The Urban League sent every Ward 9 candidate the same 37 questions ahead of Thursday night’s debate at Byron Library. The format drew one question at random per candidate, so the room only got live answers to 5 of them before moving to audience questions.
I researched and prepared an answer for all 37 anyway. Here they all are.
Leadership
You’re asking Londoners to vote you into a significant leadership role that will shape our community. What have you done to earn that job?
Being a city councillor isn’t something you earn by jumping through the right hoops and checking the right boxes. It’s up to voters to decide who has the wisdom needed to guide the city along the correct path, the skills and determination to execute, and the principles necessary to stay on course. We candidates are all here to help guide that decision.
I’ve lived my entire life on the farm, so I’m no stranger to dealing with variables completely out of my control, knowing that nobody will be coming to bail me out. When a farmer does something wrong, we feel the consequences immediately, and we’re the ones that will be cleaning up the mess. We’re also used to working on a shoestring budget, and stretching every dollar.
THAT is the mindset I’ll bring to council, along with my background in tech. I’ve used my website, ward9.online, as a pilot project for novel ideas to keep Londoners connected with the political process, including a concern tracker to let me know about important issues and get my response, a promise tracker to hold me accountable, and an open-source proposed bylaw tying council pay to property tax rates that anyone can provide input to help shape. I’ve also provided researched, sourced arguments, based on the London Plan, against developments in the Lambeth area when residents were organizing in opposition. Unfortunately, they fell on deaf ears.
But you can be sure that a vote for me is a vote for someone ready to dig in and read the reports, ask the hard questions, account for every dollar, and stand with voters over the recommendations of City Staff, or special interests.
Past members of London City Council have described the position of councillor as extremely demanding and requiring significant personal sacrifice. The most recent Resourcing Review Task Force found councillors work an average of more than 50 hours per week, including constituent correspondence, extensive meeting preparation, council and committee work, and frequent evening and weekend community events. With this in mind, why do you want to serve as a city councillor?
A 50 hour week would be a nice relaxing pace compared to a hectic harvest season. But it’s not so much that I want to inject myself straight into the vipers’ nest, where the status quo is designed to stifle people like me, who aren’t out to make friends, and aren’t there to go along to get along. I feel duty-bound to give Ward 9 a representative who will speak loudly on their behalf, look out for their best interests, and give them a clear window into what’s really happening behind the scenes. No more folding to city staff. No more approving of projects because that’s what City Hall wants. No more voting for a pay raise and raising taxes at the same time. If the community has an objection, it’s my job to make it known.
Voter turnout in municipal elections remains low, and many Londoners appear increasingly disengaged from municipal politics. What do you think is driving that disengagement, and what would you do as a councillor to help rebuild public interest and trust in City Hall?
People lose interest when their input disappears into a murky void, or when they feel that the outcome was already decided before the process ever began.
Trust, and engagement, comes back when residents can see what was proposed, what staff recommended, what changed, how each councillor voted, and that their input had a real impact. I would publish plain-language ward updates, build a system for residents to voice their concerns and see my responses, and hold me to my word. I might try, but I can’t make everyone agree with me. What I can do, is make the process clear enough that people know that their participation matters.
What should London be doing now to prepare for the city it will be 20 years from now?
London shouldn’t just use its own long-range plan as a slogan, but as discipline.
Growth should be directed where infrastructure can support it, with roads, transit, water, sewers, schools, and emergency capacity considered before approvals are finalized. We should renew the infrastructure we already own, close critical transportation gaps, and require clear costing for new commitments.
One of those gaps has been open for decades. London still doesn’t have a real ring road, and every year we don’t build one, we push more raging drivers through neighbourhoods where children play. Council finally voted in April 2025 to open talks on it, but in that same meeting admitted a ring road runs completely counter to their mobility plan, which is built around forcing 32.5 percent of all trips onto bikes, sidewalks, and buses. And this is the problem we face: City Hall constantly trying to make Londoners fit their plans, instead of making their plans fit Londoners. This needs to change.
