ISSUE 24 - Ontario town councillor attended Freedom Convoy protest
A trucker and town councillor from Ontario called into council meetings from the Freedom Convoy, and some other council and mayor election updates
Welcome to another issue of #munipoli Matters, where we discuss all about municipal elections and the often unreported area of local government across Canada and beyond.
Here’s a smattering of news about municipal elections I found this week.
This Ontario town councillor attended the Ottawa ‘Freedom Convoy’
If Harold Jonker, owner of Jonker Trucking who attended the recent ‘Freedom Convoy, was just some regular guy who thought blockading Ottawa for a month was a good idea, that’s his prerogative as a business owner and private citizen.
But Jonker isn’t the average trucking operation proprietor; he’s also a local councillor from West Lincoln Township in Niagara Region, Ontario. At least one of his council colleagues objected to Jonker attending council meetings remotely while he was in the nation’s capital.
Ontario's Municipal Act dictates that a councillor's seat can become vacant if they miss meetings for three months in a row, without permission from council. The West Lincoln township clerk told CBC that Jonker missed two committee meetings, a special council meeting and a council meeting before attending the meeting virtually on February 14.
You can hear more about Jonker’s viewpoints on the trucker convoy from the CBC Front-Burner podcast.
Besides Jonker, Mayor David Bylsma is a storm of controversy himself, asking a woman over Facebook whether the COVID-19 vaccine affected her menstruation cycle. He was also spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine, participating in anti-lockdown protests as a guest speaker.
As elections loom later this year, it looks like West Lincoln looks like it’s got its own little “caucus of controversy”.
Mississauga councillor’s provincial candidacy riles up local rival
Over in Peel Region, it appears that a city councillor’s pending candidacy for the Ontario Legislature has riled up a potential rival for that local council seat.
Ward 7 Councillor Dipika Damerla, who previously served as Ontario Liberal MPP for Mississauga East-Cooksville from 2011 to 2018, was nominated by the OLP to run in the same riding in the upcoming provincial election. Damerla lost her seat in the 2018 provincial election to Tory Kaleed Rasheed.
The councillor stated that she would be taking an unpaid leave of absence when the writ drops for what is expected to be a 28 day campaign, but that’s not good enough, according to Andrew Gassman. Gassman came second to Damerla in Ward 7 during the 2018 municipal vote, when the previous incumbent retired.
According to the Toronto Star, Gassmann, who’s unsure if he wants to run again, believes that having election signs in the Ward 7 area for the provincial campaign would potentially give Damerla an “unfair advantage” over other municipal candidates if she ran for council later this year.
“You can't tell your current employer that you're going to start canvassing your next job and doing things towards your next job while you're being paid by your current one,” Gassman said. But when you look at it, scores of people in the private sector do job interviews and look for other jobs while still working in their current job, so depending on who you talk to this isn’t that out of the ordinary.
However, what is unique is that under the Legislative Assembly Act, only if a councillor is elected as an MPP they will be “deemed to have resigned municipal office,” and similar rules apply to municipal councillors elected federally. But MPs and MPPs must resign their seats in the House of Commons and Queen’s Park to run for municipal council.
Mayor Bonnie Crombie said that Damerla is following the rules as they’re written and being a councillor is “her source of livelihood and her income.” “The rules have not changed and that wouldn't be for us to change those rules. That would be a provincial decision.”
When former councillor Eve Adams ran for the Conservatives during the 2011 federal election, she kept her job until she won her federal seat, then subsequently resigned. The by-election that came to replace her was won by Crombie, who in the same federal election lost her seat and was recruited by former mayor Hazel McCallion to run for city council.
Peel Region losing veteran mayor
Staying on Peel Region for a moment, Caledon Mayor Allan Thompson announced in a two and a half minute Facebook video with his wife that after 19 years in municipal politics, he would not be re-offering himself for a third term as mayor.
Thompson was first elected as the local councillor for Ward 2 in 2003, then elected as regional councillor in 2006. In 2014, Thompson was elected mayor after incumbent Marolyn Morrison retired, winning 48% of the vote. He won reelection in 2018 with around 45%, turning back a challenge from then-councillor Barb Shaughnessy.
Development issues, Highway 413, and losing two regional council seats dominated Thompson’s current term. You can read in my prior piece about how the loss of those seats could create interesting scenarios where certain councillors would have to run against each other to keep their jobs.
With Thompson’s retirement leaving the mayoral seat open, I would expect Shaughnessy, as well as current councillors like Jennifer Innes, Johanna Downey and Annette Groves (who ran for mayor once before) to be potential contenders. And who knows, there might be an outside voice from council looking to try their luck.
Vancouver councillor joins crowded mayor’s race
Another name has jumped into a race for Vancouver’s top job: Councillor Colleen Hardwick, who was elected under the banner of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) in 2018, but was nominated recently to be the mayoral candidate for a new party called TEAM for a Livable Vancouver.
Hardwick has been described in various circles as a right winger in Vancouver’s diverse political spectrum, although she refers to herself as “left-of-centre liberal, but certainly centrist, which is why I find the mischaracterization so amusing,” Hardwick said, saying she isn’t anti-growth as her detractors suggest.
“I’ve got two kids and I’ve got grandchildren, and they can't afford to live here and what we keep doing is pouring gas on the dumpster fire of affordability through continuously inflating land values, particularly when we have got boatloads of existing zoned capacity.”
But Hardwick, who is vying to become the first woman elected Vancouver mayor, is only one of many candidates that are running for mayor this year in Vancouver: others include Ken Sim of A Better City, Mark Marissen of Progress Vancouver and John Coupar of the NPA….not to mention incumbent Kennedy Stewart who is running again.
Other developments include two prominent names not joining the crowded Vancouver contest: former MP Jody Wilson-Raybould and former councillor Andrea Reimer. There are also progressive parties that have announced that they have nominated their candidates for Vancouver’s city council and parks board contests: the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) and OneCity.
In other news…
Lytton, BC: residents of this town that sustained severe damage during a June 2021 wildfire will be voting on April 30 in a by-election to fill two vacancies on town council. The town has had several by-elections since 2018, one of which scheduled last August was cancelled due to the fire.
Coquitlam, BC: residents of this Vancouver suburb are taking the city, and the council, to court for not holding a by-election after Councillor Bonita Zarillo resigned following her election to the House of Commons as an NDP MP in last year’s federal election.
Hamilton, Ontario: over in the “Hammer”, local journalist Joey Coleman breaks down why former mayor Larry Di Ianni’s assertion that Hamilton City Council has gone ‘way left’ is totally ridiculous, pointing out that a majority of councillors sit on the centrist, progressive conservative or conservative spectrum.
Coleman also goes ward by ward and gives his take on if the incumbent councillor is running again, who might challenge that person, or who might step up to run in an open ward.
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