Jane Pitfield provincial run?

PC party asked Pitfield to run in Ontario election
But she declined offers, focused on other projects
(Written for Town Crier Feb. 22)
Kris Scheuer

Former Don Valley West Councillor Jane Pitfield has declined offers to be a PC candidate in the provincial election. Francis Crescia/Town Crier file photo.

Former Leaside councillor Jane Pitfield is busy with a lot of projects these days, but running a campaign for a seat in the Ontario legislature isn’t one of them.
Pitfield said she was approached to run provincially for this fall’s
election, but declined.
“Three different ridings all looking for Conservative candidates asked me
to think about it,” she said in February. “I said I wasn’t interested.
“The level of government that appeals to me the most is municipal.”
Pitfield ran in a competitive race in Toronto-Danforth Ward 29 during last
fall’s municipal election. She came second to councillor Mary Fragedakis.
Though surely disappointed that she wasn’t able to get back to city hall as
a municipal representative, Pitfield began tackling other projects.
This January, Exchange Solutions contracted her services to help them launch
a new program Give Get that allows shoppers to donate to various charities
just by buying products at participating retails.
It’s free to join Give Get and there will be a list of charities online that
customers can choose to support when they purchase products at participating
businesses. The website is going live this month.
A website associated with a Leaside fundraiser connected to the Give Get program is already online.
Beyond charitable work, Pitfield is also the new owner of Gaultois Inn in
the Coast of Bays region of Newfoundland. She said it is scheduled to open
in May.

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Increasing Toronto’s voter turn out

Don’t like your choices for council, mayor?
Run, encourage good candidates to register, then vote
By Kris Scheuer

What if no one voted in the next election? What if we boycotted the election as a political statement and thumbed our noses at the whole lot? What would happen then?
Sure it has never happened yet, but you have to wonder what is at the root cause of why more people don’t go to the polls.
Voter apathy is nothing new, as anywhere from 36 to 47 per cent of those who have the legal right to elect a provincial rep choose not to show up to the party.
In the 2006 Toronto election voter turn out was a lousy  39.3 percent across the city.
Some circumstances appear to shift this such as in ward 26 where there was no incumbent and 15 candidates ran. In that ward, voter turn out was 52 percent, which was the highest anywhere in the city that election.
So why do so few eligible voters exercise this right? Is this because citizens don’t care who is elected? Or is it a political statement? When we don’t vote are we trying to send a message “why bother to cast my ballot when none of the candidates vying for my vote represent my views?”
So why is Toronto’s voter turn out is so low? What motivates you to vote?