in case you're curious, i did not vote in the municipal elections. i moved into a new ward oct 2nd,  and i didn't have the time to do the research, this time.

i can state with some certainty that i would not have voted for either of the major mayoral candidates. for a city that is supposed to be union-focused, it is strange that there wasn't an "ndp" candidate running of any renown - the choices were between a moderate conservative and a business liberal, neither of which are what the city needs right now. it is true that the city needs investment for the purposes of long term job creation, but at the mayoral level what it needs is a left-populist to tax heavily and spend liberally on social services - most importantly low income housing.

and, that's not just something that helps poor people, like me. we're in the process of converting the library into a homeless shelter, under some kind of scorched earth policy that is essentially an abandonment of the library to the mob. but, will they leave the computers in the new shelter? will it have wifi for their out-of-service phones? because, if not, you can expect that the homeless people will hang out in the new library, too - unless security gets drastic, which would be regrettable, but is perhaps not so unlikely. the solution to the homeless problem is not a new library, it's more housing. but, this is the kind of disinterested policy that you get from a conservative-driven council, that doesn't want to solve the problem, so much as it wants to find ways to effectively ignore it.

that said, it seems like the balance on the council may have shifted a little left, and that might be a start. we'll see how the mayor reacts to the new balance of power.

i did not check to see which ward i was going to be in, but it seems like i'm in ward 2. this ward was represented by a councillor who got into some trouble for stating some chauvinistic comments into the record, and i am happy to see he was defeated - even if i didn't get the chance to vote against him. i don't know much about the new councillor but it seems like it is probably going to help balance the council more towards the left.

more pressing to me was actually the sex ed question. i would have liked to explicitly vote in favour of keeping the 2015 version, and would have focused research around this question if i had the time to do it. this would have been the thing that got me out to actually vote. it turns out that one of the sitting councillors appears to have the right take on this, at least.