How I think you should choose your councillor

This question is worth a real answer — not a list of qualities like you'd find in a job posting, but something more honest about what the role actually is and how you'd know someone will be good at it.

Here's the short version: you want someone who you trust to make good decisions on your behalf. That means you want someone with good judgment who shares your priorities, and who will listen when you reach out. And you want someone who can get things done.

Most people don't want to follow municipal politics closely — and you shouldn't have to. You're busy. You want to elect someone and feel confident the city is being managed well without having to read the council package every two weeks. That's not apathy — that's what a well-functioning council should give you.

On priorities, pay less attention to what candidates say during a campaign and more attention to what they've been doing with their time for the past 10 or 20 years. That's a better guide to what someone actually cares about and where they'll focus their energy on council.

For 25 years in Ward 10, I've served in affordable housing, cycling and trails, and environmental and community organizations, because those matter to me. My record is on this website if you're curious. When I ran 5 years ago, I used to point people to my personal social media — here, enjoy 20 years of posts. The bike photos and cute rodents aren't the most relevant, but the principle is serious: you can learn more about a person from how they've lived than from what they say during a campaign.

That's the priorities side. The other half is whether a person can actually be effective once they're on Council — and that requires understanding what the job is.

It's tempting to think a councillor walks in, identifies the problems, and gets things fixed through sheer competence — as if the issues we're all seeing just need someone with the right skills and enough determination. That's not how municipal government works.

City council is not a CEO position. No single councillor walks in and points the ship in a different direction because they think they have a better way. Council acts as a group, through policy decisions, budgets, and committee work. Staff are professionals who report to the CAO. Councillors don't direct staff, and they shouldn't. Progress happens incrementally, within a framework of bylaws, long-term planning, and public engagement. A city runs more like a nonprofit than a private company.

That's not a limitation — it's how democratic governance is supposed to work. But it means the skills that matter are things like building consensus, navigating competing interests, knowing which questions to ask, and understanding when to push and when to accept an answer. It means being comfortable with complexity and ambiguity — and understanding the landscape well enough to be effective, not just decisive.

You also want someone with a bit of humility. Many of the issues people raise at the door are already the subject of a large, complicated ongoing file. It's not that no one at the city cares about the big issues that we're all seeing, like that dilapidated building that's been vacant for years, or the growing number of homeless individuals in our city. It's that some problems are genuinely difficult to solve. If a candidate gives you the impression that things would be very different if only they were at the table, they probably don't understand the job.

With that said, it matters a great deal who is at the table. A councillor who understands the policy landscape, who has relationships across sectors, and who knows how to build consensus will accomplish more than someone who doesn't — even within the same system. The difference isn't dramatic promises versus no promises. It's whether the person you elect has the experience and skills to move things forward when the work is slow, complicated, and unglamorous.

You can't possibly ask every question that will come up during a 4-year term. So you need to trust the person's judgment and priorities — and trust that they'll listen when you do reach out, whether it's about a municipal plan or that one pothole that trucks keep hitting, causing the house to shake.

So when you're deciding who to vote for, my suggestion is this: don't just listen to the campaign. Look at what each candidate has actually done. Ask around. Check whether the person you see on the doorstep is the same person their colleagues and neighbours know.