Candidate Questionnaire

Every election, candidates get questionnaires from various sources, usually advocacy groups from one cause or another, with the goal of helping voters know where their candidates stand on those issues. This year candidates in Brighton received a general questionnaire from a resident, Phyllis Lanham, who intends to share those responses via social media so that the answers that help her decide who to vote for can be of service to her neighbours, too. I love that, and I love how thoughtful and thorough her questions were. I tried to provide answers that were equally thoughtful and thorough, and I apologize now for the length! I also want to note that some of my answers reflect the fact that my perspectives change over time and with new information, and that I’m not 100% sure about some things! I hope that makes me approachable, rather than imperfect or wrong 😉

So here’s the questionnaire, and my answers. Huge thank-you to Phyllis, and I hope you all find the answers from the other candidates too. If I see them online I’ll try to make a note here to direct you all to them.

Questions for Candidates Seeking Election to Brighton Council

Candidate’s Name: Jeff Wheeldon

Position Sought: Councillor

Purpose of This Questionnaire

The purpose of this questionnaire is to help Brighton voters make a more informed decision about the candidates asking to represent them.

A name on a ballot, campaign sign or brief candidate biography tells voters very little about the person behind it. Traditionally, all-candidates meetings and other public forums have provided opportunities for residents to hear directly from candidates and, in some cases, to ask questions about the issues that matter to them. Those opportunities are not always available, and even when they are, time limitations mean that many questions voters would like answered may never be asked.

This questionnaire is intended to provide another opportunity for that conversation.

For candidates, it is an opportunity to tell residents who you are, why you are seeking office, what you believe you would bring to the position, what your priorities are, and how you would approach the responsibilities entrusted to you if elected.

For voters, it is an opportunity to learn how candidates would approach the issues and responsibilities that matter to the people they hope to represent, and to compare candidates’ answers in their own words before deciding where to cast their vote.

The questions are also intended to help voters understand what kind of representative you would be: how you would listen to residents, approach disagreement, make difficult decisions, exercise accountability, communicate with the public and ensure that residents have a meaningful voice in their municipal government.

Participation in this questionnaire is entirely voluntary. If you would like voters to have an opportunity to learn more about you and the kind of representative you hope to be, we invite you to participate.

You may answer all of the questions or only those you choose to answer, and your responses may be as brief or as detailed as you wish. There are no predetermined “right” answers. If there is an issue about which you need to learn more, saying so is also a meaningful response.

This is not intended to be a test of candidates. It is intended to create a conversation between candidates and voters – giving candidates an opportunity to speak directly to the people they hope to represent and giving voters information they can consider when deciding whom they wish to entrust with their vote.

An individual councillor does not govern the municipality alone. Decisions are made collectively by Council, while day-to-day administration belongs to municipal staff. The questions that follow are intended to explore how you understand that role, what you would advocate for, and how you would work with others while remaining accountable to the residents who elected you.

If you choose to respond, please type your response in the answer space following each question. The space will expand automatically as you type.

1. Why Are You Seeking Election?

Why are you seeking election (or re-election) to Council?

What issues, concerns or opportunities in Brighton do you believe most need attention? Where do you believe change or improvement is needed?

What experiences, skills, qualities or perspectives do you bring that would help you address those concerns and serve the community effectively?

Four years ago I ran on a list of issues that are still very relevant, especially housing affordability and climate change. There have been improvements on those fronts, both in the broader context and locally. Broadly, housing prices across Canada have been slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels (though not yet here in Brighton, where average prices are still double the “affordable” level); and the world has officially avoided the worst case scenarios for climate change (though we’ve also missed the window for the best case scenarios). Locally, we’ve taken action to address the housing and climate crises. Early in the term, I collaborated with council members from across Northumberland to create the Northumberland Inter-Municipal Task Force on Housing and Homelessness, which began with a motion I brought to our council here in Brighton, and chaired it for its first year. The Task Force has explored the housing crisis in our local context from all angles, picking out the pain points of the housing development process and determining how we might improve things from a municipal standpoint: municipal planners and CAOs from all Northumberland municipalities have agreed to collaborate toward the solutions we’ve identified as all of our member municipalities develop new Official Plans in the coming year, and I’m currently working to develop an event for November that will orient new councils to that challenge and contextualize them to the ways that Planning models have changed over the past few decades, so that we can imagine a more flexible, purposeful, and affordable model of growth for our future.  Over the same period, our council has ambitiously committed to the Land Banking program started last term. We’ve purchased land for the development of a mixed-use (residential and commercial together), mixed-income (with housing types and ownership models for various levels of affordability), complete community (which is to say, a place where people live, work, and have leisure, all in one neighbourhood), of transit-level density. We’ve hired Urban Strategies Inc to design both the neighbourhood itself and the business model for its development, with the goal of making this an investment in our community that not only funnels new growth into a thoroughly-planned development, but that pays dividends to the rest of Brighton in various ways, both socially and economically. So far as I can tell, no other municipality in the country or beyond is doing anything quite like this, and it is one of the things I am most proud of in this term, and perhaps in my life. I have been an active booster of this project, but all of the current council gets the credit for it: we have been unanimous in our support for it, even when we disagree about what exactly it might entail.  On the climate front, back around 2020 I brought a delegation to council requesting the formation of a Sustainability Committee, and when it was formed I was made Chair. I also at that time convened councillors and committee members from across Northumberland to form a sustainability group that advocated for climate action plans in each of our respective municipalities, and at the County; the County is now well into their climate plan, and they’ve worked with us to ensure that lower-tier governments can build their own plans and have them dovetail with County efforts. Once elected, I advocated from our first budget for a commitment to creating a climate or sustainability plan. As I write this, the final draft of the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan is on the agenda for this week’s meeting. If we vote to adopt it (and I don’t expect any problems there), it will set us on a path to reducing the municipality’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2,300 tons annually, improve our urban canopy, support innovation in our agricultural sector, improve our resilience to heat and flooding, and more.  These are my top two issues again this year, both because they’re the biggest issues our society is facing, but also because they both represent pivotal changes for our community that have been initiated but not fully implemented. My goal for the coming term is to get these projects well underway, and to engage residents in the changes that are coming. We’ve initiated a lot of change in this term of council, and the coming few years will be challenging as we experience those changes. My expertise in housing and homelessness issues are, I hope, well established. Likewise for my environmental advocacy and policy expertise. This term, the skill that will be most necessary is more about neighbourliness: my ability to sit with my neighbours in the discomfort of change, hearing their concerns and ensuring that as these changes occur we don’t leave anyone behind.

