Candidates share visions

Seven mayoral candidates – ranging from a loud and abrasive John Turmel to a soft–spoken and dignified Dianne Austin –shared their vision of the job Tuesday evening during a visit to Laurier Brantford's new research and academic centre.

Winston Ferguson and current councillor John Sless were no–shows at the event, sponsored by Laurier, its journalism department and the student newspaper Sputnik. Sless acknowledged afterward that he had written down the wrong time and showed up just as the after–debate reception started.

Another sitting councillor, James Calnan, used the debate to talk of the city's need to develop an arts and culture community as a way of attracting people downtown, while colleague Mark Littell spoke confi dently about the steps the city has already taken to improve its infrastructure and the promise of more to come.

Former mayor Chris Friel suggested building up the business base with new industry such as videogame design shops, while former councillor Mike Quatrococchi, a builder, hammered home the need to work out relations with Six Nations protesters.

Political newcomer Richard Casey urged a stronger, better–funded police presence downtown. Austin also stressed the need for improved downtown security, particularly as a hot–button issue with students. And Turmel, who had warmed up the pre–debate crowd with an impromptu 15–minute monologue about the beauty of his bartering scheme dubbed "bus bucks," kept repeating the message that his system, based on the trading of city bus rides as a currency, could be used in exchange for everything from park cleanup to tax arrears.

Turmel, an unabashed advocate of medical and other marijuana use, said that during the last election campaign, Friel had liked an idea similar to bus bucks, which Turmel then called "Brantford bucks." But now, Turmel added, Friel "seems to have forgotten" that apparent support. Marijuana use is "good for Alzheimer's," Turmel "You'd better start puffing some pot, boy, until you like bus bucks again," he taunted.

One questioner from the floor asked Friel why he had a change of heart on the matter, allowing Friel to clarify his position.

"What I said was that it's an interesting idea, and that's where it ended," said Friel, adding that he had heard versions of the concept worked in Africa and Germany.

"I wasn't going to make it part of my platform."

He instead advanced some other ideas that he found much more attractive to help the city bounce back from its period of "de–industrialization."

Calling on city hall to be more "open and transparent," Friel suggested reinventing the economy of Brantford from its old failed platform as a "metal bashing town" into higher–tech industry. Specifically, he mentioned videogame design as a possibility.

Littell took a different approach to answering a question about how to restore Brantford's civic pride.

"My glass is actually half–full, not half–empty," he said. "There's a lot of civic pride in Brantford."

Saying the students have made the city into a vibrant place, he added: "Laurier believes in Brantford, so I believe in Brantford."

Littell suggested that the last council actually got a lot done, though some labelled it a dysfunctional group, in part, because of the fractiousness over the teardown of the buildings on the south side of Colborne Street, which he oversaw as chairman of the south–side committee.

Much depends on what happens with the rebuilding of the area, which, he said, starts with the 100,000–square–foot Y–Laurier athletic centre and also includes potential for condominiums, green space and a bridge to the waterfront.

Austin said the key is tackling the problem while refusing to engage in negative thought. Saying that a mayor needs to be a city's biggest cheerleader, she suggested that the city needs to focus its energies on business creation, leading to more jobs and thus less negative activity, such as crime and drug use.

That's fine in theory, Quattrococchi said, but native protests at building sites are the "elephant in the room" that keep it from happening. Until the problem is solved, he added, there will be "no new investments or substantial jobs coming to this community."

Quatrococchi's vision for downtown included enticing various levels of government to surrender the registry office, the courthouse and the federal post–office building to Laurier for future development. Expansion in post–secondary means more students and more business, he said, leading to a more integrated city.

"You have to give people in the north end... a reason to come down here," he said.

Calnan suggested something similar in his vision of an enhanced arts and culture community, with an increased population density supporting it.

"When it's liveable, people will live there," he said. "And when they live here, business will follow."

To grow, he said later in answering the question on civic pride, the city had to first realize it has a problem, then work on what course of action is needed to make a difference. And he appealed to his audience, largely Laurier students and faculty: "The first step is engaging the potential we have here in this room."

Casey reminded the audience someone once said Brantford had the worst downtown in Canada, and "people in Brantford started to believe that."

The key is for council to "reprioritize," he said, by paying for core services first, including a bigger police budget.

"People won't feel civic pride if they don't feel safe walking on city streets," he said.

If he becomes mayor, Casey added, criminals will realize "it's time to start thinking about a different line of work."

Friel revealed that it was he who called Brantford's downtown the country's worst, during his first term as mayor in 1994. And that was said to get the discussion on urban renewal underway.

"What we had is a downtown at its bottom, a downtown at its worst," he said. "It is the champions within our community that can make a difference."

And a community champion, he added, is what he has proven he can be.