Londoners are gearing up to head to the polls on Oct. 24 for the municipal election as residents of the Forest City will elect their next mayor, city councillors and school board trustees.
Sixty-one candidates are running in 14 wards across the city, but four have their eyes on Ward 7.
The incumbent Coun. Josh Morgan is not seeking re-election for Ward 7 as he is up against nine other candidates for the mayor’s office.
That leaves four new challengers on the ballot.
A full list of mayoral and ward candidates can be found on the City of London’s website.
With a lot of new faces across the wards, Global News has reached out to all those in the running and emailed a list of five questions on some of the key issues in the city, among them combating homelessness, addiction and mental health issues, affordable housing, and accessible public transit.
The responses for every candidate who replies will be shared below as received.
Now it’s time to meet the candidates for Ward 7.
Corrine Rahman
Q1. Over the summer, the group The Forgotten 519 put out a call to action to come up with urgent solutions to address London’s homelessness crisis. If elected, how would you tackle homelessness, addiction and mental health issues in London?
I have followed closely the advocacy work of The Forgotten 519 and their calls to action. Conversations with the city are ongoing and I appreciate their desire to address these issues collaboratively. I support the call for a meeting with the province on mental health, addiction, homelessness and the state of our downtowns. A collective response is needed to move forward.
Our community requires fresh approaches to address ongoing challenges. The Forgotten 519 has identified some of these approaches. I believe a working group of support agencies, local hospitals, emergency services, the City of London and surrounding communities should engage in dialogue to advocate for new health related services, such as mental health facilities, addiction treatment centres and treat and release programs.
Locally, we need more shelter spaces. We need more wrap around services for people in crisis. We need deeply affordable housing in our community. We also need to continue to regenerate housing stock.
Q2. London business owners have recently highlighted some of the economic challenges they’re facing particularly in the downtown core. What strategies do you propose to revitalize London’s downtown core to help businesses thrive?
Businesses across the city are experiencing challenges. We must all continue to support local businesses in our community to help them to thrive.
All councillors, have a role to play in helping to revitalize the downtown. The International Downtown Association has renewed its call for a focus on wellness and well-being for all residents as a strategic pillar in strengthening our downtowns. We also have to focus on solutions that make people feel safe to be in our downtown once again. An update and overhaul of the Core Area Action plan is needed as a roadmap to proceed forward.
We need more housing in the core as well as more occupied offices (class B and C). Continuing to support the efforts of LEDC and Downtown London is important but the safety issues must be addressed first before more investment can flow to the area.
Q3. Affordability in the housing and rental markets is the most pressing issue for many Londoners. If elected, what changes would you push for to ease the burden on Londoners when it comes to the cost of living?
Cities play a small role in affordability. However, here are a few things I think we can do:
- Manage the inflationary pressures the city is experiencing through the budget process instead of passing these onto homeowners through property taxes. This has come up repeatedly in my conversations with residents in Ward 7.
- Set a meaningful housing target and see to it that we hit this target in our term and over the next decade.
- Pursue federal funding for innovative housing strategies like rent-to-own opportunities.
Q4. London is in the process of building three legs of bus rapid transit, but challenges remain for the north and west end of the city. What is your vision for the next phase of public transit in the city?
My vision for the next phase of transit includes a master mobility plan that will meet the needs of residents in the north and west end of the city. I’ve heard from residents across the Ward that there is interest in more transit routes and dedicated buses. We need a unified message on transit that we can take to other levels of government to secure investment.
Q5. What is your vision for London in the next 10 years and how do we get there?
I believe London is poised to become the best version of itself in the next decade. We are the fastest growing community in Ontario and fourth in Canada. I’d like to see a focus on sustainability, safety, moving around the city, economic prosperity and connectivity.
Evan Wee
Q1. Over the summer, the group The Forgotten 519 put out a call to action to come up with urgent solutions to address London’s homelessness crisis. If elected, how would you tackle homelessness, addiction and mental health issues in London?
Addiction and mental health are primary factors that cause a secondary problem; Homelessness. And those are not the only factors. There are loss of employment, poverty, family breakup, domestic violence and lack of affordable housing.
Municipal government needs to pick the factors that they have the most control over. That may mean coordination and championing local nonprofit social organizations and giving them priority for their programs or building needs.
For areas that a municipality has less influence on, city council needs to collaborate with provincial and federal government to secure funding initiatives, whether it is reopening medical facilities or improving wraparound services and social assistance rates. We cannot fight the causes alone, but we must certainly provide the drive for both the solutioning and the follow-through.