Along the same thread, we need to ensure London doesn’t become a city that taxes itself out of being livable. Every new commitment, be it a ring road or a mess of bike and bus lanes, has to come with a real number attached, because the same growth that builds a bigger city can just as easily build a permanently bigger tax bill if nobody’s counting the pennies.
The London Plan’s inward-and-upward direction can help control the cost of growth, but only if council follows it consistently, costs its commitments honestly, and reports the results publicly.
Money & Taxes
Each term, London city council approves a 4-year multi-year budget. This past council approved a record setting 23.5% increase. This means that if a resident was paying $4000 in taxes in 2023, they will be paying just under $5000 today. Do you think that this was an appropriate level of tax increase and what level of levy increase do you think is appropriate over the course of this next 4-year term of council?
No. A multi-year tax levy increase of this scale is not something residents should be expected to accept. By the City’s own numbers, this multi-year budget works out to a cumulative increase of around 25 percent on your tax bill, 8.7 percent in 2024 alone. And to add insult to injury, council voted itself a raise of almost 40 percent for the next term at the same time.
To make up for this egregious abuse of taxpayers, I won’t support any levy hike that will increase an individual’s tax bill, over the next 4 years. On top of that, I’ve drafted a proposed Pay Accountable to City Taxpayers bylaw that would tie council’s pay to the City’s portion of Londoners’ tax bill; for every percentage point it rises above inflation, council pay goes down by the same percentage. If leadership expects Londoners to sacrifice more, they can lead by example. I’ve invited every candidate city-wide to read and either support, oppose, or propose amendments to PACT, and it’s all open source and tracked on ward9.online and GitHub.
Aside from that, growth from new homes should pay for growth. It shouldn’t be an excuse to raise the rate on the people already here.
What is one thing the City currently spends money on that you believe should receive less funding, and where would you redirect that money?
I wouldn’t name a program for a cut without first seeing its service results, legal obligations, and alternatives.
I would reduce funding for activities that can’t show a clear public benefit or measurable outcome, beginning with discretionary initiatives rather than core safety, roads, water, transit, libraries, or emergency services.
Any redirected money should be aimed first at renewal of existing infrastructure, and relief from the tax levy for taxpayers. The principle is simple: fund necessities, measure discretionary spending, and stop paying for work that can’t show what residents received. The difficult part is forcing the necessary transparency at City Hall to make the correct decisions, but I believe it can be done, with the right leadership.
What do you think London City Council needs to do differently over the next term to improve public awareness of how decisions are made at City Hall?
Council should publish a plain-language decision brief before every major vote. It should state the problem, the options, the full cost, who has authority, what staff recommended, and how residents can provide input before the decision.
After the vote, the same page should show the final decision and each councillor’s comments and vote. Residents shouldn’t need to watch hours of council video or decode a staff report to understand a decision that affects their home or neighbourhood.
How would you make it easier for Londoners to understand what council is deciding, why those decisions are being made, and how residents can meaningfully influence them before a final vote? How do we cut through procedure and jargon and be clear?
Put the explanation where residents already look, use ordinary language, and give them enough notice to act.
Every major proposal should have a one-page summary, a clear deadline, an accessible online comment path, and an in-person option for people who can’t use the online system.
Public input should be summarized for council, including the concerns that were not adopted. Engagement is meaningful when residents can see both how their input changed a proposal, and why it did not.
I’ve already built a simple concern tracker for Ward 9 on my own website, where residents can write in and see my response posted publicly. What I’d like to build as councillor goes further: an official city platform with verified, and optionally anonymized, resident accounts, closer to a dedicated Ward 9 forum, eventually citywide, where residents can engage directly with council and each other on what’s actually being decided.
Council is regularly required to balance competing priorities and limited municipal resources. What principles would guide your decisions about what the City of London should fund, what it should reduce, and what it should stop doing? What does fiscal prudence mean to you?
First, protect life, safety, and the services people cannot reasonably provide for themselves.
Second, maintain assets the City already owns before adding new commitments.
