1 week Ago By [email protected] (Terry Pender)
The region’s is a miniature version of the national economy. A diverse mixture of farms, auto-parts manufacturing, food processing plants, tech firms, small towns and urban neighbourhoods, Kitchener-Conestoga is home to about 107,000 people. About half of them live in the Kitchener suburbs west of Fischer Hallman Road, and the rest in the townships of Wilmot, Wellesley and Woolwich.
The riding was created in 2003 when it was held by Liberal Lynn Myers. Conservative Harold Albrecht was elected in 2006 and held the riding until 2019. Liberal Tim Louis won Kitchener-Conestoga in 2019, one of only two ridings in Canada where the Conservative incumbents lost to Liberal challengers in that election.
That’s why Kitchener-Conestoga is known as a “swing” riding, and incumbents take it for granted at their peril. In the 2021 election, Louis was re-elected by the slimmest of margins — less than one per cent of the vote. This time, Louis is riding a wave of Liberal popularity under the part’s new leader, Mark Carney.
Tim Louis is a married with two young-adult children. They live in the Forest Heights neighbourhood in Kitchener. He is a longtime professional musician, having released four CDs and toured across Canada and around the world.
The award-winning singer-songwriter and pianist served on standing committees on agriculture and agri-food, and is chair of the Southwest Region Liberal Caucus. Kitchener-Conestoga MP Tim Louis. He was first elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2021.
Born and raised in Fergus, Treleaven is a finance professional who founded a fraud prevention software company in 2013. After attending Western and Wilfrid Laurier University, Treleaven led a Waterloo-based audit technology team at a global risk consulting firm. He moved to St.
Jacobs in 2009, finished a MBA in 2011 and is pursuing a PhD in business administration specializing in finance. The Conservative Part candidate in Kitchener-Conestoga is Doug Treleaven. Maya Bozorgzad is a lawyer, specializing in civil litigation.
Bozorgzad is recently engaged, and lives with her partner in Wilmot Township. A child of immigrants, Maya was 10-years old when her family settled in Kitchener-Wilmot. It felt like coming home after struggling for years to find a sense of belonging.
After graduating from the law school at Western, Maya chose to move back to Kitchener-Conestoga. The New Democratic Party candidate in Kitchener-Conestoga is Maya Bozorgzad. The People’s Party of Canada’s candidate, Kevin Dupuis has lived in West Montrose for more than 36 years.
With his wife Christine, they have two adult children, Alyssa and Adam, and two grandchildren. He’s worked for more than 30 years in the information technology sector. He helped develop accounting software, bar code systems, manufacturing solutions, and knowledge management platforms.
Kevin Dupuis is the People’s Party of Canada candidate in Kitchener-Conestoga. The diversified economy in Kitchener-Conestoga makes it vulnerable to the impacts of tariffs. There are several factories making auto parts in this riding.
U.S. President Donald Trump already slapped a 25 per cent tariff on vehicles and parts from Canada, which will impact auto-parts makers in this riding.
Another large contributor to the local economy is the food processing sector. According to the Waterloo Region Economic Development Corporation, Kitchener-Conestoga is part of the second largest food processing sector in North America. Conestoga Meat Packers exports pork and beef to the U.
S. The largest feed mill in Canada is located in Wallenstein. The three townships in this riding — Wilmot, Wellesley and Woolwich — are dotted with beef, dairy, poultry, vegetable farms and cheese makers.
The Canadian system of supply management, where boards sell market quotas to individual farmers, has come under repeated criticism by the Americans, who are looking to sell more of their goods on this side of the border. The agriculture sector in this riding will likely need programs to ease the impact of the growing trade dispute with the U.S.
Both the Liberals and Conservatives have pledged additional financial support for farmers. Growth, housing and economic development are all big issues here. The Township of Wilmot passed a property-tax hike of 19 per cent for 2025 to help pay for new housing developments.
The township has limited capacity at its water treatment plant, and there is an enduring controversy over the assembly of 770 acres of farmland for a new industrial site. There will be huge costs for new and expanded infrastructure in parts or this riding. The sewage treatment plant in Wellesley Township is at capacity, and must be expanded before new housing can be built.
Commuters choke the roads every morning coming into the Kitchener and Waterloo from Elmira, St. Jacobs, Baden, New Hamburg and elsewhere. The City of Kitchener is preparing a new official plan which is set to include the development of 640 acres of land in the southwest end of the city.
New housing developments there will require new roads, water mains, sewage lines, pumping stations, sidewalks, trails and parks. Development charges, the fees developers pay when taking out building permits to pay for new infrastructure like that, can’t be relied on to cover those expenses, says the Ontario Home Builders Association. The development charges already add more than $75,000-$100,000, and sometimes even more, to the cost of a new home, and the home builders say the fees charged by municipal governments must be reduced.
And that means more financial support from federal and provincial governments, say the home builders. Eliminating sales taxes on materials for new home construction, providing funds for new infrastructure to support new housing and forcing municipalities to speed up the approval process for new developments will help lower housing prices, says the home builders association..
