Sheila Fougere unveils platform
Posted by lesmuise on May 3, 2008
By MICHAEL LIGHTSTONE Staff Reporter
Sat. May 3 - 5:30 AM
Sheila Fougere kicks off her campain for mayor at the Holiday Inn in Dartmouth. (JEFF HARPER / Staff)
Halifax councillor Sheila Fougere was in Dartmouth on Friday to unveil her mayoral campaign platform that has such planks as safer communities, improved public transit, better conditions for the city’s needy, more recreation centres and a smaller regional council.
She said the municipality is a unique place, as Canadian cities go, and she wants to lead it to continued growth and prosperity during the next four years.
Ms. Fougere, 50, said Halifax Regional Municipality should be governed in such a way that the differences of its many districts are taken into account. She said a cookie-cutter approach to bylaws and other city hall rules is not the way to go.
A better system, she said, would have the city’s six community councils consider “some of the more divisive issues” before the full regional council votes on them. Such a process would “allow for nuances in regulation and service that reflected the needs of individual communities,” she said.
Ms. Fougere said she supports a review of the size of Halifax council, now at 24 members. She figures 15 would be a more suitable number.
More than 100 people attended Ms. Fougere’s campaign kickoff at a hotel. The municipal election is set for Oct. 18.
Mayor Peter Kelly, in office since 2000, has announced he is seeking re-election. Ms. Fougere did not mention him by name Friday in a speech lasting almost 20 minutes, saying later she wanted the focus of her remarks to be about her campaign and vision for the municipality.
On city transit, she said: “I want (bus) routes that run more hours of the day and more days of the week.” She pledged to get a pilot project going that would involve a late-night shuttle in Halifax for patrons and workers leaving downtown watering holes.
On crime, Ms. Fougere, who is married to a police officer, promised to help make neighbourhoods safer.
“We need to ensure that numbers of sworn police officers and firefighters do not fall below pre-amalgamation levels,” she said. “It’s also important that their numbers grow.”
Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and Halifax County merged into one political unit in 1996. Ms. Fougere, first elected in 1998, said she wouldn’t push the province for de-amalgamation.
On the city’s disadvantaged, Ms. Fougere said: “I want to foster a stronger link with our provincial politicians and community partners who look after housing, social services, mental health services . . . to improve the social conditions in our communities.”
Among Ms. Fougere’s supporters at the kickoff were a few council colleagues, a former top bureaucrat from Halifax city hall, at least two New Democrat MLAs and a former provincial cabinet minister, a Conservative who introduced the one-time federal Liberal candidate to the crowd.
Ms. Fougere, who represents west-end Halifax (Connaught-Quinpool) on council, was asked why she elected to release her platform in Dartmouth. She said it was a decision based on past parochialism.
“I chose Dartmouth because I know that there are people who bear that resentment to Halifax,” Ms. Fougere told reporters. “I’m more than happy to say: ‘You know what? I’ll go wherever in this municipality (and) I’m quite comfortable with that.’ So I thought it was important not to have it in Halifax.”
Ms. Fougere said she recognizes that women are a minority on municipal councils in Nova Scotia but she said the gender imbalance isn’t a factor in her seeking the mayor’s job. She encouraged people from all walks of life to take a shot at public office at the local level, saying it would help make for a more diverse regional council.
COMMENTS
Ed T wrote:
I seem to remember Fougere’s first press announcement that she would run for Mayor. It was after she stomped out of a HRM council meeting, suporting the “fiscally threatening” Commonwealth Games bid to the bitter end. Seems like she had plenty of sketchy statements about Mayor Kelly then and his wise move to protect HRM finances from that nightmare. After all that steam, there’s little in her platform that differ’s from Mayor Kelly. Only fuzzy political motherhood statements. After all, they both voted for this year’s HRM tax increase. I suspect there would be little future tax relief from either of the canidates. Hopefully, a real alternative canidate emerges. If not, from what I see, it seems like Kelly is a safer bet. No wonder there was such a small crowd.