Third, require a clear public benefit, full lifecycle cost, and measurable result.
Fourth, identify who has jurisdiction and use outside funding only when it doesn’t create an unfunded municipal obligation.
If a program can’t meet those tests, council should reduce it, redesign it, or stop it altogether.
Fiscal prudence, to me, is being a good steward of the fruits of Londoners’ labour. Never ask taxpayers for more before proving you’ve made the most of what they already gave you. And never ask residents to sacrifice unless you’re willing to sacrifice more yourself, and that’s exactly what my PACT bylaw makes unavoidable.
Residents expect reliable municipal services while facing increasing household costs. How would you balance maintaining services and infrastructure with keeping property-tax increases affordable? Are there areas where London should spend more, or spend less?
Start with the service level residents actually need, then fund it honestly over the asset’s full life. Roads, bridges, water, sewers, fire, police, waste collection, and transit reliability deserve priority. New amenities and expansion should wait when the City cannot maintain what it already has without repeated tax pressure. Affordability isn’t achieved by deferring maintenance until the bill is larger. It’s achieved by prioritizing early, publishing the trade-offs, and refusing commitments without a durable funding plan.
London must maintain roads, bridges, water and wastewater systems and other municipal assets. What infrastructure investments should be Council’s highest priorities over the next four years, and how would you decide what gets funded now, what can wait, and how it should be paid for?
The first priority is renewal of existing roads, bridges, water, sewer, and drainage infrastructure, with projects ranked by condition and risk.
The second is transportation capacity and safety on the arterial network, especially where traffic is pushed into neighbourhood streets.
Finally, we should look seriously at a ring road, or some other solution to get drivers from one end of the city faster. With all of the new development in the West end, Westdel Bourne seems like a prime candidate for improvement, and not to put in fancy curbs, wide boulevards, and drop the speed limit.
I would decide now, on projects with clear safety, condition, or capacity evidence. Projects that depend on uncertain growth or lack full lifecycle costing should wait until the evidence and funding are ready.
Beyond elections and formal public meetings, how should City Hall engage with London residents, particularly people who do not normally participate in municipal processes?
People who don’t normally participate mostly assume the decision’s already made and their input won’t have any effect.
The way to change that is to make the connection between input and outcome visible and specific. My Ward 9 concern tracker already does this: residents write in, and my response goes up publicly, so nobody’s left wondering whether it landed.
But not everyone will use an online option no matter how well it’s built, so we still need a real in-person option too, accessible to those who need it, like a library or community centre, and at times that actually work for people.
Whichever method someone chooses, they should be able to point to the result and say, “that happened because I got involved.”
Food Insecurity, Homelessness, and Housing
As of 2024, one in three households in London face some form of food insecurity. Many families must choose between paying rent and getting enough groceries to meet their nutritional needs. What city-level actions do you think could be taken to address food insecurity in London?
Food insecurity is primarily an income problem, though the City still has real tools available. The health unit’s own primer to every candidate this September puts Middlesex-London household food insecurity at 31.3 percent in 2024, up from about 17 percent in 2019.
The London Food Bank is privately run, not a City department, but the City partners with it directly, promoting donations and running food-rescue programs that get fresh produce that would otherwise be thrown out to people who need it. That’s a real, working piece of infrastructure, and I’d keep London leaning into it.
Beyond that, the City funds anti-poverty and food-related non-profits through its Community Grants Program. I’d want those dollars judged the same way I judge every other City dollar: a real accounting of what the money actually bought, with grant agreements that tie the funding to food-insecurity outcomes specifically, not just a general mission fit.
No city councillor can honestly claim to fix household income. That’s a whole-of-government and economy-wide problem, well beyond what any one level of government controls, let alone one seat on council. What the City can do is not waste money pretending otherwise, and make sure what it does spend actually gets food to people who need it.
How do you balance the needs of people experiencing homelessness with the concerns of residents and businesses?
Everyone deserves dignity.
Residents and businesses deserve safe, usable public spaces too, and those two things aren’t in conflict when the system actually works.
