REACH's all-candidates debate covered three themes: food insecurity, housing, and mental health. Here are my complete answers to all six questions.
Oftentimes, the decisions made by the provincial and federal governments impact local communities. When those policies put added pressure on municipal services and community organizations, like food banks, how do you see our municipality working with other levels of government to find solutions?
I'm glad the question was framed as how we work with other levels of government, because that's the only card we have to play here. Working with the County and the province to properly fund food banks in our area — with an eye on the direct correlation to the growth being pushed onto us — is the best way to get real funding to our food bank. Using local property tax dollars to fund the food bank just compounds the problem: more taxes, higher rents, more of your income going to rent instead of food. Long term, the best solution is building out a local economy that provides jobs paying above minimum wage, jobs that let people manage their own household budgets. That's why I'm focused on building out the business park and driving a local economy that goes beyond tourism.
The problem with advocating at higher levels of government is the mix we have on County Council: 57% of our tax dollars get transferred to the County, which then puts 40.7% of the County's growth onto Centre Wellington — and my question becomes, how much of the social and economic funding gets distributed back to this township? Advocating at that table is difficult, because even if you count Ward 4, which is split between Wellington North and Centre Wellington, and give it a full vote, we're still only 25% of that council, yet they control 57% of our tax dollars. With the growth they're putting on us, not just our food bank but all our social and economic programs need more of that money flowing back.
Food banks are hearing from more and more people who are struggling to afford their basic necessities, like housing, food, and transportation. What role do you think our municipality can play in helping to make life more affordable for people living on a low income?
Sounds like an easy question, but it's a complicated issue with many layers. First is helping residents close the gap between their income and what they're paying for rent. It's unsustainable for people in this community to be spending 50% of their income just on rent, making monthly decisions between utilities and food. That's where the pressure on the food bank comes from. As the municipal government, helping people find jobs here by building a bigger local economy that runs on more than just tourism lessens that gap between what they're paid and what they must pay out. That's why building out the business park and getting good-paying jobs here is a priority for me.
On transportation, I'd like to see the Township, with private-sector and upper-tier government help, expand the shuttle service that's already in place, so people can get around our community and reach the jobs available to them — and start looking at public transit options, because when a community is below the 50,000-population threshold, the federal and provincial governments will cover two-thirds of the cost.
As the Township works on its new Housing Action Plan, will you champion a dedicated Housing Community Improvement Plan that offers direct grants, permit fee waivers, and property tax incentives to developers and homeowners who build below-market rental units?
Centre Wellington already has a Community Improvement Plan with a Rental Housing Grant program, a Rental Housing Development Charge Deferral program, and a Tax Increment Equivalent Grant program, plus top-up funding available from the County. I'm not proposing we invent something from scratch — I'm committed to strengthening and expanding what already exists, specifically toward below-market rentals.
Here's the part that matters for your tax bill: a tax increment grant doesn't touch your existing property taxes. It rebates a share of the new tax revenue a project itself generates, for a limited time — money that wouldn't exist without the project. A DC deferral delays when a fee is paid; it doesn't forgive it. That's how you incentivize affordable housing without asking existing taxpayers to underwrite it.
On top of those tools, my platform already commits to a Housing Reserve Fund built from the Municipal Accommodation Tax — money paid by visitors staying in short-term accommodations, not by residents — so we have a real, dedicated funding source for affordable housing that never touches the property tax base at all. It's nearly impossible for private-sector builders to create affordable housing here with the cost of land and construction as they are now, which is why we need to bring non-profits to the table — they bring the federal and provincial grant money that comes with their applications. Together, that lets us build affordable housing in designated areas of our community without putting the already-overburdened property tax dollar at further risk.
In tourism-heavy areas like Elora and Fergus, long-term rentals are frequently converted into short-term vacation rentals. Would you support strict municipal licensing rules that limit short-term rentals strictly to principal residences to protect the long-term rental market?