2. Council’s Achievements

Looking back over the past four years, what do you believe have been Council’s greatest achievements?

What decisions or initiatives do you believe have had the most positive impact on our community?

The true impact of council decisions often isn’t felt for many years to come! I always think about the zag in Main Street, and the awkward intersection with Prince Edward, and how that zag in the road is older than Canada itself (check the map outside the council chambers!). Sometimes the things that seem most pressing barely leave a ripple in history, while other things that are just accepted as a given will shape our future in ways we can’t yet imagine. That said, I think that the Land Banking initiative will be transformative for Brighton’s development patterns, changing what options our residents have for housing and therefore who can afford to live here. That will have knock-on effects that include what kind of services and jobs are available here, which will determine what kind of lifestyles our residents can have, and so on. I am particularly hopeful that it will provide the basis for a return of regular transit routes to our community, which is particularly important as our population continues to age.  I am hopeful that our Integrated Community Sustainability Plan will be pivotal in our history, by setting new standards for what is built and how we operate. Those changes are each small in themselves, but the shift in orientation toward sustainability rather than merely dollars and cents will save us much more than just money in the long term, and will hopefully even impact our local culture, making us more attuned to the green spaces we enjoy here. Another transformative shift we’ve pioneered this term has been the simple commitment to getting along. One week before the last election, the past council had to receive a report from KPMG examining why Brighton had such a challenging organizational culture. We were losing staff, and morale was incredibly low. The conduct of council, and particularly some unnamed councillors, was named over and over again in that report. From day one, this term’s council has committed to getting along with one another and supporting staff, so that none of our work could be sidetracked by drama and egos. And we have succeeded incredibly: the ambitious and innovative work that was started this term was only made possible by the culture that we have created through our cooperation and kindness. Staff have taken big swings that have advanced our community tremendously because they now work in a municipality that will support them and be courageous enough to go for it. Every time I hear about municipal politics in the news, it’s usually a story of councils in other places fighting each other; every time I go to a conference and hear from colleagues from elsewhere, I’m so glad to be here in Brighton. May that continue, no matter who gets elected this year! But please do consider that when you vote. I have confidence in my ability to disagree well, but as I’ve seen elsewhere, some folks make that easier than others. I don’t yet know all of the candidates, but my hope is that our success in building a positive culture this term will help shape the culture of the term to come, and so on.

3. Challenges and Lessons Learned

Every Council also faces criticism.

What do you believe have been the greatest challenges or shortcomings of the current Council, and what lessons should be learned going forward?

Is there anything you believe should have been done differently? If so, what?

This is a great question! I feel like I have learned a ton this term, and hope we don’t have to re-learn those lessons in the future. Some examples: -Keeping out of the weeds. One of the hardest parts of being on council is to always remember the line between strategic decisions and operational decisions. While we provide oversight to municipal operations, we only make strategic decisions. Put differently, we decide what and why; staff determine how, and it’s not up to councillors to second-guess their decisions or undermine their expertise. We still sometimes have a tendency to get into the weeds, and I want to be better at avoiding it, and even making note of it when my colleagues do it.  -Try not to make assumptions, particularly if the assumption is a negative one about someone else. Give others the benefit of the doubt: everyone is, almost always, just doing their best. At the start of this term I had people telling me that others on council were “playing politics” and doing things that were untoward, and I wish I had stopped listening to such talk sooner. It was neither true nor helpful. I think there’s a major trend of being cynical and/or suspicious of politicians, and members of council need to stamp that out and treat people like they’re people, with grace and a commitment to understanding. -Pace ourselves, and find the pace. When I first started I wanted to do all of the things, right now. Now I understand just how much staff work goes into the simplest of council decisions, and I’ve seen the danger of over-loading staff: not only does that lower morale, but it sometimes leads to things that are important to me being put on a back burner because we’ve simply given them too much to do. At the same time, some things can be quite simple, and can make a difference right away. Knowing which changes are quick and simple, and which ones require months or years, means having good communication with staff about capacity, needs, and priorities. We have a great team, and I feel like I now have that quality of relationship and communication, but it took me a while.

4. Your Priorities

If elected, what would be your three highest priorities?

How would you measure whether you had been successful in achieving them?

Ensure the implementation of the initiatives begun this term. That includes the Land Banking initiative, the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan, the review of the Official Plan, and of course carrying out the current construction projects on Prince Edward Street and the Wastewater Treatment Plant. I don’t take it for granted that these things will all continue without continued council support, and that’s one of the main reasons I am running again. We’ve started a lot of change this term, and it’s fairly common for a new council to hit the brakes on projects that were started by someone else who’s no longer around.  Connect and engage with residents through that implementation process. I am very conscious that the changes that have started will frustrate some of you, and I want to hear about that. I want to ensure that we are conscious and respectful of all residents as we initiate changes that some will see as a loss. Whether it’s a loss of a view, or a loss of a sense of the community that was, or anything else; change is hard at the best of times, and these aren’t the best of times. We live in a world that is changing all around us all of the time, and when we have no agency in those changes it makes it feel as though those changes are happening TO us, rather than for us or with us or by us. I want to live in a community where people feel informed and empowered, and sometimes the best thing we can do for that is to spend more time communicating, making sure that we’re all on the same team even when we disagree. It might sound trite or even patronizing, though I sure hope not, because it’s sincere. Continue to make the municipality a great place to work, serve, and volunteer. We’ve done a lot this term to better support municipal staff, to cooperate and get along as a council, to collaborate across the county, and to make our resident committees more effective and rewarding. In short, and at the risk of sounding trite or cheesy again, I think that caring and collaborating take constant effort, so I want this to be a top priority for the coming term. There will be new faces on council, and I don’t take my current council colleagues for granted; there will be new councils everywhere, with new opportunities to collaborate; there will be new staff, and new projects, and new opportunities to empower others…or disempower them, pick fights, and break stuff. I want to put my effort into the good. I know that sounds like I have nothing new to do, but really it’s just that I want to see these transformative changes through! I’m not even sure we can handle too much more change at this point, we have more than enough to do just carrying out what we’ve already started. But I have no doubt that new issues and opportunities will arise, and I’m excited to meet them head on.

