Who will fill the chair?
Meet the four candidates vying to be next regional chair and learn where they stand on issues
WATERLOO REGION — It’s the end of an era in Waterloo Region.
For the first time in 33 years, a new chair will sit at the helm of regional council after Monday’s election.
As Regional Chair Ken Seiling packs up boxes filled with decades of documents and mementoes in his Frederick Street office, he ponders what it takes to do this job.
“A chair should have a good set of values and have a sense of fairness,” Seiling said, including strong personal ethics, compassion and a sense of where this community is going. “It is a very complex role,” he said.
The regional chair oversees a population of more than half a million with a staff in the thousands. He or she also sits on a council
that makes decisions with an annual budget of $1.5 billion. Two-thirds of property taxes are spent at the regional level for services like sewage treatment, waste management, major roads, public transit, policing and emergency medical services.
It is also the only elected position at the municipal level that every voter will choose. Four candidates are vying for the job.
Rob Deutschmann
Lawyer Rob Deutschmann served one term as mayor of North Dumfries from 2010 to 2014; as mayor he sat on regional council. He grew up in Waterloo, has lived in Ayr for more than two decades, and works out of offices in Cambridge and Kitchener.
“I cover it all,” he said. “I have worked at both tiers of government. I understand the cities, I understand the townships.”
Affordable housing, and addiction and mental health services are important issues in this campaign, he says.
Homelessness and addiction have become increasingly visible problems in every part of the region. Each city, especially Cambridge, struggles with discarded needles in city cores and impromptu camps popping up in city parks.
The region was considering setting up three safe injection sites in Kitchener and Cambridge, but plans are on hold as the province reviews whether to continue to fund such sites.
The locations for the region’s proposed safe injections sites were controversial, sparking rallies by some residents. The issue is likely to be an ongoing one for the new regional chair.
Deutschmann said he will work with other levels of government and social agencies to determine how best to increase social services and affordable housing availability. He wants to see safe injection sites in place, but he thinks the region needs to tread lightly.
“It’s also important to set a process in place where you can have dialogue (with residents),” Deutschmann said. “I don’t think there is enough of that happening.”
He said he would like to continue to host town hall meetings like the ones he held during his campaign if he is elected chair.
Deutschmann also wants more ambulance personnel and equipment because response times are too varied across the region and time is often wasted off-loading patients at hospitals.
Economic development is also an important issue for Deutschmann. During his time on regional council, Deutschmann put forward the motion that the three cities and four townships should jointly work to attract investment to the region. The Waterloo Economic Development Corp. came out of that idea.
“The view that everyone has come to appreciate is that development in any part of the region benefits the whole of the region.”
Karen Redman
Regional councillor Karen Redman has the most political experience of the candidates, having served on Kitchener city council, regional council and two terms as Liberal MP for Kitchener Centre as well as chief government whip.
She said her political experience gives her the skills required for the job of regional chair.
A crucial part of the role of regional chair is to lobby the province for funding and policy changes. Redman says she is prepared for that kind of collaborative work: “True leadership is knowing when to give an issue a hand up.”
As former chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity Waterloo Region, Redman said the organization lobbied the provincial government for inclusionary zoning, a tool municipalities can use to require developers to include affordable units within new builds.
She thinks the region should continue to do what it can while it waits to hear what funding plans the new provincial government has for affordable housing and addiction services.
She was impressed when The Working Centre, a local social agency, turned two shipping containers into emergency overnight shelters for the homeless.
She says it was creative and effective — an example of the pragmatism and innovation constantly brewing in Waterloo Region.
Affordable housing and supportive housing, shelters, mental health and addiction support all need a boost as the demand for social services increases, Redman said.
“One of the strengths of Waterloo Region is we’re very pragmatic,” she said; if these services will need to be funded locally, the region will find a way to make it happen.
While Redman supports safe injection sites, she also said everyone, including residents opposed to safe injection sites, deserves to feel safe.
