During election campaigns, we hear candidates speak a lot about respect for taxpayers, but we rarely hear them speak about respect for citizens.

What’s the difference, you ask?

Well, here’s how I see it:

Respect for taxpayers is about ensuring that politicians are appropriately spending tax dollars they collect from property owners. Continue reading “Respect for citizens” →

The citizens of Niagara elect 31 people to represent them on Regional Council.

Those 31 people, then, in the course of doing their jobs as elected representatives, spend money we pay through our taxes. Often, they’re making decisions about spending that money on housing or policing or public health initiatives or road construction. Sometimes, they’re spending that money on lobster dinners or driving to the Region (which most of us would say is their place of work). Continue reading “Expenses should be public knowledge” →

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia.

It’s as important a day as any to be clear that – should I earn the privilege to represent the citizens of St. Catharines at the Regional Council table – I will work to represent everyone.

This last term of Council has proven to not be especially inclusive, either in making exclusionary remarks outrightly, or in not speaking out against or properly censuring those who have made those remarks. Continue reading “I will represent everyone” →

In the last blog entry, I referenced the February 2015 decision of Regional Councillors to vote themselves a 2.93% raise (and, at the same, time remove the integrity commissioner, because it was too expensive). Then, when I was on-air yesterday for the Noon30, we got talking about Hydro One’s board voting themselves a raise, which turned into a more general discussion about politicians voting for raises for themselves.

If I am elected to Regional Council, I will bring a motion to have regional councillors paid based on a formula and remove their ability to vote for raises for themselves. Continue reading “Politicians shouldn’t be voting to give themselves a raise” →

What is the definition of integrity? What does it mean to have integrity? How can our regional government demonstrate integrity?

I feel like we all should have known; like we all really did know that integrity would be a challenge for this term of Regional Council when one of this Council’s first decisions was to remove the integrity commissioner and give themselves a raise (on the same night, and their rationale for removing the integrity commissioner was to save money…and the raise they gave themselves was more per year than the cost of the integrity commissioner).

Continue reading “Integrity in government” →