Our local Member of Provincial Parliament is feeling left out of the loop following a recent visit to Norfolk from the Minister of Infrastructure.
Kinga Surma came to the community to tour Norfolk’s water and wastewater treatment facilities in Port Dover on Wednesday, and despite this being connected to a submission Norfolk made to the Province, Bobbi-Ann Brady just happened to find out that day that the minister was in the community – and not through an official invite.
As Brady alluded to, this is not the first time the MPP has been excluded from knowing a member from the provincial government was in Norfolk.
In January, Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry Graydon Smith held a special announcement at council chambers regarding funding to assist with inactive oil and gas well – another event Brady was not given any knowledge of.
Brady did end up going down and meeting with Surma at council chambers, a pit stop she made following the tour in Port Dover.
She posted the photo online, noting that she was lucky to run into her and she was not officially invited or informed about the meeting.
This led to people wondering why she was not offered an official invite, either by the provincial or the municipality, with Brady saying many locals are telling her that it feels like the local MPP is being side stepped so that Norfolk can work directly with the Ford government.
Brady also spoke about the close working relationship with Haldimand, and is hopeful this will change locally moving forward.
As for the tour that took place in Port Dover, Brady did express some concerns as well.
This tour was conducted with the Mayor and staff, and while members of council were present when Surma came to council chambers after, she felt other elected officials should have been on hand for the tour as well.
We did reach out to Mayor Amy Martin regarding the tour and meeting at council chambers but have not received any official response at the time of this story being ran.
Written by Matt LeBlanc