If Markham residents don’t know the name Janice
Hagan, it’s not for lack of trying. This is the seventh campaign for the OPSEU
activist, including federal and provincial runs under the New Democratic Party
banner.
She's increased the NDP vote in each provincial
election (including this year’s by-election) since her first, in 1999.
But now she's running in a new riding, one that
includes the equally new and prosperous part of Richmond Hill known as Oak
Ridges. Only 30 per cent of the riding comes out of the old Markham riding,
where she ran previously.
With a 2006 population of almost 170,000, including
130,000 eligible voters, Oak Ridges-Markham is the largest riding in Canada.
And, at over $100,000 per family, it's one of the wealthiest.
As well as Markham north and east of the town
centre, and north Richmond Hill it includes King and Whitchurch-Stouffville,
with massive tracts of moraine and farm land under threat of development.
Those threats are a huge concern to Hagan, an
environmental activist. Transit, the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Rouge Valley are
issues of great importance to Janice.
Janice has been active in her union as well as her
party. Until recently, she was chair of the College Support Division Executive,
with a responsibility for issues involving about 7,000 full-time support staff
in 24 colleges across Ontario. She also served as president of Local 561 (Seneca
College – Support) for six years, and is now chief steward of her local.
She is a Support Services Co-ordinator, and has
worked with young people, foreign trained professionals and displaced workers.
Janice helped found the York Region South Simcoe
Training and Adjustment Board, bringing different levels of government, business
and labour together, to investigate and explore methods of removing barriers to
employment.
As well as education and the environment, health
care is also on her agenda. "Our hospital must be expanded with public dollars
not private partnerships," she says. "There is no room for profit in health
care."
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For more information and to help with Janice's
campaign, please call 905-472-4258
