HALDIMAND— It’s been a difficult year for Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Bobbi Ann Brady. In addition to her public feuding with Norfolk Mayor and imminent Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario candidate Amy Martin, Haldimand Council voted to ban Brady from attending any of the County’s official designations at this year’s Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference.
Through those issues, Brady’s supporters across both counties have stood behind her, filling the lobby at a Council meeting in June to demand Council reverse their AMO vote, and continuing to oppose the Nanticoke MZO, a stance Brady built her election platform around in 2022.
As Brady enters her third year in the role, she spoke with The Press about the year behind and ahead.
While acknowledging her “incredible, positive” working relationship with Haldimand Mayor Shelley Ann Bentley, Brady expressed her opinion that some members of council “continue to try and punish me because I don’t see eye to eye to them with respect to a Ministerial Zoning Order (MZO) with regards to the Nanticoke industrial park.”
She called the situation “extremely sad.”
“We can agree to disagree on issues, but there’s so many other things we could champion together. I point to the fact that I invited a few councillors to Haldibrook Rd. and Hwy 6 to do a video at that corner and said, ‘let’s work together on this’ and they came … yet they still chose to shut me out of a Ministry of Transportation meeting.”
She shared an invitation to Haldimand’s four current councillors to visit Queen’s Park for a day in 2025.
“I think it’s time that they go for a visit and understand the culture at Queen’s Park. They’ve got it all wrong. My job is to go to Queen’s Park and advocate,” said Brady. “We need to work together on the issues we can agree upon to get the very best for our communities. I’ll point to Norfolk County as well; I work well with all of the councillors around that table. The only one who’s chosen not to work with me over the past six to nine months is the mayor, who wants my job.”
While the next provincial election is officially slated for 2026, there is speculation that one might be called in 2025. Brady said she began preparing for her re-election campaign the day after winning her seat in 2022.
“If you’re not working the very next day, then you’re behind,” she said.
Brady said she plans to continue her active community presence in the new year, expressing a desire to “work with everyone who possibly wants to work with me for the betterment of our community.”
Brady said she believes the people of Haldimand stand behind her tough questions and approach to provincial politics.
“I don’t have friends in high places I’m going to advocate on behalf of; I’m going to advocate on behalf of (the) every day Haldimand-Norfolk taxpayer,” she said. “People tell me all the time ‘We’ve never seen representation like this. We like this.’”
Commenting on the selection of Martin as the PC Party’s representative, Brady said, “Democracy is being eroded at every single level of government and it’s happening every single day. I see it at Queen’s Park. We’re in a super majority position at Queen’s Park right now. It’s terrible for the taxpayer.”
Brady alleged that she’s seen “No amendments when bills go before committee, legislation rammed through despite experts or professionals coming to the table saying, ‘This is a really bad idea.’ That is not democracy. People getting kicked off committees because they ask tough questions, people coming to committees, testifying as a professional, and yet their voice is not heard. That is not democracy. If that’s the way we want to run every single level of government, it’s time that we stop paying politicians and just have somebody in charge who doles out the money.”
She said constituents “recognize that the system is not working for them. They continue to work harder, pay more, and get less. That is not fair.”
Brady insisted that her Independent status at Queen’s Park doesn’t jeopardize any provincial funding, and instead should be seen from the same perspective as opposition members from other parties representing their ridings.
“My job is to hold the government to account – and my goodness they need to be held to account – but it’s not hurting us,” said Brady.
She said Haldimand is slated to receive $4.7 million from the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund in 2025, up 16.94% from last year, while Norfolk is to receive a 21.4% increase in funding.
“A lot of what happens in Question Period is people standing up and spouting off because they think it’s good for the 6 o’clock news, but it’s frustrating to me because I’m asking questions, we want genuine answers to and we never get those answers … it’s all part of the way Queen’s Park works. Whether I like it, whether the public likes it or not, it’s the truth.”
Speaking about her constituents, Brady said: “We have some of the brightest, hardest working, creative people that this province has to offer… They deserve the very best representation, and I will continue to do that for them because they deserve it, and I wish them all the best throughout 2025. They have my word that I will continue to stand up for them.”
