1) Why are you running?
I am running because I want to be able to serve my community on a larger scale. Currently, I volunteer with the foodbank and serve on the volunteer fire department, but I want to work towards serving more of my community across the Northern Bruce Peninsula. I also believe I can be an understanding representative for a large portion of the population, whether it’s seniors, young families, or even children. With my background in health care, working as a registered nurse, I see first-hand many of the struggles our seniors face, whether it’s isolation, transportation issues, financial concerns, and more. Being a young working class individual myself, I also understand the difficulties many folks face trying to balance jobs and struggling with the current cost of living. Finally, I recognize that children are our future, and it’s important to create a community where they feel fulfilled and want to continue to live and work in. Overall, I feel I have the knowledge and experiences to be a good representative for the entire population.
2) Are there any steps municipalities can take to help ease cost of living concerns?
I believe municipalities can certainly play a role in ensuring cost of living concerns don’t get worse, mainly by being cautious with raising tax rates. While I do understand the need for taxes to support municipal services, I believe it’s important to first look at maximizing revenue generation from tourism related sources as well as ensuring the municipality is operating as efficiently as possible, before looking at raising tax rates. The municipality can also play a role in ensuring affordable housing options are available to ease concerns related to that. Also, I believe it is important to support the work our committees, such as the housing action committee, the climate action committee, and other as they can help provide supports such as grants to help people with concerns on costs associated with home ownership and energy usage.
3) What are your ideas for economic development in your municipality?
We are quite fortunate on the Northern Bruce Peninsula to have an abundance of natural beauty and a thriving tourist economy. I feel the municipality should work on optimizing public access to these natural areas and local businesses, such as by refining our paid parking and booking systems or maintaining our municipal docks. In the longer term, I believe a plan also needs to be developed for the downtown Tobermory area, as the boardwalk and side walks there are in very poor shape. Similarly, the Lion’s Head waterfront and arena redevelopment plans need to be brought to fruition to continue to beautify our towns, and emphasize that the Northern Bruce Peninsula is more than just the Grotto and boat tours. However, economic development still requires our housing issues to be mitigated, in order to allow young working families as well as seasonal workers to be able to find places to live.
4) Do you think a municipality has a role to play in the recruitment and retention of physicians and other healthcare workers?
In partnership with local health agencies, I believe the municipality can be a strong partner and advocate in attracting and retaining health care workers. Our municipality in particular used to have a Physician Recruitment and Retention Committee. Going forward, I believe it would be vital to revive that committee, perhaps this time with an expanded focus on general health care worker recruitment beyond just physicians. I also strongly feel the municipality should advocate to the county and higher levels of government for assistance in establishing a retirement home in our community. Currently, we have two seniors apartment areas and a long term care home but I believe a retirement home would fill an important niche. Retirement homes are a great option for seniors who are mostly independent, but have some needs or struggles. They provide affordable, high density housing as well as basic medical supports. Many of our seniors tend to be independent, but do have some concerns or difficulties yet are not ill enough to require a bed in a nursing home. Retirement homes also require less staffing than nursing homes, and as such, I feel having one in our community would be of great benefit to our population.
5) What issue do you believe is a top priority for Northern Bruce Peninsula to tackle during the next term?
There are two main interconnected issues I believe should be top priorities for the municipality. One is affordable housing, and two is establishing town water and sewage. Affordable housing is necessary to allow our seniors to have a place to retire comfortably and our younger population to find affordable places. Some housing solutions, like high density housing, will require town sewage and water. But quite simply put, everyone needs an affordable place to live, regardless of age, or whether they work here seasonally or year round and as such, I feel housing should be our top priority.
6) What steps could municipalities take to help get more housing built that you support?
The simplest and most cost effective step would be to modify bylaws to allow people to construct more affordable housing on their properties. Our past council took the appropriate steps in provisioning an Attainable Housing Strategy and supporting a Housing Action Committee. Now it is time to implement those recommendations. We can look to modify bylaws to allow people to construct smaller homes. While previous council did reduce the minimum to 750 sq ft, I believe we can further reduce that requirement, as other municipalities have safely set their minimums to 500 or even 300 sq ft. Additionally, there is potential to allow multiple residences on a single lot, reduce minimum lot size requirements, and allow for more secondary units in more situations. Though many factors in the national housing crisis are out of our control, the municipality definitely has the ability to employ creative and alternative solutions to allow for the creation of affordable housing options.