ACTIONS NEED TO SUPPORT OUTCOMES
What this is all about.
Every issue on this page connects to the same root problem. Sarnia has spent decades protecting what already exists instead of building what comes next, and the bill for that caution has landed on your tax rate, your roads, and your options for where to live. This city can have almost everything it says it wants: a vibrant downtown, real economic opportunity, better roads, working pipes. The catch is that none of it comes from doing more of the same. It comes from being genuinely open to change.
These five priorities are not five separate wish lists. They are five entry points into the same argument. Each one pulls together the specific votes, motions, and advocacy I will bring to both the city and county tables. Not vague commitments to “look into it.” Actual actions, tied to the outcomes they are meant to produce, so you can hold me to them.
Pick the door that matters most to you. They all lead to the same place.
This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay. That’s why we elect nine adults to talk things out and figure out what’s best for Sarnia. The job is to listen and build consensus, and that is what I am strongest at.
Homes People Can Afford
Housing that works means a regular wage covers a decent place to live, families can stay in the neighbourhoods they grew up in, and the people already sleeping in our shelters and rooming houses have somewhere permanent to go.
Sarnia has not grown meaningfully in three decades. We built almost exclusively detached homes and skipped the townhouses, duplexes, and small apartments that working families actually need to get started. That choice did not just create a housing shortage. It created a tax base too thin to maintain the roads and pipes underneath it, which is why your taxes keep climbing while the infrastructure keeps falling behind. Housing is not one issue among many. It is the root of the tax burden, the infrastructure backlog, and the economic stagnation all at once. Generations of talent lost, and too much of people’s earnings going to housing instead of everything else that makes a life here worth building.
Nobody is being asked to leave their home. What is being asked is that we stop making it impossible to build anything else. This election is a choice: do we keep protecting a pattern that is bankrupting us, or do we democratize the ability to build the housing that pays for the city and increases affordability in tangible ways.
A May 2026 housing needs assessment presented to Lambton County council put real numbers on this. The county and Sarnia will need 3,700 more housing units by 2035 just to meet local needs. Inside that figure are roughly 700 suppressed households: adult children living with parents who would rather have their own place, people sharing housing with roommates out of necessity rather than choice. These are people already living here, working here, and spending here. They do not need to be attracted from somewhere else. If we simply create reasonable supply, we can grow the tax base before we ever attract a single new person to the region.
1. Vote for gentle infill as of right on most city lots. Density on already serviced land is the norm in growing, solvent cities and the baseline most federal infrastructure programs start from. This democratizes development so a first-time buyer can build an income stream into their purchase and a senior can convert part of their home to fund retirement. Make the legal path the easy path, so the norm stops being illegal rooming houses that are neither taxed appropriately nor inspected.
2. Vote to extend as-of-right permissions to accessory dwelling units. Families should be able to welcome an aging parent home with a garden suite without paying for engineering studies to survive a variance hearing.
3. Vote consistently at both the city and county tables to approve affordable, seniors and supportive housing that is conducive to the city’s own plans and zoning. The county provides the opportunities. Sarnia keeps politicizing where they go. That needs to stop. Neighbourhood concerns deserve to be heard and worked into the final design and implementation, but they cannot be the reason a project dies. Community health and safety for the whole city cannot move forward until we address the core problem.
4. Advocate in the budget process for servicing capacity in the neighbourhoods absorbing density. Sewer upgrades, transit hours, and community services need to arrive with the housing, not years after it.
5. Advocate for enforcement of property and landlord standards. More supply only works if the existing stock is safe and maintained. Prompt response to violations protects tenants and protects property values on the street.
6. Push to align the zoning bylaw with the criteria federal and provincial programs actually use. Sarnia did not apply for the Housing Accelerator Fund. That was roughly $20 million other cities are spending right now. The next window should find us eligible.
A Resilient Economy: Jobs, Agriculture, Downtown, and the Waterfront
Oil and gas built this region and will continue to be part of it long after I am dead. A resilient economy though, is one that does not depend on a single industry, a single employer, or a single season. It utilizes all of its assets and retains diverse talents instead of letting them move away.
Sarnia-Lambton has assets other cities spend fortunes trying to replicate: a world class trades workforce, deep water port, rail, highway, an international border crossing minutes from downtown, existing hydrogen production, and 3.5 kilometres of publicly owned waterfront. St. Thomas had none of that when it landed one of the largest manufacturing investments in Canadian history. The difference was not assets. It was coordination and leadership.
Our farmers export raw grain while processors elsewhere capture the value. Our downtown empties out after five because too few people live there. Our waterfront has a master plan adopted in 2022 and almost nothing built. This election is a choice: do we keep waiting to be discovered, or do we make Sarnia the easiest place in Ontario to say yes to.
