STRONG NDP UNION CANDIDATE COULD SPLIT CLOSE WINTER ELECTION VOTE FEB. 27

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

PARRY SOUND-MUSKOKA — There’s another face in the race.

And a formidable one for the NDP who are running Jim Ronholm, a retired Canadian Armed Forces member and an almost 28-year fulltime systems analyst computer professor at Canadore College in North Bay.

“I typically tell people if it has to do with computers I teach it, but I do mostly computer programming.”

He lives in Strong Township where he’s a first term municipal councillor after having grown up in Powassan.

Ronholm is hockey dad who has coached his grown-up sons and in rinks across the riding, so he knows the two districts well enough not to get lost campaigning.

He’s also president of the OPSEU 657 local representing college faculty, including a Canadore satellite campus in Parry Sound. Previously he was a union steward “for quite some time.”

An announcement about the Liberal candidate is “imminent,” party president Bill Condy said this afternoon.

Speaking from his Canadore office in North Bay, Ronholm says today is the official kick-off of his NDP campaign that is being held via Zoom along with riding association members only.

The 56-year-old newbie NDP candidate says he’s “not worried” about splitting the vote between Conservative Graydon Smith and the Greens’ Matt Richter — the latter who finished ahead of the New Democrats in June 2022.

“No, I’m not interested in being strategic — I’m just trying to win another seat.

“I know there are people who would view it that way, especially people who would like to see Graydon replaced by anybody else. They might have issues around that. Not me personally.

“When it comes down to it, I’ve always encouraged friends and family — or whoever asked me — to vote with their conscience, for the person they’d like have represent them. I know party politics matters, but I think the individual matters.”

Ronholm says this is his first foray into provincial politics or federal.

He’s halfway through his initial community council term.

He only finalized his NDP candidacy after the Ontario election was called last month.

“This is my first time running for any party.”

Asked if he’d always been a New Democrat supporter in the past, he didn’t elaborate, adding only that “Age has a tendency to maybe change your perspective on some things. Age and life experiences.”

So how’d he end up running?

“I was reached out to by some people in the NDP suggesting they thought I’d do a good job. It wasn’t really something that was on my radar until they kind of put it on my radar. Once they’d asked me I started wondering is it something I would actually make a difference at. I talked to various people, friends and family, and I got some support. And so I decided, sure I’ll give it a try.

“That was back before Christmas, for sure, and the election call just made me have to finish everything up. Things sped up when the signs started pointing to an election call.”

When first considering whether “this was a path I would follow,” he expected the election to occur on schedule in October 2026. “When I would have reached my retirement date. But because it did come early I am trying to handle my job and run in the election at the same time.”

Ronholm isn’t daunted at the prospect of running against Smith and Richter “who did very well in the last election.”

So who is the more challenging opponent?

“You have to look at Graydon as the biggest challenger because he won it. But in the last election Matt Richter outperformed the NDP. So they’re both important. And they were pretty close to each other really.”

Carrying the party colours means supporting the NDP policies and principles. Is he more aligned with the orange?

“Well from a perspective of they’re the party that tends to have a more humanistic approach and the policies they tend to take on are going to affect people more directly. Yeah, it reflects me.”

He says he’s “always watched what’s going on” in the province. “It’s not something new.”

However, the party electoral process has certainly been “a baptism of fire, absolutely.”

“But it’s not as if I haven’t been interested in politics up until now. I’ve paid attention to what happens in the province.”

Especially on education at his level where he says “post secondary has some really serious challenges. By far Ontario has the lowest per student post secondary funding in the country. And it’s not just the last seven years (of the Ford government), it was the government (Liberal) before that that neglected the post secondary world severely.

“The current government even created a blue ribbon panel to study it and their findings were pretty dire and that the government basically chose to ignore. But they recommended an immediate injection of funding with follow-up funding in subsequent years, which to be fair some funding did appear. But it was directed funding, it wasn’t base funding. It wasn’t we’re going to increase per student funding. It was literally if you have this then you can have some more funding. But that led to college relying on international tuitions. And right now with the reduction in international students that’s having a really serious effect on many of the colleges.

“At my college, Canadore, it hasn’t really shown up so much. Some of the colleges are announcing closure of up to 40 per cent of their programs. … It’s not completely a regional thing.”

Ronholm has two sons, one still in university and the other who has graduated from university.

He says while he doesn’t regularly teach in Parry Sound he has gone there to “sort of a teach the teachers.”

Living most of his life in the north, he moved to Powassan at age 9, where he grew up before attending the Royal Military College in Kingston to gain his BA in computer engineering. Then he worked in the Canadian Armed Forces, where they “sent me to (Base) Borden near Barrie, for year of training and then I spent three years in Ottawa” in his 20s.

“Then they were going through something called the force reduction plan and encouraging people to leave the military. So I left under that plan.

“My degree is computer engineering and my trade in the military was aerospace engineering. But where I was working in Ottawa was more of computer related job as a systems analyst with the associate defence minister of personnel.”

After returning north he worked for Ontario Northland for three years in their computer telecommunications department before it was spun if off to private industry.

Ronholm said he’s looking forward to the Northlander train going past his door possibly next year.

“I will be happy when it exists.”

As for the high cost of passenger rail, what does he think of that?

Laughing he said “It’s always going to be crazy expensive to start up something like that from scratch.

“You know, if it had been me trying to come up with a solution for this I would have probably just extended the GO (Train). Here we have system that works. We have an infrastructure for it, rolling stock for it. Why wouldn’t we just extend that beyond Barrie? And then we can extend it further. …

“It remains to be seen whether they can do it in a way that people actually use it. It will be great if they can get people using it. But to be useable it needs to be convenient and affordable. I’m not all in. I really want to be hopeful, because it would be a great service to have.”

With health care at the heart of the election, the NDP candidate said “these are all issues that impact individual people. And this is what I mean by where my sympathies lie. Like health care and long-term care. But then also things like affordability and homeless. All of these issues where people are directly impacted by policy.

“I’m not trying to make a claim that I’ll be able to fix every single one of those. Or maybe even not be able to fix any single one of them. But I will work on them.”

He admits he’s in for a lot of long days on the road organizing and campaigning.

“It’s a huge geographical area to try and get everybody to meet centrally.”

A former Local League (house league) hockey coach with the Almaguin Ice Devils organization, he knows where and what he’s getting in to. The recreational league does travel, so he’s been to a lot of rinks across Parry Sound-Muskoka.

“I can find my way around all those little towns or larger towns.”

The provincial election is Feb. 27.

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