It took less than six months for Ontario voters to become disenchanted with the Ontario Liberals' majority won in late 1987. In a riding that only five months earlier handed a resounding majority victory to Liberal-elect Ron Van Horne, voters reacted to his premature resignation by turning the riding of London North over to the Progressive Conservatives' candidate, Dianne Cunningham.

Cunningham, a local school board trustee who, with the help of PC Interim Leader Andy Brandt, launched a heavy campaign of misinformation and hysteria against Sunday shopping, made the traditional political promises to increase government spending without raising taxes, and seized the riding on the tails of an incredible voter backlash against the Liberal government.

For Freedom Party, the London North byelection represented another golden opportunity to have our "free minds, free markets" philosophy promoted in a public forum, as well as offering us a chance to criticize the unworkable policies and philosophies of the major parties. Moreover, we could concentrate our resources and efforts on a single riding and, hopefully, make a modest increase in our vote return.

At the time of the election call, Freedom Party's profile and visibility in the London area were quite high, given our recent placement of full-page newspaper ads promoting freedom of choice in Sunday shopping [watch for coverage, next issue of Freedom Flyer], and our frequent public debates on the issue, an issue which surprisingly became the dominant one in the byelection.

Once again, over 30,000 Freedom Party election brochures were delivered to homes in the riding, this time emphasizing our candidate Barry Malcolm, rather than emphasizing the introduction of Freedom Party as a new political alternative to voters.

Ironically, out of six candidates contesting the seat of London North, only Freedom Party and the New Democrats fielded the same candidates in the byelection that were fielded during Election '87. Most significantly, Freedom Party was the only party in the London North byelection that purchased television advertising (courtesy of FP supporter and contributor Robert Smeenk), and approximately 22 ads were aired on London's CFPL TV during the final week of the campaign. The television ads, featuring candidate Barry Malcolm in two different 30-second messages, concentrated on the issues of Sunday shopping and on the recent promise of increased taxation made by Liberal leader David Peterson.

Response to Freedom Party's byelection campaign by the public and by the media was both positive and flattering. Candidate Barry Malcolm was exceptional as representative of our new political party, and although most voters understandably did not yet view Freedom Party as being an "electable" political alternative, our ideas, alternatives, philosophy, and "common sense" approach to the issues were met with a great deal of enthusiasm and acceptance, thus paving the way for greater inroads in the future.

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Page last updated on April 28, 2002