What is Caleb’s Platform?

We can begin by partnering with organizations like housing co-ops and land trusts while creating a municipal corporation and inclusionary zoning works to build permanently affordable housing.

We can also explore options for specific by-laws to ensure seniors and those on a fixed income are not forced out of affordable units.

The city is on the front line of the housing crisis dealing with tents, mental health, and addiction. We’re also seeing seniors who feel trapped by unaffordable housing and young people wholly demoralized by the housing and rental market.

Cities need councillors ready to tell upper levels of government that we require real tools beyond bandaid solutions. Property taxes alone are not capable of fixing the problem. Further, keeping life affordable means having a fair and responsible fiscal policy. We do this by ensuring affordable property taxes by growing the tax base within our urban boundary, we can’t afford urban sprawl in our farmland.

Invest in active, affordable and public transport — including being a champion for our community to the region to ensure Ward 4 and St. Catharines are prioritized.

Every pedestrian death and injury is, on some level, a design failure. Our roads should be designed to accommodate all, prioritizing safety over speed.

Three simple traffic calming measures we should impediment in the downtown core and around schools include raised crosswalks, pedestrian lights that change automatically and traffic lights that give pedestrians a head start. It needs to be easier and safer to walk, bike, and ride transit to our downtown core during all times of the year. Sidewalk snow clearing in the core should be something next council considers implementing.

Along with Suzanne Veenstra, a friend and neighbour, we started Fitzgerald Neighbours and would go on to start Queenston Neighbours. We started both groups with the belief that the process of city-building needs to be guided by the people who actually live in the neighbourhoods. 

We can encourage “yes-in-by-backyard” neighbourhoods across the ward.

Push for smart development that creates more housing while preserving the greenbelt. Smart development focuses on improving what we already have, rather than expanding into our farmland, creating more unsustainable debt. It’s the kind of development that doesn’t have hidden costs like environmental contamination and unsustainable infrastructure.

Improving the quality of life by growing the tree canopy, improving naturalized areas, and integrating trails and parks.

Get started on building a robust alternative transportation network so that we don’t need sprawling parking lots and we can ditch the gas pump for small daily trips.

Our infrastructure needs to be repaired or replaced. Unfortunately, we haven’t finished paying the original bill. 15-minute neighbourhoods, gentle density, and alternative transportation all contribute to expanding the tax base and helping us pay for what we have. Such development is capable of not just building essential infrastructure and services but maintaining them over the long term, so future generations are not stuck with the bill.

Places of connection are vital for innovation, and Ward 4 is full of community hubs. We also have several under-utilized properties and assets that could be put to better use and re-imagined as community connectors.

Let's make it easy for community-serving businesses to take root. The City can also do more to make room for community kitchens, tool libraries, parenting programs, urban agriculture, and incubator spaces. This will help keep money flowing through our communities while moving us closer to 15-minute neighbourhoods.

Advocate for 15-minute neighbourhoods. These are well-connected places with a diverse mix of land uses; this includes a range of housing types, shops, services, local access to food, schools and employment.

They are complete communities that support active transportation and transit, reduce car dependency, and enable people to live car-light or car-free. Many neighbourhoods in Ward 4 have most of these ingredients and just need a little nudge.

Improve democratic representation by introducing term limits and ranked voting for city councillors.

Getting tough on land speculators who take advantage of our neighbourhoods by buying and sitting on derelict and toxic properties like the GM site. I have a strong working relationship with the appropriate provincial counterparts and am committed to working with them to ensure that we have a comprehensive process for brown site remediation.

With the GM site specifically, I have two immediate priorities: first, we need to ensure no toxins are leaking into the stream or blowing in the air, and second, we need to know what it will take to clean up the site.