From the Archive – Provincial Election 2025
This interview comes from the 2025 provincial election, when I ran as the Green Party candidate for Peterborough–Kawartha. Obviously, I’m running for a very different job now.
Some of what I said then has aged into my current campaign surprisingly well.
I talked about people disengaging from politics when they don’t feel represented. I talked about housing, and specifically about the cost of continually expanding infrastructure outward rather than making better use of neighbourhoods and infrastructure we already have. And I argued that municipalities are being asked to solve problems without always being given the resources they need from senior governments.
Those questions look different from a council chamber than they do from Queen’s Park, but they haven’t disappeared.
What has changed is my perspective on where municipal government can make a difference. A councillor can’t fix Ontario’s healthcare system or rewrite provincial housing policy. City Council can make decisions about zoning, infrastructure, transit, budgets, public spaces, development and dozens of smaller things that collectively determine whether Peterborough is affordable and pleasant to live in.
I also have considerably less interest now in arguing about which political party has the best answer. Municipal council is non-partisan. If someone around the table has a good idea, I don’t particularly care what colour sign they once had on their lawn.
Looking back, the part of this interview that still matters most to me is the question of whether people feel represented at all.
That’s one of the reasons I’m running again.