London already runs a Coordinated Informed Response team, made up of City staff, London Police, and London Cares, that’s on the street every day. The City calls this a caring, compassionate approach, but homelessness and related issues are still one of the biggest concerns Londoners have.
Council also endorsed a full Community Encampment Plan back in June 2024, including a rapid forced closure protocol for situations that need one, but as of the City’s own documents, it still hasn’t been fully operationalized. That gap between the vote and the follow-through is a serious problem.
The City runs monthly dashboards tracking shelters, encampments, and its Highly Supportive Housing program. I’d hold the city to actually using that data, and changing course where the current approach clearly isn’t working.
Supported housing has to come with real conditions. If the City is putting people into housing, that housing needs to stay safe and free of drugs and other illegal activity, for the well-being of both the people living there and for the neighbours around it.
What is your plan to reduce homelessness in London over the next four years?
Asking a city councillor for a plan to end homelessness is like asking a farmer for a plan to end world hunger. It’s bigger than any one plan, any one seat, or even an entire city.
What a councillor can actually do is make sure London’s own effort is honest. And that starts with real targets: shelter exits, supportive housing placements, and repeat homelessness, tracked and published every quarter so residents can see whether the number is moving or not.
It means directing resources where they actually work: prevention, rapid connections to permanent housing, and coordinated health and outreach services.
And it means council actually using the money as leverage: tie funding to results, and correct course or pull it when something isn’t working.
That has to include holding supported housing itself to a standard. If the City is putting people into housing, that housing has to stay safe and free of drugs and other illegal activity, for the people living there and for their neighbours.
I can’t tell you a councillor ends homelessness in four years, but I can tell you what an honest four years of trying actually looks like: targets you can check, results you can see, and a councillor willing to say when something isn’t working instead of throwing more money at it.
What specific actions would you support to increase affordable and supportive housing in our city?
By the City’s own numbers, council endorsed 600 new highly supportive housing units, over three years, back in April 2024. As of the City’s own most recent report, 169 of those units are actually built and occupied.
I’d use City land first, the way our own Official Plan already says surplus land should be evaluated for affordable housing before anything else.
And I want to be clear about what I’m not proposing. Turning single-family streets into rental complexes, three, four, five units crammed onto one lot, run by a landlord who doesn’t live there and doesn’t answer to the neighbours, isn’t the kind of housing policy I’ll support.
What I do support is family taking care of family. London and the province both already allow a homeowner to add a basement suite or a small backyard suite on their own property, so a parent or an adult child can live right there with the family instead of getting shipped off to a facility they don’t want to be in. I’d protect and expand that option specifically, while keeping the line clear against turning ordinary neighbourhoods into rental blocks.
And supportive housing has to come with the services that make it actually work: health supports, case management, security. Without that, it’s just a different kind of failure in a nicer building.
Both council and the public need to see the numbers. Units approved, units built, units occupied, and units still safe and stable a year later.
If a new supportive housing project was proposed in a neighbourhood where many residents opposed it, how would you respond? What commitments are you prepared to make tonight that voters can hold you accountable for?
I don’t believe a developer or a bureaucrat downtown should get to decide what a neighbourhood has to live with. If a supportive housing project came to a neighbourhood that didn’t want it, it’s my job to be the voice of the people living there and represent their will.
But the truth is that provincial law limits how far a council can go to block a housing project just because a neighbourhood opposes it. I won’t tell any neighbourhood that I can hand them a guaranteed veto, because that would be a promise I couldn’t keep, and I don’t make those.
What I can promise is that before a project like this comes anywhere near a vote, residents get the actual plan on the table: who runs it, what security looks like, what happens when something goes wrong, and how they can hold someone accountable after it opens. I’ll use every real tool a councillor has, like site conditions, servicing requirements, and a public record that actually reflects what residents said, to make sure a project that goes forward reflects what the neighbourhood raised. And if I think a project is being forced through without honestly addressing what residents brought forward, I’ll vote against it and say so publicly, regardless of the final outcome.