I ran on this in the last election — a short-term rental bylaw is something that's long overdue here. But let me clarify some facts before people start yelling and screaming. In the last four years, short-term rental units in our community jumped from 144 to 235. The STR bylaw was drafted, consulted on, and deferred four separate times. As chair of the Economic Development and Healthy Growth Committee, my committee looked at this, argued about it, and ultimately approved it, even with members who had Airbnbs themselves weighing in.
The bylaw as written isn't perfect, and I'm not saying you can't have an Airbnb, and I'm not going after the person renting out a room in their own home so they don't have to move. What I'm trying to stop — what the bylaw is trying to stop — is the Wild West of people buying investment properties and pushing out local residents who no longer have a place to live. Is the bylaw perfect? No, it's far from it. But there are people in this community living next door to Airbnbs that are out of control. There are good Airbnbs and bad ones, just like there are good tenants and bad tenants, good landlords and bad landlords. We're in a housing crisis, and in a moment of crisis you can't wait for perfect — it doesn't come along.
"Seems to me if both coaches are yelling at you, you've got a pretty good start."
— Neil's father, a former national soccer referee, after listening to him describe the STR debateWe need to pass this bylaw, start getting it under control, and deal with the complaints as they come in and adjust the bylaw accordingly — that's why you're allowed to amend bylaws. But doing nothing is no longer acceptable.
Given that over 70% of Centre Wellington's housing consists of single-detached homes, what policies would you adopt to permit gentle density — such as fourplexes, courtyard flats, and secondary suites — as-of-right, across all residential zones in Fergus and Elora, to remove planning approval delays?
This is one of the pillars of my platform, not a new position. I'm committing to permit fourplexes as-of-right across residential zones in Fergus and Elora, aligned with Bill 23 and the 2024 Provincial Planning Statement — no rezoning required, no fight. I'd extend that same as-of-right principle to secondary suites and courtyard-style flats in the same zoning bylaw amendment. Longer term, this is exactly why I'm pushing for the Community Planning Permit System — it lets us lock in design standards for gentle density upfront, so it fits the character of Centre Wellington by design, not by accident, without every project becoming its own political fight.
Because the County of Wellington acts as the Service Manager for housing and social services, how will you actively collaborate with County Council and local health providers to ensure Centre Wellington gets its fair share of supportive housing developments, rather than seeing those facilities built almost exclusively in Guelph?
The County spends where it gets the most bang for its buck, particularly on affordable housing, so this is a fair challenge. Centre Wellington keeps losing out by default: we transfer 57% of our tax dollars to the County, we're allocated 40.7% of the County's growth, and we hold 4 of 16 votes on their council. The fight to get these projects to Centre Wellington is skewed from the start.
By bringing surplus municipal land to the table and transferring it to non-profit housing providers, we can put pressure on upper-tier governments to fund non-profit housing here as a real option for Centre Wellington, not just Guelph. With a seat at that table as mayor, I'll make sure our voice gets heard, and I'll publish the votes I make on housing issues so you can see exactly what we're pushing for at the County table. If we're taking this much growth, we need their help for the people being pushed out by it. We cannot and will not do it alone, but we also can't afford to raise our property taxes to accommodate it, because that only worsens the problem up and down the line.
While provincial law now permits up to three residential units per lot as-of-right, homeowners in Fergus and Elora still face major hurdles — utility hookup costs, strict parking rules, and complex building permits. If elected, what specific steps will you take to encourage ADU construction, and would you support expanding local CIP grants, offering pre-approved garden suite design plans, or fast-tracking permit timelines to help homeowners build affordable long-term rentals?
All three of these are already in my platform: pre-approved design plans and fast-tracked permits for Additional Residential Units, targeting 100 ARUs a year. On utility hookups, instead of passing the cost to the homeowner or the tax base, I want to aggressively pursue Bill 17's Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund, which exists specifically to offset that kind of infrastructure cost. On parking, that's a zoning bylaw issue that needs to be revisited — a lot of our parking minimums were written for a different housing type than garden suites. And yes, I'd extend CIP grant eligibility to ADU construction, funded the same way as our rental housing incentives, through tax increment and deferral tools that don't touch your existing tax bill.
