New Democratic Party candidates, 1999 Ontario provincial election
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The New Democratic Party of Ontario ran a full slate of 103 candidates in the 1999 provincial election. Nine of these candidates were elected, making the party the third-largest in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Some of these candidates have their own biography pages; information on others may be found here.
[edit] John Devries (Brampton West—Mississauga)
Devries moved to Brampton, Ontario from Amsterdam, The Netherlands in the early 1970s. He has been a food bank volunteer in the area, and started an employment help organization called the Labour Action Centre in 1994, after losing his job with Caterpillar Inc. Devries was 52 years old during the 1999 election, and also operated a non-profit apartment building in Toronto (Toronto Star, 26 May 1999).
He first campaigned for the NDP in the 1990 provincial election, replacing original party nominee Martha MacDonald halfway through the campaign (Toronto Star, 13 September 1990). Despite his late entry, Devries came within 98 votes of defeating Liberal incumbent Carman McClelland in Brampton North. Devries received 11,588 votes (34.63%), finishing less than half a percentage point behind McClelland. MacDonald, who received 434 votes as an independent candidate, may have prevented Devries from winning.
He contested the same constituency in the 1995 provincial election, and received 5,288 votes (12.98%) amid a general loss of support for the NDP across most of the province. The winner was Joe Spina of the Progressive Conservative Party.
Devries received 2,824 votes (6.33%) in the 1999 election, finishing third against Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Tony Clement. Devries emphasized health care in this campaign, noting that Brampton only had one hospital for 300,000 people.
In 2000, Devries had a letter published in the Toronto Star entitled, "True Christians can't support right-wing policies". He criticized Canadian Alliance leadership candidate Stockwell Day for pursuing policies that would hurt the most vulnerable in society, and opposed the calls of some church leaders to support Day as a "family values" candidate (Toronto Star, 13 June 2000).
[edit] Gordon Coggins (St. Catharines)
Coggins is a retired professor from Brock University in St. Catharines, and a former head of the English department at Aldershot High School in Burlington. In 1977, he published A Guide to Writing Essays and Research Papers. He wrote an open letter to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation in 1997, encouraging solidarity in the face of government threats.[1] Coggins has written critical pieces on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the International Monetary Fund and the military policies of the United States government. In 2004, he co-drafted a presentation for the city of Windsor on Municipal Property Tax Assessment, entitled "Our Tax System in Crisis".[2]
He received 2,902 votes (6.21%) in 1999, finishing in third place against Liberal Party candidate Jim Bradley.