5. Communication and Public Trust

What do you believe the present Council has done to improve communication between Council and the citizens of Brighton Municipality? What has worked well, and is there anything you believe could be improved or done differently?

If elected, how would you build on those efforts?

Would you support regular Town Hall meetings, open question-and-answer sessions, plain-language explanations of major decisions, and follow-up reports explaining how public input influenced Council’s decisions?

One of the things I ran on in 2022 was improved communication, so I’m definitely on board with this. And this term the municipality hired a Community Liaison Officer. She does great work! She runs socials, writes newsletters, engages with local media, and more.  One place where I still see a gap comes out of the report of the Brighton Homelessness Task Force, where I discussed the municipality playing a convening and facilitating role for the many nonprofits and volunteer groups in Brighton. While the Task Force temporarily brought volunteer groups together, and provided a lot of introductions and coordination between us all, there was an expressed desire to maintain connections and coordination between those groups. We currently lack a mechanism for this. Given that council supported the recommendations of the Task Force report, this is something I expect to explore in the coming term.  I very much support plain-language explanations of major decisions and follow-up reports: I’ve been doing that all term, on my blog at jeffwheeldon.ca  I will say that there are many, many ways for the public to have input. For starters, you can contact us: council’s phone numbers and email addresses are published. You can come to a meeting and talk to us before or after; you can bring a formal delegation; you can ask a question in question period, or offer citizens’ comments; you can send correspondence to the Clerk. All of these things can be done remotely or in person. We frequently have public open houses about major projects. We invite public participation through open houses and surveys for our Strategic Plan. We advertise these things on local radio and social media and in our newsletters and on our website. We hold our meetings in the evenings, outside of work hours. And despite all of that, we get very little turnout or input. Given that, I’m not sure that holding regular Town Hall meetings will make any difference. I’m not against it—I welcome any opportunity for input and feedback—but clearly there are reasons why people don’t use the many opportunities for input that they already have, and until we determine what those reasons are, I’m not hopeful that anyone would even attend a Town Hall. I suspect that people assume that their input won’t make a difference, and I want to stress how untrue that is, particularly when turnout is so low. If you’re the only person showing up to provide input, you’d better believe it will be considered! That input is precious, because it’s so rare.

6. Public Consultation

When do you believe the public should be consulted on major municipal decisions?

Do you believe meaningful consultation should give residents an opportunity not only to learn about a proposal, but also to offer suggestions, raise concerns, propose alternatives and provide input before a final decision is made?

How would you ensure that public consultation is more than simply presenting information, and that residents are told how their input was considered when Council reaches its final decision?

I believe that the primary way that the public is consulted on major municipal decisions is through their elected representatives: we are members of the public, chosen to make decisions on the public’s behalf, and I think sometimes folks forget that. I live here too, and I’m affected by major decisions too, usually in the same ways that you are, and the concerns you express to me in the dairy aisle (or preferably, by email) do make a difference in my decisions. But I do believe that we should have public consultation meetings about major decisions. And we do. The most impactful place to provide input is in the Strategic Plan process, which will probably begin in the spring. That plan shapes all of the work we do for the rest of the term, but participation is usually quite low. We also have public open houses about things like the Land Banking initiative and the Transportation Master Plan, both of which had low turnout despite offering opportunities for direct input. There are some kinds of decisions that we are legally required to have consultations for, following a pattern determined by the province; I tend to find such statutory public meetings underwhelming, because they are about Planning matters (determining which developments will be allowed), and those decisions are entirely shaped and framed by provincial statute. We don’t actually get much say in who does what with their property, provided they follow the rules, and those rules are either set directly by the province or set within the framework provided by the province, and adjudicated by the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT). By the time a development proposal comes to the stage of requiring a statutory public meeting, it has already checked all of the boxes; as such, the public’s comments at that stage are largely too little too late. Occasionally the public will bring up some relevant new information that can cause a review of the file; and frequently there’s still opportunity for good suggestions to be taken into account. But I think that what people are often looking for when they come to a consultation is some kind of veto power, and ultimately not even council has that. If we decide not to allow a proposal to be approved that otherwise meets all of the criteria for approval, we have to defend that decision before the OLT, and we’re most likely to lose. The one time that we did so this term, we not only lost, but we were forced to pay the proponent’s legal costs. So at least on Planning matters, resident input doesn’t affect our decision much at all unless those residents have discovered a hole in the proponent’s case that our staff have missed. Our staff aren’t perfect, but they don’t miss much. If folks are looking for more opportunities for meaningful consultation, I highly recommend that people sign up for the municipal newsletter so that they’re aware of when consultations happen. Check the municipal website, where consultations are listed and there are often opportunities to sign up for updates on major projects. Stay connected to a councillor or two so that you know what’s up, and how to contribute. We DO want to hear from you!

7. Transparency

What does transparency in municipal government mean to you?

When Council is considering a major expenditure, property purchase, development commitment or other decision involving significant public resources, what information do you believe residents should receive before a decision is made? When should the public have an opportunity to provide input?

Once a decision has been made, what responsibility does Council have to disclose the cost, source of funding, commitments made, intended purpose and future plans?

Are there circumstances where you believe Council is justified in making significant decisions without informing the public beforehand? If so, what should those circumstances be, and when should the details subsequently be made public?