How can London improve public safety while also supporting people experiencing homelessness?
Public safety is the most important thing a city government does. Everything else council debates matters less if people don’t feel safe walking through their own neighbourhood.
That starts with a simple line I won’t blur: breaking the law shouldn’t get a pass. Period. Theft, violence, trespassing, open drug use in public spaces, none of that is acceptable, no matter the circumstances of the perpetrator. I expect that to be enforced consistently.
At the same time, help should go to people who actually want and need it. Outreach and health teams should be there for someone ready to take housing, treatment, or support, and council’s job is to fund that system and make sure it works. But help isn’t a blank cheque, and it isn’t a substitute for consequences when someone breaks the law.
In a 2025 survey, Londoners identified homelessness as their top issue. In spite of significant investments, the city’s level of homelessness is continuing to grow. What do you believe council has done well in dealing with this critical issue? What would you do differently?
Council has made progress worth noting. It built 24/7 Hubs that have moved dozens of people into stable housing, a Highly Supportive Housing Plan with actual staffing and intake standards behind it, and London was the first city in Canada approved for federal Housing Accelerator Fund money, over 80 million dollars now, tied to real unit targets the City has actually beaten on permits issued.
But there are problems, straight from the City’s own numbers. The City keeps a real, active count of every person known to be homeless in London. In 2021, that count was just over a thousand people. By the end of last year, it was nearly twenty-three hundred. That’s a core measure of this crisis, and it more than doubled while the City was building all of that infrastructure.
Council endorsed a full Community Encampment Plan back in 2024. The City’s own website says it still hasn’t been fully put into practice. That lack of follow-through on the plans already voted on is a real gap. And in 2024, the share of people successfully diverted away from homelessness actually dropped, well below the City’s own five-year average.
I don’t want to keep funding programs that return no or negative results. I’d rather run smaller pilot projects, test them against real outcomes, and get behind whatever actually works instead of pouring more into something the City’s own numbers say hasn’t been effective.
What will you do to respond to the businesses and residents impacted by homelessness in their neighbourhoods?
Communication is the easy part. A contact number and a follow-up email don’t fix anything on their own, and residents and business owners in this city have had enough studies and plans thrown at them. They’re right to expect more than that. They expect the problem in their backyard or in front of their store to actually get resolved.
So here’s what that means in practice. Every resident report should get a clear contact path and a real response time, as the bare minimum starting point. Behind that has to be actual outreach and enforcement, whichever the situation calls for, and a public record of whether the problem was resolved or not. If the same corner shows up on a list month after month with nothing changing, that’s a process failure.
The success metric Londoners care about is whether a person got help and whether the sidewalk in front of that business is actually safe and usable again.
Bad faith renovictions by landlords have resulted in tenants being evicted from their rental homes. In 2025 council approved a Rental Unit Repair Bylaw. Is it enough? What else can London do to address this issue?
London already has a tool for renovictions. The Rental Unit Repair Licence has been in force since March 1, 2025. A landlord serving an N13 for renovations needs a building permit first, and has to apply for that licence within seven days.
But here’s what people miss on evictions generally. The bigger risk to tenants isn’t a landlord adjusting rent to cover rising costs, insurance, taxes, maintenance. It’s a landlord who can’t afford to keep the unit on the market at all, or a unit that falls apart because there’s no money left to maintain it. Block every legitimate path to a workable rent, and there will be no more units left for renters to live in. That helps no one.
Same logic applies to safety enforcement; nobody should be trapped in a home that’s genuinely unsafe. But push too hard over minor, fixable issues, and landlords pull units off the market instead of fixing them. That only shrinks the supply, and there is no avoiding the laws of supply and demand.
The law has to work for both sides. Tenants need stability. Landlords need viability. Enforce the licence, and apply safety standards with reasonable judgment.
