The day after losing her bid for re-election, former health minister Jane Philpott posted a public letter thanking her supporters and expressing her disappointment at the results.
In the letter, posted to her campaign website, Philpott wrote that she was “heartbroken” by the results in her riding of Markham-Stouffville, where she finished in third place behind Conservative candidate Theodore Antony and Liberal candidate Helena Jaczek, who won the riding.
As well as thanking the hundreds of people who volunteered or contributed to her campaign, Philpott expressed her hope for a different kind of politics in Canada, one in which people are set free from the “prison of the status quo.”
“Change can happen. There was a time in Canada when women could not vote. There was a time when universal medicare was only a dream,” she wrote.
“Change must happen.”
Philpott also thanked her supporters and volunteers at her campaign headquarters Monday night.
“We have unleashed a desire for change,” she said. “There is an appetite, a thirst to change our political culture in a positive way.
“There’s an appetite to colour outside the party lines.”
Philpott was first elected to Parliament in 2015, following a 30-year career as a family physician and associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine.
She held several cabinet posts in the Trudeau government, including health minister and president of the Treasury Board, until news of the SNC-Lavalin affair broke.
Philpott resigned from her position to support former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. Both MPs were eventually removed from the Liberal caucus as a result.
Both decided to run as Independents this election.
Jaczek is a longtime former member of provincial parliament and a former health minister in Ontario. She is also a medical doctor and spent years on staff at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.
Twitter mentions per candidate
Comments