Kitchener South-Hespeler: Get to know this riding and its candidates

CBC Kitchener-Waterloo is profiling different local ridings in advance of the federal election, set for Sept. 20, 2021. Read our earlier coverage of the Kitchener Centre, Cambridge, Waterloo and Kitchener-Conestoga ridings. 

The Kitchener South-Hespeler riding includes the south end of the City of Kitchener, along with part of the City of Cambridge north of Highway 401. 

There is no incumbent candidate in Kitchener South-Hespeler after former MP Marwan Tabbara declined to run again. 

The riding has the most candidates running in the federal election this year out of any riding in Waterloo region. 

They are Tyler Calver with the Conservative Party, Gabe Rose with the Green Party, Valerie Bradford with the Liberal Party, Suresh Arangath with the NDP, Melissa Baumgaertner with the People's Party, Stephen Davis with the Rhinoceros Party, Elaine Baetz with the Marxist-Leninist Party and C.A. Morrison, who is running as an Independent. 

Learn more about the riding and the candidates running in the election this year. 

Who lives in Kitchener South-Hespeler?

The riding is 111 km2 and has a population of 105,309, of which 80,444 are eligible to vote.

It's another Waterloo region riding that skews younger, similar to Kitchener-Conestoga and Waterloo. According to the 2016 census, the average age in Kitchener South-Hespeler was 37.7 and the median age was 37.1 — both younger than the provincial average of 41 and provincial median of 41.3. 

The most common language listed as a mother tongue was English, but other languages commonly spoken in the riding include German, Punjabi, Portuguese and Romanian. 

Statistics Canada data shows 22,625 people identified as part of a visible minority group in 2016, with the South Asian, Black, Latin American and Chinese communities being some of the largest. 

The median total income among recipients in the riding was $36,923, which is above the provincial median of $33,539. Similarly, the median household income was $79,851 — higher than the provincial median of $74,287. 

There are 38,665 private households in Kitchener South-Hespeler. The average census family size is three with 2,840 families listed as having five or more people. 

Tayler Calver - Conservative Party of Canada

Political priorities: 

• Creating jobs. 
• Mental health.
• Protection of religious minorities. 
• Accountability for Members of Parliament. 

Tyler Calver is a former broadcast journalist with CTV Kitchener and other outlets in Ontario and Manitoba. He said his reporting experience influenced his decision to run for office. 

"I've interviewed thousands of people, and what they're telling me ... is that a lot of people are hurting in this community, there's a lot of people hurting in this country," said Calver. 

"What I wanted to be able to do is use my strong voice and my ability to communicate with people to really get the message out ... that there are so many people in our community here in Kitchener, in Hespeler, across Waterloo region that are really hurting and government needs to to do more."

A main priority, he said, is to help people get back to work, pointing to the party's jobs plan. 

Calver said he's also heard from people at the door about their struggles with mental illness, and believes the federal government needs to do more to ensure people have the support they need. 

He added that while many assume the environment is not a Conservative priority, that's not true. 

"I have been recycling and composting before it was cool," he said. "We need practical solutions dealing with the changing climate." 

Gabe Rose - Green Party of Canada

Political priorities: 

• Climate change. 
• Housing affordability. 
• The opioid epidemic. 
• Long-term care. 
• Mental health and suicide prevention. 

Gabe Rose is a medical lab technologist at St. Mary's General Hospital. Rose told CBC-KW his passion for helping people led him to a career in healthcare, and also motivated him to run for the Green Party. 

Rose said the climate crisis is one of the "defining crises of our generation." 

"It's really time to act," he said. "Our party, the Green Party, has the strongest plan, I believe, to combat the climate crisis."

Rose said he also has many concerns when it comes to health care, from long-term care and staffing shortages to mental health care and the opioid epidemic.

"I see it a lot at the hospital, like every day, there's people coming in with overdoses," he said. 

Rose said he's heard from many people, especially those who are precariously employed, who don't have benefits that cover counselling or prescription drugs.

"A lot of the times they're not able to afford to go see a therapist or to go see a psychologist that's just out of reach," he said, adding that he also supports a universal pharmacare program. 

Addressing the lack of affordable housing in the region is also a priority, he said. 

C.A. Morrison - Independent

Political priorities: 

• Protection of Charter rights. 

C.A. Morrison moved back to the region after living in the United States for several years. While in the U.S. Morrison trained as a lawyer and later founded a workshop space called the Sacred Smoke Sanctuary in Colorado. 

"I would describe it as a place for medicinal and spiritual, or cultural, uses of cannabis," said Morrison. 

Morrison returned to Canada when her mother became ill and has since been writing, working on artwork and spending time with her family. She told CBC-KW she decided to run for office due to concerns about pandemic restrictions. 

"I'm concerned about our ability to be able to practice our religion and be able to assemble and associate, our ability to just express ourselves in terms of having to wear masks, our ability to travel, our ability even to vote and to run for office," she said. "All of these things are … being affected by the current orders, and I'm concerned about that."

Morrison said she also wants to be an advocate for people of colour. 

Valerie Bradford - Liberal Party of Canada 

Political priorities: 

• Housing affordability. 
• Affordable childcare. 
• Cost of living. 