Downtown
London City Council has just adopted a new 10-year Downtown Plan and a new Economic Development Strategy. Both identify downtown as an important component of London’s economic future. At the same time, downtown investment is likely to be a significant issue in this election, with some Londoners calling for continued investment and others questioning whether downtown receives too much of the City’s attention and resources. What role should downtown play in London’s future, and how would you rank downtown revitalization among your priorities as an elected official?
Downtown should be a thriving part of the city where people can do business, live, and enjoy entertainment while feeling safe and secure. Downtown matters the way every part of London does.
But I’m running to represent Ward 9, and when downtown’s priorities compete with Ward 9’s roads, parks, and services for the same attention and the same dollars, I’ll always lean the same direction. While every area matters in this city, a councillor’s job is to prioritize their own ward.
The Downtown Plan contains 58 actions, some of which will require new or additional municipal investment. If elected, would you support allocating additional City resources to implement the Downtown Plan? If YES: What types of investments would you prioritize? If NO: Which elements of the Plan would you not support?
I’m not comfortable giving a blanket yes or no answer to a question with so many unknown variables. It depends on the action, and the cost.
I’d prioritize the investments with a direct, measurable public benefit: safety and enforcement in the core, and cleaning and beautification that keeps the area inviting and enjoyable. Those pay for themselves in results people can experience.
What I wouldn’t support is open-ended spending on things like programming and promotion, projection art, self-guided tours, late-night bus pilots, more branding for the City of Music designation, that are competing for the same dollars as core services with no way to measure what they bought.
The Downtown Plan is a roadmap, but that doesn’t warrant a blank check. Every dollar allocated should be done based on merit.
Implementing the Downtown Plan will require Council to make choices about future municipal investment. When downtown investment competes with other priorities across London, do you believe downtown should continue to be a City-wide investment priority? Why or why not? If YES: What would you be prepared to prioritize or fund? If NO: What should take priority instead? If IT DEPENDS: What would your decision depend on?
I won’t prioritize downtown to the detriment of the rest of the city, but we shouldn’t neglect it either.
Council endorsed a roadmap: a new downtown office, upgrades to Victoria Park, Ivey Park, and Covent Garden Market, a river district at the Forks of the Thames, and more branding around the City of Music title. But endorsing that roadmap isn’t the same as funding it. The City’s own account says the roughly $48 million it would take gets decided later, through the next strategic plan and the next multi-year budget.
A park upgrade, a new office, or self-promotion shouldn’t take priority over essential infrastructure or emergency services.
Downtown definitely needs attention, but my priority will always be Ward 9, and essential services and infrastructure come first.
Arts and Culture
Arts and culture contribute to London’s economy, downtown vitality, tourism, and civic identity. What specific policies or investments would you support to strengthen the cultural sector as a driver of economic development, talent attraction, and placemaking?
Culture can mean jobs, busy downtown nights, and a reason people stay in London. If it’s a net benefit, and we can afford it, it would be worth considering. But I’d treat culture the same way I treat every other line in the budget: show me the objective, the cost, and the result.
It’s important to keep grant programs arm’s-length and transparent, so residents can see who gets funded and why, and we can support affordable venues and creative space through planning rules the City already controls.
Placemaking works when it’s tied to a downtown or neighbourhood plan with a cost attached. It fails when it runs on the assumption that culture pays for itself. A cultural sector that attracts talent and visitors is worth supporting when we can see tangible results for the taxpayer dollars spent on it.
How would you ensure that municipal cultural investments, programs, and decision-making processes are inclusive and accessible for Indigenous, Black, newcomer, disabled, and other equity-deserving artists and communities? What role should reconciliation play in London’s cultural development?
Public venues and programs should be equally accessible to every member of the public. That means fixing barriers anyone can hit: inaccessible buildings, tangled applications, and grant information people can’t find. One standard, applied the same way.
On reconciliation, London should comply with the obligations it has already committed to. Finish the metrics and timeline on the ReconciliAction Plan, and report progress in public.
Many of London’s cultural facilities, creative spaces, and heritage assets face aging infrastructure, affordability pressures, or capacity challenges. What are your priorities for maintaining, improving, and expanding cultural infrastructure across the city?