She said safe injection sites should be a wraparound service with experienced staff who can help clients connect with a variety of services.
Other issues important to Redman include attracting talent and investment to the region and continuing the region’s work to extend light rail transit to Cambridge.
Jay Aissa
Jay Aissa, owner of Jay Fencing, said his business experience is what the region needs. He is the only candidate running for regional chair who has no political experience.
“I’m not a politician and I don’t dance around the question,” he said. “If I look at myself and if I was the person who’s voting, I would say ‘Wow, this is the person we need to put in the region.’”
Aissa has called the region his home for 32 years. It is where he built his business and raised his family. His top priority is to bring a new, high-tech hospital to the region.
“Our hospitals are too old. There is no sense in renovating them,” Aissa said.
He said he wants to build a teaching hospital through a public-private partnership and turn Grand River Hospital into a longterm-care facility with a giant splash pad in the parking lot.
But the province, not the region, decides when and where new hospitals are built.
In the 2014 municipal election, Aissa came in second, pulling in 25,615 votes to the 63,885 votes Seiling had. Aissa campaigned to stop the light rail transit project.
“I wasn’t against the plan,” Aissa now says. “I thought the whole idea was backwards. The first part should have been Cambridge to Kitchener.”
He said he plans to carry on with the region’s work to extend light rail trains to Cambridge.
Like Deutschmann, Aissa thinks more equipment and personnel will improve ambulance response times and time spent off-loading patients at hospitals.
Aissa believes safe injection sites should be mobile units rather than brick-and-mortar sites. He wants to tackle affordable housing by having the region pay half the rent for families on the waiting list to house them quicker instead of waiting for funds to build affordable housing.
Just over 4,000 families are now on the wait-list for affordable housing in Waterloo Region. Market rent in 2018 for a onebedroom apartment is $917 according to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
The region currently offers a similar affordable housing incentive to landlords of rental units where the region offers to pay the difference between what a tenant can pay and what the rent of a unit is.
As a business owner who oversees dozens of employees, Aissa said you have to be a “master of juggling.”
“It’s easy to be behind a desk and make decisions. I’m the guy who is going to make the decision every day,” Aissa said.
The regional chair, however, has no executive power to make decisions, and is just one vote out of 16 on regional council.
Jan d’Ailly
Former two-term Waterloo city councillor Jan d’Ailly is a business development executive who works with tech startups, so he thinks he can offer the best of both the business and political worlds.
“Our No. 1 priority should be to invest in social infrastructure,” d’Ailly said. “Overall, I think the region has done really well ... but I can see some cracks appear on the social side of things.”
He points to income disparities, mental health issues, homelessness and affordable housing. D’Ailly said the region has several social programs, but said they’re fragmented. He wants to create a “comprehensive ecosystem of social services” to fill in wherever there are gaps.
Like Aissa, d’Ailly also thinks safe injection sites should be offered in mobile units because overdoses occur in the suburbs as well as in city centres.
With experience on a variety of city committees, from trails to environment and arts, and with experience in strategic planning for large corporations, d’Ailly said he has the know-how to try to make regional government more efficient.
“We need to make sure the region is nimble, responsive and cost-effective.”
He wants to establish a task force to look at how to make the region’s operations more streamlined.
“It just hasn’t been looked at. We need to look at other ways to align our services,” he said.
Ranked ballots are another important issue for d’Ailly. He said if elected, he will push to see that change happen before the next municipal election.
“It’s very important because it provides for a more democratic election. It avoids the splitting of the vote.”
On Monday, voters will head to the polls to pick a new chair, someone who will represent the region to the rest of the province, country and the world.
Seiling said strong values are important to be a successful chair, but so are relationships.
“A very important part of the job is to work with members of council, to find a common purpose and strategy,” he said.
But relationships are important in every aspect of the job, from working with the province to local community organizations and ordinary citizens.
“There are lots of things that have to be balanced,” Seiling said. “You hope for the best.”