A long-time resident challenges municipal candidates to prioritize essential infrastructure and social services over vanity projects. The author argues that true leadership in Sarnia-Lambton requires a focus on the least fortunate rather than business success.
I grew up in the north end, half a block from Canatara, and I have spent the last 23 years raising my children half a block south of Exmouth Street.
I pay the same amount in property taxes as a friend who lives four streets from Lakeshore, yet my home insurance premiums are higher because I’m in a high-risk area for sewer backup. Shop around, you say. I have. When one insurance company knows you live in a poorly maintained area, they all know.
In the 23 years I have been in my neighbourhood I have not seen regular sewer maintenance and certainly not an upgrade. I saw a snow plow twice this year and I've been waiting 15 years for a tree that burned down on the boulevard to be replaced. Yet I see the never-ending battle against mother nature along the lakeshore consistently funded.
So, when I get ready to vote municipally, I look for candidates who focus on the community as a whole. Being financially successful and good at running a business is not necessarily the best qualification for municipal politics. Municipal politics requires a person to be in touch with the entire community, to be able to identify with the least fortunate of the population, and to be capable of determining what services are lacking and where they are most needed. Being successful in business could simply mean maximizing profits at the expense of front-line staff and customers.
There are plenty of "successful" operations that treat their staff poorly and have zero accountability for their management. There are organizations where the focus is on logging pensionable time rather than spending taxpayer funds efficiently. There are managers who actively violate employment legislation, either purposely or out of ignorance. Many "successful" businesses talk the talk – telling their staff they can only make changes if their employees tell the truth. That is a cop-out, plain and simple. Employees who tell the truth are often targeted and seen as threats, particularly if they are knowledgeable about the rules, legislation, and policies that govern their employment. Many employers rely on the following: most employees do not know their rights; of those who do, few will speak up for fear of being fired; and of those who do speak up and suffer consequences, almost none will pursue the remedies available to them – fewer still can afford the necessary legal representation.
Building boat docks or restaurants in the park are wants, not needs. These are great ideas if you don't depend on services in your community that need improvement. Such projects should come after what is broken is fixed – like my sewers. If you're running for office and this is the type of vision you have, you are severely out of touch with what a large portion of this community needs.
Attracting people and business from outside the community won't happen because we build attractions; it will happen when we are an inviting, tolerant community that shows potential for growth and progress. We currently have some of the poorest air quality in the country, some of the highest rates of certain cancers, and a drug problem worse than in other communities of comparable size. Where are the research facilities that such statistics should warrant? Or at least, where is the candidate who will start the conversations necessary to make that happen with provincial and federal governments?
The Fifth Estate recently aired an investigative report on the staggering number of teenage boys who have gone missing from Toronto and ended up in "remote communities," recruited into the drug trade. Guess where one of those communities was? Sarnia.
Projects on the waterfront won't make us less remote or more accessible.
The south end of the city needs improved transit, upgraded sewers, roads repaired, and accountability from school boards regarding the disruptive way students in French immersion programs are shifted between districts.
The drug problem in this community will not improve until we have honest conversations about how this city has been drowning in cocaine for decades, and how the feast-or-famine nature of industry here creates the perfect environment for a functioning cocaine addict to become a nonfunctional oxycodone, methamphetamine, or fentanyl addict. Drugs stolen from pharmacies in London fetch higher prices when brought to Sarnia. We need to ask why there is such a high demand for drugs in this community.
Fun Fact: only one politician has come door-to-door in my neighbourhood in the 23 years I have lived here. It takes character to go where others will not deign to go.
Leadership is not about exercising authority, making threats, flaunting wealth, or blocking those with whom you disagree. It is not about making statements on social media, knowing the "right" people, or posting video infomercials. Leadership is about inspiring cooperation, brokering compromise, facilitating opportunities, proposing creative and collaborative solutions with provincial and federal counterparts – and being able to handle criticism from your opposition. If you only want to hear from people who agree with you, you are not cut out for politics. If you cannot have a civil conversation about a contentious issue with an adversary, you are no leader.
I want to hear a candidate talk about where they volunteer their time rather than how they became financially successful. I want to hear what initiatives they have for the least fortunate in the community, not what they want to build to attract outsiders. I also want a candidate who can be trusted to adhere to rules of confidentiality – regardless of who they know or are related to – and who communicates with tact and discretion.
Lastly, I take no issue with some of my tax dollars being spent to support local artists, particularly those from Indigenous communities. However, I do take issue with the sign in Centennial Park that tells us all where we already know we live, while presenting to those viewing the city from the water that this is “AINRAS.”
– M. Cathcart
