Newell running for Trillium Party

March 9, 2018 · 0 Comments

By Bill Rea

The social conservative Trillium Party of Ontario is going to be represented in Dufferin-Caledon in this year’s provincial election.

Melancthon resident Andrew Nowell has announced he will be carrying the party’s colours in the coming campaign.

He said this will be his first venture into the political arena, but he has become involved with his local landowners’ association, and began working on issues dealing with the local farming community.

“It kind of started from there,” he said.

Mr. Nowell, 54, and his wife have three grown children and one grandson. They currently live on a horse farm with their extended family of rescued horses, ponies and llamas.

He also commented that he likes the direction Trillium seems to be taking.

“I really, truly thought they were going to be the party of the people,” he remarked, “rather than for the leaders, which at times seem to have their own agendas.”

He also stated there is growing unrest with both the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives.

“People of Ontario are looking for something different,” he said. “There is a chance the Trillium Party will grow during this election.”

Mr. Nowell said he’s been a member of the party for about a month. He commented that he heard about it through a neighbour, and was intrigued when he met Elizabeth Marshall, the Trillium candidate in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound. That prompted him to look into the party in more detail.

Wikipedia describes the Trillium Party as “a right-wing, social conservative political party” that ran two candidates in the 2014 provincial election and received 397 votes.

The party gained its first member of the Ontario Legislature on May 28, 2017, after Jack MacLaren, Progressive Conservative MPP for Carleton-Mississippi Mills was removed from the PC caucus for making negative remarks about Francophones. Since the Trillium Party lacks official party status, he is listed by the Legislature as an independent.