Saunderson’s Your Guy

With the provincial election only a few days away, I thought I should remind you why you might want to vote for Collingwood’s much-disliked, hypocritical, bullying, and inept mayor, Brian Saunderson. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve likely read the dozens and dozens of posts I’ve written over the years about his failure to act in even a vague pretense of a leadership role, his hypocrisy, his mismanagement, his personal vendetta, and the constant conflicts of interest he ignores. But just as a reminder, I’ve added links to a few of those posts…

• If ideology matters to you more than ethics or accountability, then Brian’s your guy!
• If you don’t think our hospital is worth keeping, and you applaud his lengthy and strenuous efforts to block the hospital’s redevelopment with taxpayers’ money, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s a good idea for the town to hire a high-priced lawyer and a high-priced PR consultant, both sole-sourced, to lecture the public on why the hospital’s redevelopment shouldn’t go ahead, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think bullies are good people and that bullying a female council out of office so he could replace her with a campaign donor, lobbyist, and personal friend who didn’t even run for election is laudable behaviour, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think that a mayor should complain about a female councillor to the town’s Integrity Commissioner without ever talking to her about the complaint or why he did so, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s not hypocritical to criticize others for conflicts of interest yet voting to spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars on your former employers without once going out to tender for the work is how politicians should behave, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay not to disclose that your former employers are getting a lot of taxpayers’ money, and not excusing yourself from the discussion or the vote to hire and pay them, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay to break your main campaign promise in order to hire your former employers at great expense to taxpayers, then Brian is your guy.
• If you think that leadership in a mayor is not a necessary skill, and that allowing a supporter on council to belittle and bully a female councillor is how mayors should act, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think that members of the public who speak to council and ask embarrassing questions should be treated with insults and verbal attacks instead of answers by one of your council supporters, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s better to spend more than $10 million of tax dollars on a personal vendetta than to use it to fix roads, sidewalks, and improve the town’s infrastructure, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you don’t think a candidate should actually have to work to win his nomination and can rely on Daddy’s influence to get himself nominated over a more qualified candidate, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think a candidate should just ignore debates with other parties’ candidates when they’re either afraid or too lazy to debate, and not show up, without any explanation or excuse, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think the mayor spending years ignoring the town’s needs, its infrastructure, its streets, parks, sidewalks, downtown is better than trying to make sure everything is well-maintained, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think failing to renew the pipeline contract with New Tecumseth before it expired, despite numerous staff presentations warning about it is good business, and not even dealing with it for another year, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think panicking over your mistakes and then passing an interim control bylaw (ICBL) that will kill all local construction, hurt the town’s revenue, and put hundreds of people out of work for years and halt growth because you failed to manage the town’s water infrastructure and responsibilities while you focused on your own vendetta is good business, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s good for local businesses and workers for the town to provide no help or financial aid during the two years of lockdowns and pandemic, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay for a mayor to spend his time campaigning for the job of MPP while still taking the town’s paycheque for the job he was elected to do, but is trying to get out of, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay for the mayor to campaign for a new job while still in office but only take a leave of absence at the last possible moment, a few weeks before the election, when he should have done the honorable and the right thing at the time he announced his candidacy, and quit as other candidates have done, then is okay, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay for the town to censor public comments and social media posts so that nothing opposes the party line, or criticizes anyone on council, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay for a candidate to show a spineless lack of confidence he can win a provincial election by only taking a leave of absence from the job he’s trying so hard to get out from under, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think selling our electricity utility to an out-of-province, for-profit corporation without a single public meeting or public consultation but plenty of closed-door meetings, is the way to manage public assets, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think that selling our public airport to a for-profit corporation without a single public meeting or public consultation, but plenty of closed-door meetings, is the way to manage public assets, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think that holding more than 40 closed-door meetings with council to discuss the hospital’s redevelopment and selling public assets is open and transparent governance, then Brian is your guy.
• If you think making our public transit system more expensive and less accessible for the people who use it, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay to pay taxes for our local fire department, but if they respond to a fire at your home, you later get a huge bill for their service, sent by the insurance company one of our councillors and mayor’s campaign donor works for, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay to cut a secret deal with a for-profit corporation to pay their legal bills and not tell the public is okay, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay to hold secret negotiations with a for-profit corporation to give them our water utility without any public consultation or input into the deal, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay for a public official not to disclose or explain why he’s being sued by a local business (for $150,000), then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay for a mayor to enact petty vengeance against a resident and rescind an award given to him for service to the community more than 20 years ago, because they stood in the way of your demand for the town to grant the YMCA a $35 million handout in 2012, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think a mayor should try to have the names of former members of council and staff removed from public facilities because they wouldn’t grant his demand to give the YMCA a $35-million handout in 2012, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay to approve six raises for council this term, including an expense account boost of almost 40%, but not make one property tax reduction, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay to offer to give away large pieces of our waterfront park to outside organizations with no connection to Collingwood, and no public consultation, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think a mayor and council should have an adversarial relationship with our downtown business association and merchants, then Brian’s your guy.
• If you think it’s okay for a mayor to shrug off wasting more than $10 million of taxpayers’ money on his personal vendetta instead of spending the money on community improvements and maintenance, then Brian’s your guy.

So many reasons to vote for Brian! And not just to get rid of him as mayor and end his disastrously mismanaged regime in Collingwood! Just pretend that ethics, honesty, leadership, openness, accountability, confidence, competence, forward-thinking, and concern for the community don’t matter in a politician and you’ll be happy to elect someone lacking in all of those attributes.