1. File a motion to accelerate the Economic Development Community Improvement Plan. Waiting two years to build reserves before the tools become usable costs us two years of opportunity. If we believe the tool works, fund it like a business plan worth funding.
2. File a motion to extend the Economic Development Community Improvement Plan’s development charge discounts to major tourism investment, funded through the city’s share of the Municipal Accommodation Tax. The city’s portion of the MAT exists to drive tourism-related economic development, and council already has the discretion to direct it toward targeted investment in tourist areas. Paired with the waterfront, using it this way makes the Market District a genuinely compelling proposition for private capital rather than a line item we cannot afford.
3. Vote for zoning that allows real density in and around the downtown core and Mitton Village. A business anchor or a waterfront attraction cannot survive on tourists alone. It needs residents living within walking distance who spend money there every week of the year, not just in July and August. The same zoning barriers holding back housing citywide are holding back the customer base these neighbourhoods need to thrive.
4. Empower the community groups already committed to creating change. Groups like the Mitton Village CDAC and the Downtown Collective are doing the essential, block-by-block work of revitalization on the ground. City hall should be a partner to that work, not an obstacle to it, removing barriers and giving these groups a real seat at the table when decisions affecting their neighbourhood are made.
5. File a motion to explore a floating swimming dock at the re-shored Ferry Dock Hill, with a deck layout built for food trucks and small food tenants. Low cost, immediate activation, and a reason to come downtown that does not wait on an anchor tenant.
6. File a motion to develop a self service tool on the city’s website, so anyone with an idea can find out quickly where and whether it is viable, and what bylaws and zoning allow or get in their way, and how to get started. The usage data can show us exactly where investors are hitting friction, allowing us to take meaningful action.
7. File a motion for an ad hoc committee on barriers to entrepreneurship, doing business, and achieving our growth vision, benchmarked against comparable cities that are actually growing, made up of councillors, economic development staff, citizens, and business owners.
8. Advocate for a nuclear SMR in Lambton County by working with all three levels of government, Indigenous leadership, and industry, while staying open to the full range of manufacturing and energy investment where our assets give us a real advantage. We have all the assets to be next in line for this, as long as we decide it is for us. There is nothing else that could bring this consistent a level of work to the region for six decades.
9. Advocate for value-added agriculture. Connect farmers and potential processors to current federal opportunities, including food security funding, and build the kind of agritourism offerings that have made Prince Edward County and Niagara year-round destinations. The land and experienced growers are already here. We have the ability to diversify and add resiliency to one of our greatest assets.
10. Defend the working port without a Minister’s Zoning Order. Covenants tied to title and proper holding provisions can protect the grain terminal. MZOs have been used against agricultural land as often as for it, and a tool with no appeal process is bad policy for everyone, and takes planning and consensus building out of local hands. We only have 3.5km of public waterfront left, it should be in our hands to use it responsibly.
Roads, Pipes, and Your Tax Bill
You are paying a lot and it still does not cover the pipe under your street. That is not just because we have spent reactively. It is because there are not enough of us on that pipe.
Sarnia manages $4.8 billion in public assets, most built between the 1950s and 1970s and failing at the same time. We are reinvesting at 1.4% annually against the 1.8% needed to keep pace, which leaves an average shortfall around $27 million a year. The potholes and the flooded basements are not bad luck. They are what deferral looks like after three decades.
Inaction is not the low-tax option. Emergency repairs cost three to five times more than proactive maintenance, and every year of delay narrows the choices left to us. This election is a choice: a manageable plan now, or an unmanageable bill handed to the next council and the next generation.
1. Make the process public. Personally host an info night between the first draft of the budget and the vote on motions that affect it, to help people understand the complexities and tradeoffs of the choices in front of council. Advocate for official interactive tools on the city website that help citizens understand where their money comes from and where it goes.
2. Champion a balanced capital plan. Ensure we are funding proactive fixes over emergency repairs, paired with structured debt where it makes sense. Keep tax increases reasonable, while not allowing negligent cuts to maintenance and planning that grow the infrastructure deficit and let beloved assets go derelict.
3. Vote to prioritize flood mitigation in the unfunded capital queue. Money spent reactively fixing flood damage is money not spent in the local economy. The federal government’s own figure for climate adaptation investment is a return of up to $13 to $15 in benefits for every dollar spent. Even financed through structured debt, that return outperforms the interest cost many times over, which makes proactive mitigation cheaper in the long run than paying for the damage after the fact.