Matters of transparency in municipal governance are at the heart of nearly everything council does, by law. All of our meetings are shaped by these requirements, and mostly only happen in the first place for the sake of transparency. That’s a key role of council: to make sure that the work of the municipality has resident-led oversight. In service of that, many of the reports we receive are only there to make sure everyone knows what staff have been up to. All regular meetings of council and committees are public, and must be held in an accessible public place. We also live-stream our meetings to YouTube, and recordings are available there to be watched afterward; this is not a requirement, but we do it anyway whenever possible (sometimes technical difficulties prevent it, and we carry on anyway, but most of our meetings are freely available).  There are exceptions, reasons that allow us to meet in a Closed Session. Those reasons include when we are buying or selling land: real estate transactions, and especially the price, are private and protected by law in Ontario, not least because sharing offer amounts publicly can disadvantage us in negotiations. Occasionally a municipality will even purchase a property anonymously, because people tend to demand a higher price from a municipality than they would from an individual. For those kinds of reasons, we don’t negotiate in public. Similarly, matters related to trade secrets are discussed in a closed session. This comes up sometimes when we have put out a Request for Proposals, and firms bid on the contract. The technical details that they submit to show what they’re capable of and propose to do for us can include trade secrets that are likewise protected by law.  The most common reason we go into a closed session is for council training. From an educational perspective, it doesn’t make sense to have the public observe us learning how to do our jobs; that’s not relevant to you, and it might make us too self-conscious to ask questions that might help us learn better. This also extends to things like tours of the community, which are required to be a formal meeting because a quorum of council members are present but nonetheless impractical to be a public meeting because we’re on a bus going from place to place all day, getting to see local businesses, tour municipal facilities, etc.  Aside from those closed-session meetings, everything that we do is done in a public place, with the documents we see posted on the municipal website, and very often a recording of our conversation is available. The only thing that you don’t always get to see is our rationale or thought process: while we tend to make an effort to explain our position on things during a council discussion, a seven-way discussion doesn’t always leave room for everyone to expound at length, nor is that always necessary to make a good decision as a council. For that reason I have kept a blog over the past term, so that people can see more of my thought process than might be evident in the meeting. I have tried to blog weekly, and I make a special effort to blog about matters that are particularly interesting, important, or complex.

8. Financial Stewardship

How would you balance the need to invest in our community while respecting taxpayers’ ability to afford rising municipal costs?

What principles would guide your decisions when approving major expenditures?

When Council must choose between competing priorities, how would you determine what is essential, what can wait, and what taxpayers simply should not be asked to fund?

I love this question, because it isn’t always clear to me why some things get funded and others do not. Very often, the cost of doing nothing is higher than the cost of doing something, it just isn’t always accounted for. For this reason, I tend to ask: what is the cost of NOT doing something? As one example, the “social cost of homelessness” is far greater than just the cost of operating shelters; it also includes increased use of all sorts of services, such as policing, paramedics, hospitals, food banks, by-law enforcement, repairs, courts, prisons, rehab, and more. It would be much, much cheaper for society to simply house everyone than it does to refuse to do so; but those costs are spread out over every level of government, and the nonprofit sector, so nobody is counting the full cost. And yet, “there is only one taxpayer,” despite all of those services coming out of different budgets. It would be more cost effective AND more humane to increase social assistance rates and provide more subsidized housing, or even to have a basic income for everyone, than it is to maintain the fragmented system we have now that keeps so many people impoverished. The cost of under-investing is higher, certainly over the long term but often even in the short term.  That said, we do have real limits. Provincial law requires us to live within them. We are limited to borrowing only what we have the capacity to repay, and we can’t run a deficit, so if we need to increase our spending then we need to increase our tax rates. Our current borrowing limit is around $40M, and this term we committed about half of that amount, most of which is going toward the wastewater treatment plant. If we were to increase our tax rates we would also increase our borrowing limit…and reduce how much we need to borrow in the first place. Nobody wants to pay more taxes than we need to, me included! But Brighton currently has the lowest tax rate among the urban municipalities in Northumberland; if we taxed at the same rate as Port Hope (which has the highest), we would have an additional $5M to work with each year. Relatively speaking, our tax rates are quite low, and we’re missing out on opportunities to do more as a community. I’m also very conscious of the fact that many of the things that we’ve spent the most on this term have been things that were passed on to us from previous councils, who decided not to spend that money. Now, doing those things costs much more. The wastewater treatment plant is a great example: ten years ago it would have cost about 1/3 of what the project is costing us today, and we would have avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for our ammonia pollution. The issue of private roads in the municipality is another one: the Willow Point Property Owners’ Association asked us for money to fix their road, citing important safety considerations; but they also presented us with a news clipping from almost 30 years ago talking about how the council of the day refused to assume the road, citing cost considerations. We can only “kick the can down the road” for so long before we have to play catch-up with a lot of deferred maintenance and missed opportunities. We’ve been catching up all term, and it’s been far more expensive than it would have been in the past.  I know that some residents struggle to pay their taxes. I want people to know that tax relief is available for those who are struggling! It’s possible to defer taxes on the basis of poverty, through a County-run program. Please reach out if you need help, either to the County offices directly or to a member of council who can point you in the right direction.  As for how I decide what council should decide not to fund: if something has made its way to the council chamber for funding, it probably isn’t being funded anywhere else. We deal with this all the time: matters that should be funded by the province or feds, like healthcare, get downloaded onto us in the form of paying for hospital equipment and physician recruitment. Housing has been left to the private sector for decades, and now is completely unaffordable for almost everyone. And yet these things are needed, and nobody else will do it for us. If we can get better value by going in on it together, we should. If not, then not. If we need it, and can’t get it otherwise, then we should pay for it. If we only want it, and most people aren’t willing to pay for it, then I can’t justify spending much on it. The question of new rec facilities will take serious consideration in this regard: they’re important, and if we don’t have it then nobody can use it; but the cost is so high that it’s difficult to justify the spending unless there’s a serious community commitment.

9. Managing Disagreement and Speaking Up

How would you work respectfully with Council colleagues who hold different opinions while still representing the people who elected you?

If Council were considering or had approved a decision that you genuinely believed was not in the best interests of the community, what responsibility would you have to speak up and explain your concerns publicly?

Would you be willing to clearly explain to residents why you disagreed with a Council decision, while still respecting the democratic decision of Council and any legitimate requirements for confidentiality?