Low-income gap: a single minimum-wage earner at $17.95/hour generates roughly $37,300 gross annually, meaning an affordable unit for them sits at $933/month. However, many provincial policies use the 60th percentile (median/moderate-income earners), setting the provincial threshold for "affordable" around $1,400–$1,600/month. What policies can the Township adopt and promote to help low-income earners left behind by the current provincial definition of affordable?
The question is right that the province sets the threshold, and rent-geared-to-income housing is administered by the County. What the Township controls, or can help with, are the incentive tools we already have — the CIP grants, the DC deferrals — to prioritize projects with units genuinely targeted below that 60th-percentile threshold, not just labelled "affordable." We have to work with non-profits to bring that housing here, and with every level of government, to get those projects underway and lower rents in this community. My caution is always the same: we can't raise local property taxes to do this.
If we build out that business park and bring better-paying jobs here, we get a long-term solution; in the meantime, we work with grants and programs from upper levels of government to bring this problem under control. Because we're in a crisis situation now, I'd look at releasing surplus Township land to help non-profits start those builds and use every program at our disposal, from the CIP program to deferral of development charges. And to be precise: development charges for affordable and non-profit housing are, under Bill 23, waived outright, not just deferred. That's the extent of what local government can do without making the property tax problem worse.
We know municipalities don't control the healthcare system, but they can convene partners, invest in community initiatives, advocate to other levels of government, and help remove local barriers to care. If elected mayor, what specific, measurable action will you commit to taking within your first year to improve access to mental health and addiction services in Centre Wellington? And what outcome should residents expect to see by the end of your term that would let us say, "Yes, this municipality actually made a difference"?
As many people here already know, I'm a long-standing mental health advocate. As mayor of Centre Wellington, I will convene a standing Mental Health and Addictions Table with CMHA, Groves Memorial Hospital, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, Compass Community Services, and any other providers I can bring to the table. Their job will be to tell me what local barriers the Township itself is creating — zoning blocking supportive housing or treatment space, no free accessible space for peer support, transportation gaps, and anything that falls under the Township's control, we will address. We'll put those issues on a scorecard so you can look at it quarterly and judge for yourself whether we're doing what we said we'd do.
There is a significant gap between publicly funded mental health and addiction services and private care. Many Centre Wellington residents don't qualify for publicly funded services but also don't have the financial means or workplace benefits to pay privately. If elected mayor, what would you specifically do within your municipal authority to address this gap and improve access to mental health and addiction care for Centre Wellington residents?
The mental health situation in this community continues to be a crisis. When I was on council, we met with the province to present local initiatives, only to be left in the dark with no results. Less than three cents of every healthcare dollar in this province goes to community-based mental health care — I know that figure from my time serving on the CMHA board of directors, and from that seat I've also learned that some of the biggest drivers of mental health crisis are housing and food insecurity.
The best thing we can do is deliver on the initiatives we've already talked about tonight: getting people housing and helping them afford the food they need. I will not, even as a mental health advocate, accept municipal responsibility for a mental health budget the province continues to underfund. We will not put in a 3% levy for mental health. We will not carve that out of the taxpayers' budget, because that increases the cost of housing and pushes more people into housing insecurity. That doesn't mean we don't have a strong advocacy role — it means we can do things like helping businesses connect with service providers through an EAP program, and bringing every provider into the same room to identify barriers and work toward removing them.
The caution is simple: we'll work on what we can — housing insecurity and food insecurity — but we can't pay for treatment for residents who can't afford the service themselves. That responsibility belongs to the County and the province. I'm not abdicating our responsibility here — any barrier we can identify that falls under municipal authority, we will eliminate. But I want to be clear: with an underfunded healthcare system, particularly in mental health, if we take on any part of that responsibility, I guarantee you the province will let us keep it. If we do that, your tax bill climbs drastically. We will push the province, we will push the County, and we will get people the help they need — but we cannot put property tax dollars into it, and that's hard for me to say. But that's the cold, hard reality.