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Libertarian candidate says pandemic revealed political path

Michelle Lashbrook never saw herself as a politician.

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But the candidate for the Libertarian Party in the June 2 provincial election didnt like what she saw happening around her.

I have been very much involved in the community, Lashbrook says, working with the Womens Business Network of North Bay, with international exchange students through the Rotary Club and helping seniors at the Chartwell Barclay House.

You get to know people, really enjoy people when you work with them like that, Lashbrook says. You see what makes people tick.

Everyone has a story.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, there was so much that wasnt right, she says.

We locked down in the first three weeks. But why were Wal-Mart and the LCBO open? Why could the big corporations stay open while small businesses were shut down? Why did our politicians continue to get raises? They were imposing their will on us. Friends were charged because they were hugging someone.

It was a huge abuse of power.

Lashbrook, the chair of the Northern Freedom Riders who spent several weeks in Ottawa earlier this year when truckers and protesters descended on the city to oppose the mandates surrounding COVID-19, said the only good thing to come out of the mandates was exposing the cracks in the system.

Education, hospitals, government, they were all faulty. COVID brought everything to light. A lot of things (government enacted) were taken right from the Nazi handbook.

She went to Ottawa during the protests to see for myself the stuff that was reported from the Northern Freedom Alliance.

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It was frustrating, she says, when you see some of the stuff that is reported.

She said a protest in North Bay which ended up at the North Bay Mall in 2021 was nothing like what really happened.

Several of the protesters were charged with theft and vandalism, but there were zero thefts. Nothing was damaged. There were zero threats.And it took the police four months to charge seven people, mostly women over 60 years of age.

A North Bay business person was also charged under the COVID-19 protocols, she says, although those criminal charges were vacated. When she and other supporters of the business woman protested at the North Bay courthouse, they tried to run us off the grounds.

The political leaders, she said, do absolutely nothing to help the general public.

The PCs (Progressive Conservatives) are like the Liberals, the Liberals partner with the NDP.

The Libertarian Party has been in existence since 1975, and its major focus, Lashbrook says, is very much about freedom of choice.

That freedom, she says, comes with responsibility, and brings back accountability to political leadership in the province.

Nobody now is accountable. The buck keeps being passed. Government has created massive issues in the province.

There is too much government. There is too much over-reach. We need less government, fewer mandates. When you cut those things, local business is able to thrive. There is more money in their pockets.

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Right now, she says, just being able to build a house is overburdened with regulations and codes, slowing down the approvals and making a home more expensive than it should be.

That should be on me. Government doesnt belong there. Government shouldnt be able to tell us how to raise our kids.We need less restriction.

And while the country was gripped by the pandemic, little was done to tackle issues such as the opioid crisis.

Right now is a critical time in our history. There are a lot of unhappy people. The (protest) convoys attracted thousands of people.

People are just done. They are looking for options.

Its time people take their country back.

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'COVID brought everything to light' - The North Bay Nugget