Donna Skelly is running for her third term as Flamborough-Glanbrook’s member of provincial parliament — and she says this is the most important election of her decade-long political career.
“Hamilton was built by men and women who worked in our steel industry and now their jobs and the jobs of hundreds or thousands of other Hamiltonians are under attack by these threatened tariffs,” Skelly said, adding she believes only the Ford government is capable of dealing with these threats.
Skelly has been Flamborough-Glanbrook’s MPP since 2018, but said she began her political career in 2010. Before that, Skelly was a well-known journalist with a 30-year career reporting from around Ontario.
Skelly, 63, grew up in Capreol, Ont., a small rural town just north of Sudbury. She graduated from Seneca College’s journalism program before beginning her career as a broadcast journalist. She reported from Fort Coulonge, Que., Pembroke and Kingston, before settling in Hamilton in the late 1980s, to work at CHCH.
Skelly entered politics after interviewing a Liberal Party member about the cost of the Green Energy Act in 2009. The Act was repealed in 2019 by the Ford government.
“It made hydro rates unaffordable. We went from 4 cents to 80 cents per kilowatt hour, and it was just the beginning of when I thought, ‘I've got to do something, I've got to get involved,’” she said.
Skelly became a Hamilton city councillor for Ward 7, on Hamilton Mountain, in 2015.
In 2017, Skelly was claimed as the Progressive Conservative party candidate for Flamborough-Glanbrook, which had just been created as a riding. She has served as the riding’s MPP since.
In her bid for a third term as MPP, Skelly said she wants to protect jobs, protect farmland and bring schools to the area’s growing communities.
“I'm very proud that I was able to bring three new schools to the riding and increase student spaces and daycare spaces at several others,” Skelly told FlamboroughToday.
If re-elected, she said she plans to move forward with a motion to stop municipalities from charging residents stormwater fees, like Hamilton’s proposed Stormwater Incentive Program that goes into effect April 1, 2026.
“I spoke with one farmer who said it would have cost him $88,000 a year for a service he didn't get, so I had a tremendous amount of support not only from the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Rural Affairs and the Minister of Housing, but also the opposition to make sure that this doesn't go through,” she said.
