A second hospital and the affordability crisis are top of mind for Guelph NDP candidate, Cameron Spence, ahead of the 2025 provincial election.
“I understand the struggles of regular people in Guelph, because those are my struggles too. I know what we need and I can go get it,” he told GuelphToday.
A life-long renter, Spence moved to Guelph five years ago with his wife and now six-year-old son.
“It’s a wonderful city. I love how passionate Guelphites are about their city, and I’ve equally gained that passion.”
He volunteers with Royal City Mission, Your Downtown Guelph Friends, and with the Guelph NDP, “trying to make things a little bit better in Guelph.”
“There are certainly a lot of problems with mental health conditions and homelessness that I feel that I’m a perfect person to address with the experience that I have.”
Spence is a life-long renter. He previously worked in local factories Polycon and Well.ca, but switched to marketing following a workplace injury.
Though he dropped out of high school, Spence later secured a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and eventually a PhD in global health and social medicine from Kings College in London.
He is also experiencing the affordability crisis first-hand.
When he moved to Guelph, rent was under $1,300 for a two-bedroom apartment.
“Now it’s $2,500, and that’s for a basement apartment,” he said. “There will be no middle class left, because even if you’re making $70,000 and you get a one-bedroom apartment you’re barely scraping by. That’s just unsustainable.”
He believes the NDP is “well-suited” to address the issue by bringing back the rent cap and “coming up with smart ideas to build homes,” along with pushing for accessible and sustainable public housing.
“We don’t need radical ideas. We already have the tools and the ideas and policies to fix the issues and to make our economy much stronger than the conservatives could ever dream. We just need a government that’s willing to do them, and that’s the NDP,” he said.
The 39-year-old was inspired to run because of the lack of inspiration and trust in government these days, he said. That, and his son.
“I took my son to the Science Centre on a PA day and he fell in love with it. He just loved the frogs,” he said. “When I had to tell him the science centre was closing, the first thing he asked me was, ‘who’s gonna take care of all the frogs.’
“It is really tough explaining to your child why something they’ve fallen in love with is being closed because we need a giant parking lot down by the spa,” he said. “It’s decisions like that that don’t make sense to me.”
Likewise, he doesn’t agree with the recent discourse around mandatory addictions treatment.
“As someone who comes from a background in mental health … doing that to people who are very vulnerable, who are generally very scared and traumatized, is just re-traumatizing them and turning them away from that service forever.”
A better and more economical approach, he said, would be investing in a housing-first strategy.
“If you’re suffering from mental health issues or an addictions issue, the first thing you need is safety and security, and that comes through housing,” he said. “It’s much cheaper to pay for housing than it is to pay enormous healthcare and emergency service bills.”
While living abroad, Spence was struck by the public healthcare system in England “that was doing incredible things, things that I didn’t see here.”
Anyone going to the emergency room in Guelph might be facing a wait time of several hours. In England, he said he was in and out in under an hour.
“I didn’t know that a public healthcare system could do that. That’s one of the things I want to bring to Ontario, and to Guelph," he said. “We need a hospital, and we need it now. I think the NDP can deliver that for Guelph."
If elected, he aims to be the most accessible MPP, and said constituents can regularly find him at the Hanlon Creek dog park with his dog, Arlo.
“I understand the struggles of regular people in Guelph, because those are my struggles too. I know what we need and I can go get it,” he said.
The provincial election was called by Premier Doug Ford on Tuesday, with a set date of Feb. 27.
