the NDP and Liberals. 

In conversation, Mr. Malette is responsive and engaged, and unafraid to ask questions. “I’ve been reading policy documents since 4am,” he tells us. “We might actually win!”