Valerie Bradford was a single parent from the time her children were three, six and seven years old — an experience that she says influenced her decision to run for office. 

"I can really relate to the struggles that families face," said Bradford. 

"One of the primary challenges back then was the lack of affordable, accessible childcare, and I have to say all these years later, that situation hasn't been resolved — in fact, I would argue it's worse today." 

Bradford spent the last 15 years working in economic development with the City of Kitchener, with a focus on manufacturing. She is also the former chair of the Workforce Planning Board of Waterloo Wellington Dufferin. 

"We worked with people who had been dislocated from their current employment for various reasons and needed to transition to new careers, often requiring re-skilling," she said. 

"I feel that as we build back out of the COVID-induced recession, these are things we're going to need to focus on locally and nationally." 

Bradford said she's also troubled by the uptick in housing prices during the pandemic, and said her party has a plan to make housing more affordable. 

Elaine Baetz - Marxist Leninist Party

Political priorities: 

• Political and democratic renewal.
• A new direction for the economy. 

Elaine Baetz has run locally for the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada since 1993. Outside of her political work, she is an office worker at a local company. 

Baetz said her main priority this election is pushing for "political and democratic renewal." One proposed reform would be to fund Elections Canada to provide information about the various candidates and their platforms, rather than having parties put out their own advertisements and information. 

"Canadian people are kept out of the decision-making process and they have very little power to exercise control over decisions that affect their lives," said Baetz. 

Baetz said the pandemic has also revealed problems with the existing Canadian economy, pointing to the lack of domestic vaccine and PPE manufacturing and the cracks in the long-term care sector. 

She wants to see Canada develop a "self-reliant economy." 

"We need to stop paying the rich and increase funding for social programs," she said. 

"We need to put the human and material resources of society in the service of solving the real problems of our natural and social environment." 

Suresh Arangath - New Democratic Party

Political priorities: 

• Clean drinking water for Indigenous communities. 
• Affordable housing. 
• Mental health care. 
• Addiction. 

Suresh Arangath is a first-generation immigrant, financial advisor and volunteer with organizations like the Food Bank of Waterloo Region and Sunnyside Long-Term Care. Arangath said those experiences have helped him understand the problems people are facing. 

First on his list of priorities, Arangath said, is addressing the ongoing lack of clean drinking water in many Indigenous communities. He's also concerned about affordable housing, and in particular, the thousands of people on the region's housing wait list. 

"The New Democratic Party, we think that this is a human problem and we have to address this like an emergency situation," said Arangath. 

Through knocking on doors this election, Arangath said he's heard from people about another pressing issue in the region: a lack of affordable mental-health care. 

"One of them told me that she cannot take her daughter to a counselor because she has to pay $200 per visit, which she [doesn't] have," said Arangath, who also mentioned meeting a woman who was homeless and staying with a friend. 

"This is the kind of thing I hear from the people, and that's what makes me feel that running this election is the right decision."

Arangath also ran for Kitchener city council in 2018 though he ultimately did not win. 

Melissa Baumgaertner - People's Party of Canada

Political priorities: 

• Opposition to lockdowns and vaccine mandates. 
• Support for small and medium-sized businesses. 

Melissa Baumgaertner said she believes lockdowns during the pandemic have done "more harm than good" by hurting business owners. 

"We need to work quite a bit with small and medium-sized businesses, let's get their doors open again, let's keep them open," said Baumgaertner, who said she's also concerned about inflation and cost of living. 

Baumgaertner disagrees with vaccine mandates and masking policies for children. If elected, she said she wants to "bring people back together again." 

"Whether they're vaccinated or they want to wear masks or not, it's just everyone's choice," she said. 

Baumgaertner worked in restaurant and event management in Alberta for several years before returning to Kitchener, where she grew up. Today, Baumgaertner runs an office management and administration business and is studying for a designation in holistic nutrition. 

Stephen Davis - Rhinoceros Party

Political priorities: 

• A "none of the above" option on the ballot. 

Stephen Davis said his previous political experience has been restricted to complaining about politics, but he made a "snap decision" to get involved in this year's snap election. 

The Rhinoceros Party is a satirical Canadian political party that was first established in 1963. 

Davis, who works in the tech industry, said he wants his name to be a "none of the above" option on the ballot, which currently doesn't exist. 

If elected, Davis said "I would probably take it to heart that it means, you know, this riding is not looking for status quo — enough people kind of voted 'none of the above' that 'none of the above' got elected," he said. "I think that would be my job to behave as none of the above."

Davis said his election as an MP would also point to the need for electoral reform. 

Vaccination status

Arangath, Bradford, Davis, Calver and Rose said they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. 

Baetz said she, too, has been vaccinated but added that she understands people have "legitimate concerns about vaccinations and medications." Baetz said she also objects to the pharmaceutical industry's monopoly on intellectual property. 

Baumgaertner declined to answer. 

"In my view, it's just not something people should be asking one another," said Baumgaertner. 

When asked, Morrison said "I don't feel that there is a vaccination against COVID-19." 

Health Canada has approved four COVID-19 vaccines, which evidence indicates are effective at preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19.