KENORA — The Liberal Party of Canada has its candidate in the Kenora–Kiiwetinoong riding.
Charles Fox, a former Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Ontario Regional Chief, will carry the Liberal banner in the federal election. Mark Mymko, the chair of the riding association, confirmed the decision in an email to Newswatch on Wednesday.
Fox is from Bearskin Lake First Nation.
This won’t be Fox’s first time campaigning for a Liberal party; he ran for the Ontario Liberals back in 2018 in the Algoma-Manitoulin riding, where he garnered about eight per cent of the vote, finishing in third place.
Fox served most of his two terms as the regional chief for Chiefs of Ontario before retiring from that position in 2005. From 1994 through 2000, he was the top elected official in NAN, which represents 49 First Nations in Treaty 9 and Treaty 5, across Ontario’s Far North.
When running for provincial office in 2018, Fox said he has spent his life working to create opportunities for Indigenous communities and building bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Kenora–Kiiwetinoong is a newly-named riding (it was known as Kenora prior to the federal riding redistribution process that was completed in 2023), and saw some of its borders with the neighbouring ridings of Thunder Bay-Superior North and Kapuskasing–Timmins–Mushkegowuk change in the far north. It is the second largest Ontario riding by area at just over 256,000 square kilometres behind neighbouring Kapuskasing–Timmins–Mushkegowuk.
It has a population of just under 62,000 people.
According to Elections Canada, so far Fox will be running against incumbent Conservative Eric Melillo, Tania Cameron of the NDP, Bryce Desjarlais of the People’s Party of Canada and independent Kelvin Boucher-Chicago.
