At a nomination meeting in early January, Heather Ray will be voted in as the candidate for the New Democratic Party (NDP) for the new Peterborough riding in the 2025 federal election.
With nominations closing earlier this week, Ray was the only nominee, which will make her the party’s candidate to campaign against incumbent Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri.
A member of the riding association executive for about a year, the 40-year-old Ray is a queer farmer and single mother based in Douro-Dummer, where she was born and raised. With a master’s degree in international public policy, she has worked in the not-for-profit sector, including for years at Peterborough GreenUP.
Coming from a multi-generational farming family, Ray left the not-for-profit sector to work in partnership on an agricultural endear that will spotlight how agroforestry and environmental conservation can work hand in hand to support sustainable business practices. She also works at Peterborough’s Harbr Accounting as an operations coordinator.
As for priority areas of interest as a federal candidate, Ray says Peterborough will notice she is most celebrated for her “interdisciplinary nature.”
“I don’t see political topics as being siloed,” she says. “I really see them as being interconnected, so what you’ll see from me is really weaving conversations and interests, issues, and concerns together in these broader waves.”
Ray notes that, as a single mother who does not come from generational wealth, she knows “what it’s like to not have an extra $10.” She is also advocate for mental health issues and, given her background, environmental concerns.
“The impacts of climate change are going to be vast and they’re going to impact us economically, environmentally, socially,” Ray explains. “We need to really break these things down and talk about them and how it impacts us people on the ground and move forward from there.”
“We might connect and talk about climate change on many different levels, and we might connect and talk about the cost of living on many different levels, and we might connect and talk about how difficult it is to feel like you’re empowered to be part of our community system,” Ray says.
“What you’ll see for me is a movement towards really wanting to not only listen to community members, but to really get a sense of how we can action your concerns, and how we can make you feel empowered to take an active role in local and national politics.”
Ray says the NDP platform aligns with solutions that are “innovative, creative, and collaborative,” noting Peterborough’s historical advancements with General Electric and manufacturing sector which is still seen today.
“We also have such a strong arts and culture community, and I think we’re known for that and that out-of-the-box thinking that we have at our fingertips could really move us forward,” she says. “There are so many beautiful collaborative groups in the not-for-profit sector within Peterborough that are deep and often work together in such a beautiful way, and I feel that collaborative nature needs to move forward in policy.”
The next federal election will take place on October 20, 2025, unless the minority Liberal government falls in a no-confidence vote before then or decides to call an early election.
So far, Ferreri is the only known major party candidate for Peterborough. When she unseated former Liberal Cabinet minister Maryam Monsef with 39 per cent of the votes in 2021, Ferreri made history as it was only the second time in 60 years where the riding elected a candidate who was not a member of the party that formed the federal government.
The other major party candidates during the 2021 federal election were Joy Lachica (now a Peterborough city councillor) for the NDP and Chanté White for the Green Party.
Potentially affecting the 2025 election could be the redistribution of federal district boundaries that came into effect on April 23, 2024. It now uses a 343-seat electoral map based on the 2021 Canadian census to ensure a roughly equal number of voters in each riding.
With the redistribution, the previous Peterborough-Kawartha riding is now called Peterborough and consists of the City of Peterborough, Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation, the part of the Municipality of Trent Lakes comprising the islands of the Curve Lake Indian Reserve No. 35A, and the townships of Asphodel-Norwood, Douro-Dummer, Havelock-Belmont-Methuen, Otonabee-South Monaghan, and Selwyn.
Along with the additions to the riding, two municipalities that were previously part of the riding — the Township of North Kawartha and the Municipality of Trent Lakes — are instead part of the new Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes riding (previously Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock).
“The boundary change is significant, and I think it really does shift the voices that are part of the riding,” says Ray. “But I do think we’ll see a similar narrative and still see similar concerns and we’ll definitely have some of those core issues coming forward.”
According to the latest CBC News poll tracker updated on December 9, both the Conservatives and the NDP have made gains, while the Liberals have fallen to a new low. The Conservatives are at 42.7 per cent, the Liberals at 21.8 per cent, and the NDP are at 19.1 per cent.
For her part, Ray suggests “it’s too early for polls to be definitive.”
“There is still so much movement that needs to happen and there’s a lot that can happen within a campaign period,” she says. “When people really take time to review the platforms of the parties, to look at the past track (record), to look at things that have been promoted by our current Member of Parliament that perhaps isn’t how we want our community to be known nationally and across this country, people are going to start thinking more orange and look to the NDP.”