4. Vote to align the zoning bylaw with the city’s own Climate Change Action Plan. Outdated parking minimums increase runoff into a sewer system already at its limit and kill development potential at the same time. Fixing them costs nothing and pays twice.
5. Advocate for lower parking minimums in commercial settings, measured against observed excess. Vast swaths of underused parking at big box stores are paved surface doing nothing but adding to our stormwater problem. Right-sizing those requirements reduces runoff and frees up land for better use.
6. Aggressively pursue grant funding by committing Sarnia to the density targets those programs require. The path to the money runs directly through the housing decisions in Priority One.
7. Make the math public. Publish tax yield per acre across all zoning and housing types so residents can see exactly what three decades of low-density-only development has cost them.
The Cost of Waiting: Safety and Community Health
Safety is not only about who responds. It is about how many calls never need to happen.
Baby formula is under lock and key in our grocery stores. One in four Lambton households cannot reliably afford food. Our opioid death rate is nearly double the provincial average and the drug supply is getting more dangerous faster than our response is keeping up. These are not separate from crime statistics. They are upstream of them.
I support our officers and I support responsible investment in the facilities they need. This election is a choice: do we keep paying five dollars downstream, or do we spend the dollar upstream that prevents the call.
1. Support a hub and spoke precinct model with a properly scoped and funded downtown police headquarters and smaller community precincts in high-need areas. A reasonable facility investment is supportable, and increased community presence builds real trust.
2. File a motion to have key areas of the city evaluated with police for adequate lighting, to promote safety and reduce environments conducive to criminal activity.
3. Advocate for expanding IMPACT, MHEART, and CHIC as the primary response for non-violent mental health and addiction calls, freeing officers for the work only they can do. The downtown constable pilot showed what this looks like in practice: an officer who knows the people, and people who know who to call. Any new supportive housing should arrive with these resources attached. One of the biggest benefits of housing someone is knowing where they are, so the people who need support to recover can actually be reached by it.
4. Pursue a seat on the police services board to bring fiscal oversight and public accountability to the governance of the service, and support provincial reform of police board reporting standards. Council and the board should be working toward the same long-term aspirational goals and grounding budgets in the same ideals.
5. Advocate for public crime mapping on the police service’s website, so residents can see where incidents are actually occurring rather than relying on rumour, and community advocacy and resource allocation can be grounded in real data. Other jurisdictions have offered this to residents for the better part of a decade. It is a reasonable next step for Sarnia.
6. File a motion at county council to add food bank funding to the annual budget. If a single citizen donation made a meaningful difference to food bank operations, continuity is worth securing collectively. People should not need to steal food, and food banks should not need to close.
7. Advocate to make HART Hub funding permanent beyond its pilot, and champion a wraparound mobile outreach model with food, peer support, drug checking, and medical care anchored in community spaces where people already gather.
8. Use the seat at the county table to make the upstream case to the province with evidence connecting community health spending directly to emergency department and hospital costs. Not another letter. Data, visibility, and public pressure.
Open Books and Straight Answers
Sarnia does not have a shortage of plans. It has a shortage of leaders willing to report honestly on them and explain why they are not getting funded.
The Waterfront Master Plan. Disappearing beloved assets. The Climate Change Action Plan. The affordable housing targets. The infrastructure backlog. These are commitments made to this community and quietly left unfunded while the bills compounded. The information is technically public, buried across hundreds of disconnected PDFs that no working person will ever have time to assemble into a picture. That is not transparency. That is the appearance of it.
Residents who cannot connect today’s tax bill to the decisions that caused it cannot hold anyone accountable. That gap is where trust dies. This election is a choice: do we keep governing by press release, or do we show people the math and let them judge for themselves.
1. File a motion for interactive public financial dashboards that link city finances and decisions across years, so residents can see trends and ask informed questions rather than reading a decade of budget PDFs.
2. File a motion to load council minutes, bylaws, and supporting materials into a focused AI agent the public can query. The documents already exist in disparate silos. Easily accessible and officially referenced materials allow more citizens to get engaged.
3. Report publicly every month on active files, with plain-language explanations of every consequential or contentious council vote and why I voted the way I did. If a beloved public asset is at risk, residents shouldn’t have to learn about it in the paper.
4. Refuse to commission new master plan processes that are not tied to concrete capital planning and implementation timelines, and report semi-annually on progress against the plans we already have.
5. Measure every budget decision against one test: does this produce a permanent positive outcome or reactive containment, and can I explain the difference to a resident in plain language.
BREAKING THE PATTERN
Sarnia gets what it's willing to fight for.
If this is the change you want to see in Sarnia, the campaign runs on people who show up. Every donation, every sign, every volunteer hour moves this from a platform to a plan.