This is a challenging question, because there are both rules and norms about disagreement. The new council will be trained by the Integrity Commissioner on how to navigate this, but the short of it is that when council makes a decision, it does so as a whole. That means that even if I vote against something, when I am representing the council I must support that decision moving forward. (In private I might complain, but even there I should be very careful not to disparage the council or its members!) If we are addressing an issue that is contentious, we’re supposed to have a rigorous debate right there in the meeting. That’s our opportunity to voice our position and attempt to persuade our colleagues. We are required to maintain an open mind right up until the moment of the vote, so that our debates are meaningful and persuasion is possible. Once the vote is called, the arguments are over, and we all must move on with the decision that the council made as a whole.  One tool that only gets used on contentious issues is a recorded vote, so that the minutes of the meeting show who voted which way on an issue. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it gives us all an opportunity to have our position be very clear (otherwise the minutes only show whether a motion passed or failed, not who voted which way). On the other hand, it makes it easier for some people to keep that debate going, and harder to move on with the decision that council made.  In my blog I often talk about issues that are contentious. Usually I blog about an issue before it gets to council, to try to explain the issue in plain language ahead of the meeting with the hope that it will inspire people to watch the meeting and participate. Occasionally I feel the need to write about it afterward, and I try to take care to explain the reasoning that went into the decision, rather than railing against something I disagreed with. In general this hasn’t been too difficult, as this council has been excellent about disagreeing well. On disagreeing well: all it takes is a commitment to the idea that we are all on Team Brighton, and that we are all human beings doing our best. I have had people tell me that I’m “besties” with Mayor Ostrander, and we always vote alike, which makes me chuckle: of all of the members of council, Brian and I are probably the most ideologically opposed to one another. It’s far easier to get along with people who agree with you, and yet Brian and I have gotten along very well because of the way we see and treat one another. The same is true of the rest of the current council: Councillor Rowley and I occasionally stick out our tongues at one another as we vote in different ways, but we’re still neighbours and we can maintain our good humour (even if it probably violates decorum!). Councillor Faretis and I used to spar over wildly different opinions about EVs, but we became friends anyway, bonding over our common cause of supporting our community (and donuts at Tim’s). I firmly believe that this commitment to each others’ humanity, and to putting the community and the council as a whole ahead of ourselves, is what has made this term so successful in Brighton.

10. Online Voting

What do you know about online voting, and what research or investigation have you personally done regarding its use in municipal elections in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada?

What advantages and concerns have you identified, particularly regarding security, voter privacy, accessibility, public confidence and the ability to independently verify election results?

What is your opinion of online-only voting? Do you believe it provides appropriate and equal access for all eligible voters, or should Brighton provide additional methods of voting?

If elected, would you support a review of Brighton’s voting system before the next municipal election? Why or why not?

This is an issue that my mind is changing on. This is Brighton’s second election using online voting, and I have supported it both times, even arguing that we should make this change permanent. Now I’m slightly less sure, and would support reviewing it for the next election. I want to be very clear about why. First, I have not only researched this myself, but more importantly, municipal staff researched it thoroughly and presented council with a full report about it prior to both elections in which it has been used, and in a review of the 2022 election after the fact. They reviewed its accessibility/ease of use, as well as its safety. It is far more accessible to the vast majority of residents, who can now vote from their home computer or even mobile device; for those who do not have either, they can still vote at the municipal office or the Codrington Community Centre, with support from municipal staff to help get them set up. After that it’s just a matter of checking a box, the same as it would be in a voting booth. In the last election our Deputy Clerk even did house calls, bringing a tablet computer to people in their own homes to ensure they had a chance to vote. So as far as accessibility goes, online voting is more accessible to everyone, even if it doesn’t feel that way to everyone. I’ve been told that by approving online voting we have disenfranchised all seniors, which I think is not only false but also insulting to those seniors, and to our staff. Just because it is different doesn’t mean that it’s difficult, especially when our staff work so hard to make sure everyone can vote. As for safety, people often point to electronic voting in the US as an example of times digital votes were manipulated. First of all, the US used electronic voting machines, not online voting. But second, the accusation that their electronic voting was manipulated was defeated in court: the Canadian company that provided those voting machines won a major lawsuit against Fox News for falsely claiming that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election because of these machines. Let’s not let American fake news inform our decisions in Brighton. There ARE security concerns with internet voting, and the companies that provide internet voting platforms take those concerns very seriously. The one that we chose has the best track record for updating their protocols to ensure the security of their platform. And while we’re on the subject of not comparing ourselves to the US, we should also not compare ourselves to federal or provincial or state elections anywhere; the incentives for meddling in our small-town election are VERY low. Who would benefit from voter fraud in little Brighton? The risk would be far greater than the reward. As such, I’m much less concerned about electronic voter fraud here than I would be in a federal or provincial election. All of that said, I’m starting to change my perspective, particularly with the rise of AI. Email scams are already far less obvious and more numerous, and even the number of scam phone calls I receive has increased drastically in the past few months. The enshittification (yes, that’s a technical term) of the internet is accelerating rapidly, and my trust in any and all digital services is decreasing. Pardon my language, but that’s a damn shame. Internet voting, banking, and many other services have so much potential to simplify our lives; but the business models of the internet of today make most or all online services suspect, and ripe for exploitation. Yesterday while canvassing I met a couple who have gone very far out of their way to never, ever do anything online; and yet, they’ve both had their data hacked through bank and government data breaches. I have a hard time blaming them for refusing to participate. The internet as a whole is becoming less and less reliable, so we should not rely on it if we don’t have to. I have full confidence in this election, but will support hybrid voting in the future on principle.

11. Community Engagement

What do you believe prevents more Brighton residents from participating in municipal government and municipal decision-making?

What practical steps would you take to reduce those barriers and encourage greater public participation in Council meetings, advisory committees, public consultations and other opportunities for residents to become involved?

