Collingwood’s 2026 Municipal Election, Part 4

By now (October 12), some of you will have already voted, since it’s an online voting system here that opened October 8. I don’t want to tell anyone how to vote, but I have some strong opinions about some of the candidates I wanted to share. And keep in mind, these are just my own opinions: you are certainly welcome to vote as you see fit. My views are shaped by my own experience serving as a councillor and for a dozen years in media covering our and local municipal councils. Your mileage may vary.

Before I do that, I encourage readers here to spend a few minutes using the search feature of this blog to look at what I have written in the past about incumbents and former incumbents. Please read those posts. There were, to my mind, some pretty unsavoury, undemocratic actions during the time the much-disliked Brian Saunderson was on council, and some of his most ardent sycophants and enablers are on the hustings now.

For newcomers: incumbents who served with and supported the despicable Saunderson are current mayor Yvonne Hamlin (running for re-election), and current councillors Kathy Jeffrey (running for mayor) and Deb Doherty (running for deputy-mayor). Former Saundersonite incumbents include Cam Ecclestone and Marianne McLeod (both running for council). You can click on their names in this paragraph to call up the search engine’s results for my previous posts that include them.*

For the TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read) version: I have little to no respect or admiration for any of these candidates. The two council terms previous to the current one were, arguably, the worst and most corrupt in the town’s history, and those who participated on council have nothing to boast about. In fact, they should be ashamed. Most have been at the council table too damned long already.

Among other things, those Saundersonite councils cost us our public electricity utility (sold to a for-profit Alberta corporation without public input), our public airport (sold to a for-profit private corporation without public input), and delayed our hospital’s redevelopment by at least five years. They saw a female councillor, Tina Comi, bullied off council by the incumbents. And when Comi resigned, the incumbents replaced her with one of their campaign donors (another much-disliked former mayor) instead of someone who had run in the previous election.

Very undemocratic of them, you say? That was the very nature of Saunderson’s councils. You might notice none of this shows up in their campaign literature or their speeches. And don’t get me started on the egregious sense of entitlement some of them showed.

So here’s my short-form view of the mayoral candidates (click on their names to see their own websites):

• Hamlin: If you want to pay much higher taxes for all her promises ($100 million for a recplex, $76 million arts centre, etc.), she’s your choice. Assuming you like colourless personalities with an empty record, and who arrogantly wouldn’t answer Ron Shulman’s questions to all candidates.**
• Jeffrey: If entitlement was a person…THREE trips to Ghana? Voting herself an unlimited expense account? Five terms on council is long enough.
• Hillis: All the buzzwords, lots of enthusiasm, but thin on specifics, and no municipal experience. He should have run for councillor to learn the ropes first.
• Sandberg: At last, someone who understands and has experience working with infrastructure, project management, water treatment, asset management, and the economy. Former councillor with six years on the board of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) and two on the board of Ontario Small Urban Municipalities (OSUM).

And for deputy mayor:

• Doherty: Wanted to create a Magical Healing Forest. Didn’t understand what a dividend was for. Sigh… four terms is enough.
• Potts: Was in the town’s works department for 12 years before politics: at least he has firsthand experience.

I won’t go into the 19 council candidates — many are unknown to me — but hope you will read my earlier comments about former incumbents before you decide. Remember:

Collingwood deserves better.

Notes:

* All of whom supported Saunderson’s Vindictive Judicial Inquiry. The SVJI was, it seems, merely Saunderson’s personal vendetta against people he imagined had done him wrong some years earlier. The SVJI cost taxpayers $10 million or more for a report on process from so-called experts (none of whom had actually served on a municipal council). Its conclusion can be boiled down to two words: “Do better.” After that, these same sycophants also voted to approve Saunderson’s motion to rescind the Order of Colingwood award from Ed Houghton, the former CEO of Collus (it had been granted for work he did on behalf of the town more than a two decades earlier). I’m sure it pleased Saunderson to be seen as egregiously petty.

** A consultant’s report to council, presented in September, said property owners would be on the hook to pay at least 4.8% more taxes every year for eight more years to accommodate these promises and wishlist items. Details are on my blog post.

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