Funding is not everything, but with it, there are a lot of options.
Q2. London business owners have recently highlighted some of the economic challenges they’re facing particularly in the downtown core. What strategies do you propose to revitalize London’s downtown core to help businesses thrive?
The “Explore the Core” program is a step in the right direction that is essentially a semi-induced grassroots initiative to encourage the startup of small-medium enterprises (SMEs). I think it can be accelerated by pairing it with the following suggestions:
- Digitalization of storefront
- Every store should also have a web presence, under the umbrella of a London Core App.
- It allows businesses to have the best of both worlds; physical appeal of in-store shopping and broader access of a more modern and savvy consumer.
- Combine financial support with advisory services
- SMEs frequently have a great product/idea/service but need professional advice with marketing, operationalization, accounting and bookkeeping.
- Support can even include the setup or quick-wizard of the digital storefront in the first suggestion.
- Personalization of shopping experience
- Give each shopper their own profile linked to the London Core App.
- This unlocks the option of gamification where shoppers can be incentivized.
- Create an experience where visitors can “tap in” via NFC at each store.
- Give a badge for visiting all the different coffeeshops for example.
- Provide weekly missions like, “visit this Hair Salon and get 15% off the Spa next door”
Strategies like the above provide increased matchmaking opportunities between businesses and their customers. So we provide a push beyond the initial effect of The “Explore the Core” program.
Q3. Affordability in the housing and rental markets is the most pressing issue for many Londoners. If elected, what changes would you push for to ease the burden on Londoners when it comes to the cost of living?
I would push hard for 2 things:
A) Work with MPPs to secure increases in housing stock through the following existing programs:
- Affordable Housing Innovation Fund
- Funding for unique ideas and innovative building techniques that revolutionize the affordable housing sector.
- We have Western University and a lot of brilliant minds, let’s tap them, hold a city-wide contest.
- National Housing Co-Investment Fund
- Low-cost repayable loans and forgivable loans for building new affordable housing shelters, transitional and supportive housing.
- Rental Construction Financing
- Low-cost loans encouraging the construction of sustainable rental apartment projects across Canada.
B) Create a “Golden Ratio” metric for housing development in London.
Nature has a notion of a golden ratio number. In our case, I want city staff to research and provide the ratio of housing services/stock that fits London for the next 5-10 years. The categories match those of the housing continuum: Emergency shelter, Transitional Housing, Supportive Housing, Community Housing, Below-Market Rental/Ownership and Market Housing. An example could be:
So for every increase in housing (in the above example, 10000 units), the city needs to provide the equivalent for every other category. This does 2 things for us:
- Figure out where our current status is.
- Currently, we do not have data on how bad the problem is quantitatively.
- Measure our yearly commitment to the Golden Ratio.
- If city council does not keep up, then it is clear that they are not performing to par.
Q4. London is in the process of building three legs of bus rapid transit, but challenges remain for the north and west end of the city. What is your vision for the next phase of public transit in the city?
I have a two-part vision for London public transit.
In the near term, I wish to see the north and west legs of bus rapid transit return in one form or another and with the current trajectory, It would have to be reliant on another provincial investment co-sponsorship and it should be, given that we are the fastest growing city in Ontario and the sixth-largest in the province. We are a major city and we deserve the attention.
For the long term, I would love for either of this to happen:
- London to adopt a multi hub-and-spoke public transit model, which involves real interchanges at each corner of the city (northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast). This improves neighborhood service and frequency due to the shorter routes and integration with active transportation.
- For some form of light-rail to be adopted, if London is to remain with a traditional Central Business District (CBD) model, then the track would be a ring around the city. Both federal and provincial governments committed to $3.4 billion for Hamilton’s LRT. They did the same for Waterloo’s ION LRT to the tune of $565 million. I believe London to be just as important as these cities.
Q5. What is your vision for London in the next 10 years and how do we get there?
We are a city that has a number of firsts; the invention of insulin and the first to use Ranked Ballot Voting in Canada. So we definitely have the innovation and the guts to forge ahead.
I want London to develop a sustainable development strategy and a national specialization that would place it with special interest no matter the provincial or federal government of the day.
Let’s look at some examples:
- Waterloo – Arguably either a Primary or Secondary Technology city for Ontario
- Mississauga – A Secondary Financial Services city, just behind Toronto
At present, our key sectors are agri-food, manufacturing, digital-media and tech, health and professional services. We go for broke on the latter two being tech and professional services.
We have several thousand graduates from Western University every year alone, which means we have talent in supply. We will need to provide red-carpet service to woo a few major companies to provide the demand, being jobs for these graduates.