I’m definitely going to be reading other candidates’ response to this, because it’s a pressing question that I ask almost continually! Currently we: -hold public meetings after work hours, to make them more accessible to working-class people; -live stream our meetings so they can be viewed during or after the meeting online; -advertise public consultations via our newsletters, website, social media channels, and even directly to properties in the vicinity of a planning matter; -hold more public consultation meetings than is required by law; -I blog regularly to try to keep people informed Despite all of that, turnout for any of our events is very low. I sometimes joke that, by getting along as well as we do and ensuring that we have low-drama meetings, we’ve succeeded at my goal to “make politics boring again.” When I first moved here, you had to show up early to get a seat at council, and bring popcorn; we probably have as many people who still watch, but they watch online instead, with only one or two residents in the gallery for regular meetings. For public consultations we usually get somewhere between one and two dozen participants, which means one or two participants per thousand residents.  I have argued in the past that we should continue to strive to have as many meetings as possible outside of regular working hours; but that means that staff miss dinners with their families more often, and most of the time nobody comes anyway. Other communities even have their regular council meetings at 10am on a Tuesday, which seems much less accessible and transparent, but when I see our low turnout I have a hard time blaming them for scheduling a meeting when it works best for those who actually attend. All in all, I’m not sure why people don’t come. I have to guess that they’re either satisfied with the work that we’re doing, which would be the best case; or else they feel so disempowered that they don’t even bother to engage, which would be the worst case. Probably there’s a mixture of both, and many other reasons besides. I don’t expect anyone to follow everything that council does (except for the two who are always at our meetings, I worry if they don’t show up!), but I feel disheartened when I see people who are frustrated that they don’t know what’s going on in our community. We work hard to ensure that we are as accessible as possible to our residents, so I want to pull my hair out when people claim they never know what’s up. The last thing that I’ll say about this refers back to my previous answer about the enshittification of the internet. If someone is relying on Facebook for local news, it’s almost a guarantee that they won’t know what’s going on locally. Facebook is designed to share angry opinions, not facts. In fact, they have actively blocked all legitimate news in Canada for years, and they’ve adjusted their algorithms to hide informational posts while emphasizing paid promotions. We can’t guarantee that our municipal Facebook posts will find anyone, so getting news out that way is very difficult and expensive. At this point we’re resorting to old-fashioned physical notice boards!

12. Supporting and Engaging Young People

What steps do you believe Brighton has taken to encourage greater participation by children, youth and young adults in our community? What do you believe has worked well, and where do you see opportunities for improvement?

What additional steps would you support to give younger residents meaningful opportunities to participate in community activities, municipal initiatives and discussions about Brighton’s future?

What role should the municipality play in making Brighton a community where younger generations not only want to stay and build their futures, but also feel that they have a voice in shaping the community in which they live?

As a father of two middle-grade children, I think it’s critical to engage young people in the governance of our community. Younger people necessarily have a more future-oriented perspective: with their whole lives ahead of them, they need to consider the long-term implications of our choices much more than middle-aged people like me and those older than me. While I think that we should all vote and make decisions with the whole of society in mind, despite the political rhetoric that urges us all to prioritize our own self-interest, I know that our perspectives are strongly shaped by who we are, including our age. I believe that the community benefits from having a council that is as representative as possible of our residents, which is why I hated being the youngest member of council when I was 40 years old! That was one of the reasons that, when we had the chance to appoint a member of council to fill the seat vacated by my friend and colleague Byron Faretis, I argued for appointing Hannah MacAusland. I not only knew that Hannah had the chops for the role and could do a great job, but I also knew that she came with perspectives that the rest of us didn’t have: the youngest by a wide margin, a single parent, a renter, a waged worker. All of those perspectives were otherwise unrepresented, despite being the perspective of a large portion of our community. And when I asked my kids who I should appoint, they immediately gravitated to Hannah. They could see themselves in her in ways they struggled to see in older candidates. My hope is that her time on council has inspired other younger people to run for office, but there are some practical considerations that largely prevent people from choosing that. First and foremost, most people can’t afford to dedicate much time to council. Our pay is not enough to replace a full-time job, or even many part-time jobs. We voted to increase our pay this term, and at the time I argued that it was a step toward making council more accessible to younger candidates. Without paying a living wage, we can only ever expect wealthy or retired people to run, and most municipal councils in Canada are made up largely of people from those categories. I am neither, and the same is true of most of my colleagues on our council, but we are an outlier. As such I will continue to support increasing the wages of municipal politicians. I would love to see numerous changes to our voting system, including lowering the voting age and potentially even giving proxy votes to parents for their children (a new idea I’ve only just heard about, and am still thinking through); but changes to the voting system are a provincial matter, and we sadly have no say in that at the local level. This term the Sustainability Committee, on which I serve as Chair, passed a resolution saving a seat for a representative from the ENSS Environmental Club, but we never managed to get one to a meeting. Coordinating meeting times with a high school schedule was challenging, and the club itself depended on having faculty support, and there were changes in ENSS staff that disrupted that. I would like to make another attempt to get youth on some of our committees in the coming term, whatever that looks like.

13. Growth, Development and Affordable Housing

Brighton has taken steps to encourage both residential development and commercial growth. What is your assessment of the steps being taken? What is working well, and what would you change or improve?

Housing affordability has become a serious concern. When you use the term “affordable housing,” what does affordable mean to you in actual dollar terms? Affordable to whom?

Government-subsidized housing is often identified as one way of addressing the needs of people who cannot afford market housing. However, subsidized housing alone does not necessarily address the needs of residents who do not qualify for it, cannot obtain it when they need it, or simply cannot afford today’s market rents or home prices.

What do you believe Brighton can realistically do to increase the supply of housing that ordinary working people, young adults, families and seniors of modest incomes can actually afford?

What role, if any, should municipal land, taxpayer funding, government subsidies, partnerships with developers or other approaches play? How should Council measure whether an initiative has actually produced affordable housing rather than simply additional housing?

Finally, how would you balance residential growth with commercial development, infrastructure needs and preserving the qualities that make Brighton an attractive community in which to live?

