The Green Party candidate for Thunder Bay Superior North is Amanda Moddejonge. She did a quick tour of the north shore region and stopped in Schreiber to talk exclusively with Kim Krause of the Schreiber Media Centre. During the early polls last week one question kept popping up. Do you vote for the party or the person? All but one of the candidates running in the region are new faces, so it was decided that the purpose of these interviews would be finding out more about the person behind the position. Interestingly there seems to be an increase in the number of women taking on the fight for a seat in Ottawa and out of the 4 candidates interviewed 3 were women.

Amanda Moddejonge has been involved with the Green Party for quite a few years. She is a single mother and also a veteran. Her credentials include emergency management and pandemic planning, environmental sciences and waste management, and recently went back to school to study indigenous learning, or as she calls it “the best political science degree”.
Despite the Green Party’s lack of seats in government, Amanda feels that the issues the Greens bring to the table often result in action being taken by the other parties. Transparency and accountability are just two of her concerns. A holistic approach to most things is a fundamental part of the Green Party and applies to health as well as economy. Family is very important to Amanda and she believes that education should focus more on delivery in rural areas, which would allow students to remain and contribute to the areas they live in. Housing is in a crisis according to Amanda and impacts the economic and mental health of people. She suggested MPAC assessments in Ontario right be a factor in inflated house prices and the spillover affect of this has consequences for all home owners and especially first nations people. Amanda is devoted to veteran affairs and is a huge supporter of the Royal Canadian Legion. Mental health lacks a holistic approach according to Amanda and often leads to misdiagnosis. She questioned why this election was necessary in light of the mixed messages around COVID with variants becoming an even bigger threat. Finally she stated that as we move to more technology for communication and working and commerce, we need to have infrastructure in place to enable people in rural areas and allow them to participate in society.

(Schreiber Media Centre and all CACTUS LJI partners are committed to a full discussion of the election and offers equal time to all candidates.)