That does not mean letting the gas off agri-food and manufacturing or health, even though that depends a lot on provincial policy and decisions. It is just that we have a glut of commercial office space in the downtown core that should really be our prime advantage. A lowered cost of doing business.
In a post-COVID world, technology firms still require a physical location for the in-office days and our cost-of-living is a lot more competitive than those in the GTA. As for professional services, many of them are digitized and it is not uncommon to move entire headquarters or major regional branches to a city that has both the talent and the competitive price-performance, and still retain core functions for a better balance sheet. We need to use our natural advantages to reap the momentum of change that has happened and for future trends to come.
In my vision, London doesn’t only have Maple Leaf Foods, General Dynamics, StarTech, LHSC and PWC. It also has the regional headquarters of Manulife, Deloitte, a satellite Google office and a TechAlliance-sponsored unicorn startup that just went IPO.
The first step is to ideate at the LEDC for an accelerator in getting an office plan amendment, zoning, site plan and building in eight months or less for key investors in our local economy. This is the red carpet service that invites businesses into London, whose participation would turbocharge the local economy, provide steady employment for our graduates and bring a prosperity that would render large budgets to service our environmental and social programs.
Sharon Deebrah
Q1. Over the summer, the group The Forgotten 519 put out a call to action to come up with urgent solutions to address London’s homelessness crisis. If elected, how would you tackle homelessness, addiction and mental health issues in London?
I understand council debated what to do with the decommissioned mental health hospital. I would propose that it be used as a rehabilitation site. We can not separate inter-related issues such as mental health, addiction and homeless. We need to have conversations with the region of Waterloo as they aim to eradicate homelessness within the next few years.
The homelessness is also a factor in earning the attention of large businesses as 80 per cent of businesses are small investors and the rest are medium size investors. Why are large investors not interested?
Safety is an issue for their business and employees. The AMO (Association of Municipalities of Ontario) defines municipalities as ensuring residents have a place to work, live and thrive, plus access to education. There is no doubt that we have failed our community in many ways. That mindset needs to change.
Q2. London business owners have recently highlighted some of the economic challenges they’re facing particularly in the downtown core. What strategies do you propose to revitalize London’s downtown core to help businesses thrive?
The downtown core is suffering and there are a number of reasons why. The homeless epidemic ignored by previous council, it has become a problem. Investors are not interested in unsafe environment. The old buildings are to costly to retro-fit to current building codes, so they will have to be demolished at the cost of the city. Even Farhi in a media release said he was not interested in investing because of the old infrastructure and the cost. The problems are interrelated; Safety, homelessness, and old buildings that do not meet current building codes and council not being 100 per cent on board with economic development.
Another factor is the their economic development group is an arms length body instead of incorporated as part of the organization, such as the City of Toronto’s organizational chart. That alone tells large scale investors how the city is not interested in economic development. The city is unable to retain and attract people from universities and colleges because they are not in tune with the appetite of the younger generation. Unfortunately, London has turned into a retirement city. Stagnant in growth and 80 per cent of the businesses are small businesses.
Q3. Affordability in the housing and rental markets is the most pressing issue for many Londoners. If elected, what changes would you push for to ease the burden on Londoners when it comes to the cost of living?
This is an issue of concern. We have stopped teaching trades and years ago, the school board removed all the millwright tools and replaced them with the arts, dance studios, etc. The trades are now retiring and that is driving up part of the cost for housing.
The city did not have the strategic planning foresight to flip back to the trades. Another factor is bargaining with developers, not for campaign donations, but for geared to income rentals.
The other would be to invest in housing projects. Temporary shelters using retro-fit shipping containers, and reuse of the mental health hospital as a rehabilitation facility. There is also a program to match students with seniors for affordable living and they help each other. These are all benefits to community service.
Q4. London is in the process of building three legs of bus rapid transit, but challenges remain for the north and west end of the city. What is your vision for the next phase of public transit in the city?
Again, missing foresight of futuristic needs and not involving the right skill sets at the table of discussion can lead to a huge failure. Transit is a necessity and better for the environment. London has fallen short so badly in the department that it is sad. We have to bring people from Europe and architects and technology to compile transit solutions. London is building transit like they would 100 years ago in Toronto.
Q5. What is your vision for London in the next 10 years and how do we get there?
If members of the current council gets in, I see London being a retirement city and a downhill slide to take shape as Detroit. New people with new experiences that have been a part of bigger cities is a benefit to this city. There is no room for small minded people.
— questions by Global News’ Jaclyn Carbone and Maya Reid.