Phenomenal question! First, affordability is best measured as the bottom 2/3 of a community (on the economic scale) spending no more than 30% of their gross income on housing. That’s how social services determines affordability. The Ford government invented their own metric, using “affordable” to mean any housing that costs less than 80% of the average market price, and “attainable” to refer to any housing below average. Not only do those numbers constantly change with market conditions, but they have nothing to do with whether or not anyone can afford something because they don’t take income or wealth into account. So I stick with the official definition, which for Brighton means homes priced around the $300k mark. The average house price in Northumberland, according to last month’s stats, is still over $700k. We are very far from affordable. I’m going to risk bragging outrageously here and suggest that nobody in Northumberland has put more into the question of affordable housing than I have. The Northumberland Inter-Municipal Task Force on Housing and Homelessness was founded first through a motion I brought to Brighton council, replicated by friends in Port Hope and Cobourg before spreading throughout the county, and I chaired it for the first year. We have, as a group, championed affordable housing and explored all of the reasons that housing is expensive in the first place. We issued a report about that in 2025, and as a result all Northumberland municipalities are now working together to streamline the Planning process and support alternative housing models. I also sit on Tiny Homes Northumberland, which promotes backyard Additional Dwelling Units as another tool to address affordability. Through my day job as a real estate agent I keep up to date with market trends and local supply of housing, and I also occasionally work as a planning consultant and understand that aspect of housing development very thoroughly. Here are (VERY briefly!) some reasons housing is so expensive: -Land is expensive because development is largely limited to lots within the urban boundary, so developers either need to build more units to maintain their margins or else just charge more -Permitting fees and development charges go up if they have more units, but not as much if they have fewer, bigger units, so they opt for fewer bigger units with bigger price tags -Construction loans are easier to get for single-family detached homes than for multi-residential apartment units, which especially incentivizes just building more single-detached homes -Building low-density housing requires more roads and pipes to service the same number of people, which increases construction cost and long-term maintenance costs to the municipality, driving up taxes -Material costs have fluctuated a lot in recent years, between COVID disrupting supply chains and the US starting a trade war -Labour costs have risen significantly, in large part due to the uncertainty of the housing market and the feedback loop created by high housing costs: construction workers need to make enough money to afford their own housing! The Task Force continues to work on finding more solutions from the municipal level, and building collaboration across the housing sector. But the most promising project in Northumberland is right here in Brighton, our Land Banking initiative. Council has purchased land to ensure the development of diverse housing types and ownership models that the market simply doesn’t provide for us. We’re currently planning for a mixed-use (residential and commercial), mixed-income (with various housing types appropriate for different demographics and income levels, plus a mix of subsidized housing, workforce housing, and market housing), complete community of transit-level density. This will be truly transformative for our housing situation in Brighton, and I’m looking forward to implementing it!

14. Council, Staff and Representing Residents

What do you believe is the proper relationship between elected Council members and municipal staff?

When a resident brings you a concern about a municipal service, policy or decision, what do you believe your responsibility is as their elected representative?

How would you advocate for residents while respecting the professional and administrative responsibilities of municipal staff?

I mentioned this briefly above, but it bears repeating: supporting staff, and staying out of operational decisions, is a critical matter of leadership that directly impacts what is possible to achieve as a community. Leaders empower their staff, rather than undermine, micro-manage, or second-guess them. Occasionally we catch an error from staff, it’s true; and if we’ve built a good relationship with them, then catching that error is a matter of teamwork rather than a gotcha moment or threat. But we should never, ever be telling them how to do their jobs. Council decides what, and why; staff determine how, and while sometimes they seek input into that part, we should never dictate to them. We hire them for their technical expertise, and it isn’t our role to play armchair engineer. I myself work on planning matters, and I know enough about the field to have informed ideas of how things should be done; but if I ever find myself disagreeing with our Planners, my own expertise (even if it were equivalent to theirs, which it is not!) is not the relevant expertise in the room.  As leaders we need to empower staff not just with respect for their expertise, but with ensuring that what we ask of them is realistic given the constraints they face. We can’t ask for champagne on a beer budget. We need to ensure that we have enough staff to do the job, with enough resources to do the job, or we shouldn’t ask them to do the job.  When residents bring me a complaint about staff performance, my job is to take it to the CAO, period. Staff performance management is operational, not strategic. I do not opine about performance issues, and in both public and private our staff have my unconditional support. If there is a performance or behaviour issue, the CAO will take care of it; she’s quite good at that. The only performance I have any say in is that of the CAO herself, and I won’t talk about that in public. It can be challenging to advocate for residents on matters related to staff. Very often, the concern from residents is about an issue that has not yet been resolved. Everything municipal usually takes far more time than any of us expect, often for very good reasons. By-law matters, for example, are subject to timelines set in provincial legislation, so our officers know going into a matter that it might actually take months for a matter to resolve. Explaining to residents that someone has a right to appeal within a certain time frame, which means that our staff are waiting before they can move forward, is rarely satisfying. Other times it’s simply a matter of backlog: issues often arise in clusters, and we can’t justify increasing staffing levels for occasional backlogs when most of the time extra staff would indeed be extra. I think it’s a general human tendency to see something that’s taking too long, or not resolving in the way we think it should, as a matter of incompetency or even malice, and we look for someone to blame. I don’t know all of our staff, but the ones I do know are lovely people with relevant expertise doing their best at their job, the same as you or I would do. So even if I were in a position to undermine staff and the chain of command by going after employees, I couldn’t do so in good conscience: they’re just not blameworthy. So very often the best I can do for residents is commiserate about their situation, explain the constraints that we work within, and ensure that their concerns are heard by the CAO and/or relevant Director or Manager. And my commiseration is sincere: neighbourliness often involves sitting together in the discomfort  and frustration of living with other people, and of change.

15. Looking Ahead – Measuring Your Success

Imagine it is four years from now and a resident asks you: “What difference did you make?”

What would you hope your answer would be?

How would you hope residents would describe your contribution to Council and to the Brighton community?

