Laura Mae Lindo plans to 'keep rabble rousing' after stepping down as Kitchener Centre MPP
CBC
Laura Mae Lindo is no longer the MPP for Kitchener Centre.
Thursday was her last official day in office. She's been the MPP since being elected in June 2018. She announced in January of this year she was stepping down from the role for various reasons, including citing the difficulty in finding and paying for child care, as well as a desire to be closer to home for her family.
Lindo sat down for an interview with CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's Craig Norris, host of The Morning Edition, on Friday to talk about what's next for her.
The full audio of the interview is at the bottom of this story.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Craig Norris: What's in your heart? What's on your mind this morning?
Laura Mae Lindo: I'm feeling all the feels. Serving the people of Kitchener Centre for the last five years has literally been one of the biggest honours that I've had.
There are so many issues that we still have to face and it's unfortunate that a systemic barrier that I was fighting outside of the system ended up being the reason that I had to leave. But you know, I'll just keep rabble rousing from outside. It's how I roll.
Norris: You announced in January that you were stepping down. What has it been like in this role since you made that announcement?
Lindo: It was tough, but it was also, there were some good moments.
Part of why I had announced early was because I didn't feel comfortable knowing that this was the choice that I was making and not telling the public. But I chose to wait until the end of the session because I was handing bills over.
So I was able to hand over, for instance, a guaranteed basic income bill, hand that over to one of my colleagues so that they could keep that fight up. Ensuring that the seniors advocate work that we were doing prior was also happening and just sort of making sure that there was a bit of a transition so that some of the voices and key advocacy areas for the people of Kitchener Centre were still on the docket.
Norris: Now it is important to note and you mentioned that systemic reason you left was centred around daycare and the prohibitive cost of of daycare and availability of it. What have you heard from the community about your decision to move on?
Lindo: Well, it was interesting because there were a lot of people that were worried about me being honest about childcare being the reason that I couldn't keep going. But because I was open with the full story. Childcare, we already knew, was expensive and that was one of the fights that we had.
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