Start with a condition and lifecycle-cost inventory of every cultural facility the City owns or funds. Rank them by safety, how much the public uses them, heritage value, and what it actually costs to keep the doors open. If a building has a public purpose and a plan London can sustain, keep it. If it can’t be maintained, council should say so early instead of letting a structural failure decide years later, and look at shared, adaptive, or partnership models before it becomes a crisis. Waiting on a hard decision almost always makes the bill bigger.
Affordable space for creating, rehearsing, performing and exhibiting remains a significant issue for artists and cultural organizations. What role, if any, should the City play in making affordable cultural spaces available?
Public space should be available to Londoners for the uses they need, at a price the City can sustain without overburdening taxpayers.
That can mean identifying underused City space, clear lease terms, and planning rules that make adaptive reuse easier. It doesn’t mean the City becomes the landlord for every group that wants a room, or locking in subsidies with no review date.
London is a UNESCO City of Music. Do you think the city has taken full advantage of that designation? If not, what would you like to see London do with it over the next four years?
A UNESCO title on letterhead doesn’t build a music scene. The people who write, play, book, and fill the rooms do that.
London can facilitate and assist where it’s sustainable and not a burden on taxpayers: clearer rules, faster permits for venues and events, and a light touch that gets out of the way. If a partnership has an honest cost up front and doesn’t grow bureaucracy, I’ll look at it. If it’s mainly a way to wave the designation around, I won’t.
Over the next four years I want that title tied to what artists and venues get done, with results residents can see.
At a time when municipalities face significant pressures around housing, homelessness, infrastructure and affordability, why should, or shouldn’t, the City continue investing public money in arts and culture?
I’d support investing public money in arts and culture when it earns its place. Housing, homelessness, infrastructure, and affordability come first.
A city needs more than emergency response, but every cultural dollar still has to face an honest public test.
Cultural spending can support local jobs and downtown activity when the benefit is measurable, but no line item gets automatic protection just because it makes a good sound-bite.
I’d require a public-purpose test and a measurable return for every cultural dollar. When those are transparent, a focused cultural investment can still clear the bar without jumping the line ahead of housing, and without burdening the taxpayer.
Transportation and Active Transportation
Cycling infrastructure is currently patchy or incomplete in places. What would you prioritize to make active transportation (cycling, walking, mobility devices) safer and more connected, and how would you balance that against concerns from residents and businesses about parking and traffic flow?
We need to plan around how Londoners actually travel. Council’s Mobility Master Plan targets walking, cycling, and transit rising from about 23% of trips to 32.5% or more by 2050, with personal-vehicle driving falling from 61% to 52.5%. Most trips today still rely on cars, so I’d judge every project against how people move now and want to move in the future, not against some dreamed up target.
I want to get the arterials moving, protect neighbourhood streets, and put the investment where people will use it. I’d advocate for cycling infrastructure that’s safe and connected, and focused where cycling is already a practical way to get around.
Londoners are tired of staring at empty bike and bus lanes while they’re stuck in gridlock and can’t find a place to park.
Many residents say they’d like to cycle or walk more but don’t feel safe doing so on our streets. What specific steps would you take in your first term to improve safety for people getting around without a car?
Everything has a price tag, so the benefit has to at least match the cost.
I’d start with a ward-wide gap and hazard list built from collision data, school and transit connections, accessibility concerns, and what residents themselves report.
I’d fix the highest-risk areas and the missing links first, keep them maintained, and inspect the result once construction is done.
A route people can’t safely reach or safely cross isn’t connected, so the first dollars go where the risk and the daily trips already are. Success would show visible, ranked improvements on the ground.
Writing more lines on a plan without that work doesn’t make anyone safer.
As the city grows, how do you see active transportation (cycling networks, sidewalks, transit connections) fitting into your broader vision for the ward, including its role in reducing congestion and supporting the environment and downtown vibrancy?
Active transportation should give residents practical choices without pretending every trip in Ward 9 looks the same, or works the same for everyone.