YES to thinking about the future! What a great question! I truly don’t care if anyone ever knows the difference I made, but I do know that I am already making a difference, and I do have some idea of how to measure that: -Do more people see serving on council as something that they CAN do, and an act of community service that they have some obligation to do? I sometimes think that we put politicians on a pedestal, and I frequently have people tell me “good for you, but I could never do that!” You certainly could, I promise you. I’ve met enough politicians to know that they’re not all smarter or better than anyone else in any way, and I hope that I present what we do on council with enough clarity and accessibility that anyone could see themselves doing it. And I hope that I contribute enough to a culture of community service to create an expectation that we all have something to contribute, whether that’s through volunteering with local nonprofits or serving on council or committees. If I see voluntarism and local political and social engagement thrive in our community, I will be happy with my contribution and unconcerned about our future. -Do we make decisions with more of a future orientation that we did before? Through my own approach to budget meetings, but even moreso through bringing in a Sustainability Plan (which I introduced and advocated hard for), I hope to see us plan more for the future of the community, rather than just for the present or with an eye to the past. I believe in learning from the past, but we can’t plan for the past, and we can’t spend for the past. The decisions we make today will have some effect on the present, but most of their effects will be felt in the future. My campaign slogan this year is “The future is something we build today.” I want to live in the Brighton of 2050 that I imagine today (or better); and I want that Brighton in 2050 to be planning for Brighton in 2100, and beyond. And if someone gives me credit for that, I will happily accept a small amount of it! -In hard terms, I want to see some particular metrics: I want greenhouse gas emissions to go down, energy use to go down, housing density and transit use to go up, housing costs to come down, available services to increase, average distance to services to decrease. I want to see real things built: the land banking initiative could be the proof of concept of a number of different things that are rarely seen in our communities these days, whether that’s housing co-ops, or integrated seniors’ living with daycares, or truly walkable neighbourhoods, or modular housing, or tiny homes, or mixed-income apartments. Seeing these things exist, and work, and thrive in our small town environment could lead to them spreading throughout the region, transforming the development pattern away from just more subdivisions and toward more intentional and integrated communities. If that were to happen I would consider all of my work worthwhile and then some.

16. Rebuilding Trust

What responsibility do you believe elected officials have to rebuild and maintain public trust in government?

What specific actions would you personally take to strengthen that trust between Brighton Council and the people it represents?

Upholding and rebuilding public trust is a core responsibility of a councillor, and one of the main reasons the role even exists. Councillors provide oversight over municipal operations, strategic direction to staff to determine what the municipality does, and transparency and accountability for all of it. As such, our own transparency and accountability is paramount: people need to know that we’re not going to bullshit them, but also that we’re not pursuing our own interests or vendettas through the office. Key ways that we can uphold public trust: -Don’t disparage one another. As discussed above, council makes decisions as a whole, and even if I “lose” a vote, I still support the outcome and the process. If there’s a problem with the process, I transparently bring that up in the appropriate ways. I support my colleagues in using the correct processes for our public discussions and debates and decisions, and then I support the outcomes even if I wish they’d gone another way. -Don’t disparage staff. One of the most important factors in public trust in institutions is competency, and while it’s easy to get political support by firing people up against supposed incompetency (or worse, conspiracies of malice or corruption), the best thing we can do is support our staff and explain the constraints that they work within rather than blaming them for those constraints. I have rarely seen a situation in which I could have done better than our staff members, and I tend to be very good at most things that I do; so if the public looks at our staff as incompetent or unreliable, that reflects on me, not on our staff, because it’s my job to ensure that people know the what and the why, including explaining how things are supposed to work so that the public has realistic expectations of municipal services. By celebrating the good work that our staff do every single day, we support public trust in the municipality and in institutions more broadly, and we sorely need more of that. -Contribute constructively and collaboratively. Politics at other levels tend to be contrarian, populist, or both. Rather than just negate what other people propose, I think we should contribute constructively to solving issues. But as much as I appreciate the image of a politician who shows up in their pickup truck to help with a construction project or emergency effort, sometimes it’s a short jump between that and “only I can fix it,” and the end result of populism is authoritarianism. Instead, I think that we should celebrate when our opponents get something right, and contribute solutions in ways that invite others in. Raffi was right: more we work together, the happier we’ll be. We have more trust in institutions that empower us to be part of the solution. I think so much of the distrust in our society is a symptom of how powerless we feel in a world full of changes that are being done TO us, or at best FOR us, rather than with us or by us. I believe that our best resources exist right here within our community, and that together we can provide almost everything we need. This approach combats a “scarcity mindset”, which is associated with distrust and frustration, and empowers community participation and action.

17. Accountability

If you supported a decision that later proved to have unintended consequences or did not achieve what Council had hoped, how would you approach acknowledging the problem?

What responsibility would you have to explain what went wrong, help correct it and rebuild public confidence?

This makes me think of the time that I spoke unwisely in a council meeting, and ruffled feathers at Queen’s Park. I made a public statement at a subsequent council meeting to apologize, and thankfully there were no negative results. I can think of one occasion in which I believe we made a mistake as a council, but it was at the urging of an organized group of residents. The underlying issue is sure to come up in the next council. At that time I will not throw the past council under the bus: again, council makes decisions as a whole, no matter how I voted on them. But it will be relevant to note that we need to learn from the past decision and its circumstances, and so it will require some diplomatic language and grace to move forward successfully. I think it’s important to note that accountability isn’t about finding someone to blame for something. I believe that accountability is about truth and justice, and the true end of justice is reconciliation and restoration. This was well-presented to us when we were trained by the Integrity Commissioner, who described their own role as being focused on public trust rather than punishment. So long as we keep the public trust paramount, we’ll be more effective by applying grace and forgiveness than blame and punishment.

18. Sharing Your Responses

Would you be comfortable having your responses to this questionnaire shared publicly so that Brighton residents can read your answers and learn more about your views and priorities?

Please answer Yes or No. If you would like to place any conditions on how your responses may be shared, please explain them here.

Yes please! I would also add that I would love to answer any questions anyone has about any of my answers to this questionnaire; it may well be that I have explained my position poorly, or raised other questions, or simply misspoke. Or we might just have a difference of opinion, and I’d love to hear that too! Please reach out at jeff@jeffwheeldon.ca or 613-902-0680, or check out my blog at jeffwheeldon.ca

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I believe respectful dialogue between candidates and voters is essential to good local government. I appreciate candidates who are willing to explain not only what they believe, but also how they intend to represent the diverse interests of everyone in our community.

P.S. If there is a question you wish voters would ask every candidate for Council, but which I have not included here, I would be very interested in hearing it.

[Your questions are phenomenal, Phyllis, and show a depth of thought and care that is truly admirable and well appreciated! I truly can’t think of anything to add.]

Sincerely,

Phyllis Lanham