Seaforth's Keeley takes on leadership of local NSP riding association
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Maintaining a healthy political landscape requires an influx of younger individuals, regardless of whether that interest is left, right, centre, other or to be determined. In the spirit of springtime’s air of rejuvenation, The Citizen sat down for a chat with Seaforth’s Angela Keeley, who is just starting her second term as Riding Association President of the Huron-Bruce New Democratic Party (NDP).
Keeley explains the thought process that got her into local politics as fairly simple. “It comes down to a sense of, ‘if I don’t care, who will?.... It comes down to the fact that I care very deeply about Huron-Bruce. This is where I was raised, and I want to make sure that we are representing the people here as best as possible. That includes unions, and that includes our farmers. That includes looking at healthcare, in a very broad spectrum. Our youth, our seniors - how are they being treated? What are the options for healthcare? Are we retaining any healthcare specialists?” Especially of concern to Keeley is the current state of rural emergency rooms. “Unless you’re Goderich, or Stratford, pretty much everywhere has shutdowns, or limited hours, which is insane.”
As a born and raised citizen of the farming community of Kingsbridge, Keeley’s thoughts never stray far from her roots. “What is the future going to look like in terms of agriculture? I don’t know if people are really up to date on what’s happening with the expropriation of land in Wilmot Township, but it’s something that is scary to me.” Keeley is not alone in her fear of the implications of the unprecedented and unexpected decision on the part of Waterloo Region to potentially expropriate many valuable acres of prime farmland - it’s a move that has farmers all over Ontario struggling to understand how something like this could be allowed to happen. “That’s a huge buy-up of land,” she explained, “and they are trying to strong arm a lot of the farmers, so I’m trying to be quite involved with that.”
In recent years, a number of members of the Huron-Bruce’s NDP Riding Association have retired, including long-term President Wilhelmina Laurie and Federal Treasurer Fran McQuail. That meant somebody had to step in to fill those positions. “We’re moving towards a much younger executive - several of us are under 40, and that [is an age demographic that has] really been lacking in politics in this area. We’ve had a lot of success, just in terms of visibility. We went out to Pride parades, we went out to union marches, and just made sure we were visible in the community.”
A riding association is the most local level of organization within a political party. The riding association’s executive tasks itself with all things related to community engagement, from selecting local candidates, supporting their campaigns, fundraising, election preparations, and identifying and discussing policies and initiatives deemed important to constituents.
Keeley is also the group’s LGTBQ+ committee representative, which is quite an impressive pair of roles to take on, if you consider that she had no real plans to get involved with politics until she started getting involved with politics. “I really wanted to be the president for a second term. The first term, I was kind of getting my feet under me, and figuring stuff out... I didn’t really have much of a concept of how government actually works, or what it meant to be a riding association president.”
Keeley handled the steep learning curve of executive leadership with a lot of welcome assistance from other dedicated riding association members. “I really relied heavily on my executive, especially Nick McGregor, who has been the president before, and then was the vice-president. Last year we had to do a kind of switcheroo because we needed a federal treasurer, and you can’t be president and treasurer. So he’s the [vice-president] and the treasurer, and I’m the president.”
For this second time around, Keeley finally has a chance to focus on the issues she feels are important to the people of Huron-Bruce. “This year, I’m really looking at agriculture. I want to make sure our agricultural lands are protected... we’re in a rural area with some of the richest agricultural lands. We want to make sure families can afford to feed themselves, which means looking at the rising cost of groceries, at the minimum wage, guaranteed basic income - things that will support this community specifically, but also benefit all of Canada…. Most of Canada is rural, most of Canada is isolated, we can’t just say ‘well, these cities deserve funding.’ We have to look at northern communities, rural communities, farming communities - they deserve the same attention and financial accountability as any other area.”