For most, that’s a reliable arterial for getting across the city, and for others it’s a safe sidewalk to school or a cycling link that connects to somewhere useful, and Ward 9 needs all of it working at once.
Dense short-trip areas can support walking, cycling, and frequent transit more easily than longer winter trips with groceries or gear, or more rural or outlying areas.
I’d support projects that close existing gaps and keep cut-through traffic off neighbourhood streets, because a network only works if people can trust it to get them where they’re going safely and practically.
Some residents feel cycling infrastructure gets built at the expense of other priorities, while others feel it’s chronically underfunded. How would you approach funding decisions around transportation relative to other infrastructure needs?
Some people say active transportation crowds out other priorities; others say it’s starved. Both of those complaints can be true at once.
Transportation should sit among the City’s highest infrastructure priorities, because if people can’t move, nothing else works. But the dollars still have to compete in public with water, sewers, bridges, and the rest of the capital plan.
That fight should run on evidence, lifecycle cost, and a published ranked list.
I’d fund what matches how Londoners actually travel and how they want to travel.
London’s Mobility Master Plan commits the City to delivering a safe and connected cycling network suitable for all ages and abilities, including closing critical gaps, adding new facilities, and integrating cycling infrastructure into major road projects. The MMP is based on evidence indicating cities that increase walking, cycling, and transit as viable alternatives to the personal automobile consistently see reduced road congestion, stronger local business activity, and significant cost savings for both residents and government. If you are elected, what specific actions will you take in the next four years to accelerate implementation of London’s cycling network, particularly closing critical gaps, ensuring cycling facilities are included in all major road projects, and making active transportation a preferred daily travel option across the city?
I wouldn’t accelerate it. I’d aim to make it smarter.
I’d request a four-year schedule that closes gaps where people already travel, and put the priority on links to schools, transit, and jobs where walking and cycling are already practical.
That means safe crossings at danger points where people are currently at risk, and coordinating with planned road renewals so a street isn’t torn up twice.
I’d review every major road project for what it does for people walking, cycling, and using mobility devices, whether the arterials move more efficiently, and whether neighbourhood streets stay protected.
I’d publish the safety and usage results so residents can see if the benefit outweighed the cost.
A citywide mode-share target on paper isn’t the project. I won’t use 32.5% by 2050 to justify a build that fails on its own street.
I’d judge each project on safety, usage, and whether it matches how Londoners get around.
Reconciliation and Environment
On May 13, 2025, The City of London approved the ReconciliAction Plan intended to guide the City’s actions over the next decade towards truth, justice, and reconciliation by supporting the implementation of the Calls to Action. What specific action(s) will you prioritize to move forward? How will you do this?
London should comply with the obligations it has already committed to, and I won’t push for more on top of that.
Council approved a ten-year, 155-action plan in May 2025, and the metrics and timeline for those commitments are still being developed.
Finish that accountability work so the public can see what’s complete or delayed, and what the true cost is.
Anything still open to change gets examined against an equal-treatment and taxpayer burden standard, with results reported in public.
We have seen more incidents of flooding, extreme heat and wildfire smoke in London in the last few years, and the need to adapt to a changing climate. What do you see as the most important climate-related action that you would support if you were elected and how do you envision funding it?
Protect people from the risks that are already here: flooding, extreme heat, and wildfire smoke.
The City’s own 2024 progress report puts community emissions 22 percent below 2005 levels, with the 2030 target at 55 percent below.
I’m not willing to subject Londoners to undue financial hardship to hit an arbitrary target.
I won’t put more money into climate programs on the strength of an emergency label alone.
The Climate Change Reserve Fund held about $1.19 million at the end of 2024, with only about $225,000 reaching a project and the rest sitting unallocated.
Keep core infrastructure reliable through the capital plan and partnerships where they’re available, with the full cost published before any vote. All spending has to pass the same evidence, lifecycle-cost, and result test.
That’s all 37. If any of these raise something you’d like me to go further on, get in touch.