Mayoral contenders Craitor, Mansour debate Thundering Waters
Only two candidates available for CKTB segment
Niagara Falls should stop chasing GO trains and university campuses and focus on fixing the city’s transit and infrastructure issues, says mayoral candidate Kim Craitor.
“I think it’s time to get back to the basics,” he said during a 90-minute debate on 610 CKTB Wednesday with fellow candidate Dinah Lillia Mansour.
“That’s what people want, their services at the best possible price. They want things they have to deal with each and every day to be dealt with,” Craitor said.
It was a lively debate, but suffered from the absence of the other two candidates — Mayor Jim Diodati declined to take part, said host Matt Holmes, and challenger Kip Finn didn’t respond to an invitation (he did say on social media he had work commitments).
They covered a wide range of topics leading up to the Oct. 22 municipal election, but saved their sharpest criticisms for the massive $1.5-billion Thundering Waters project in south Niagara Falls.
If approved, it would see residential and commercial development on 48 of the 193.6 hectares on the property near Marineland. It’s being proposed by investment groups from China led by GR (Can) Investment Ltd.
Mansour called it “a city within a city” — to also include restaurants, a traditional Chinese medicine centre and a casino train service. It’s being marketed to Chinese investors as Paradise.
More approvals are needed for the project to move ahead. Earlier this year city council agreed to revise the city’s official plan.
In a recorded vote both Diodati and Craitor voted in favour, though Craitor later said he did so on the understanding certain conditions would have to be met
which were later removed.
“This has shocked me how this has unfolded,” said Craitor, a longtime city councillor and former Liberal MPP.
“Let me get this straight — you have a developer who bought land knowing that over half of it is protected, you can’t develop it (because of wetlands). Who bought land that was sold a number of years ago for around $800,000, she buys all this land knowing all these strict conditions are on it, for $20 million?
“Who does that? … unless you believe that you’re going to get the rules changed just for you.”
He criticized a memorandum of understanding Diodati signed during a junket to China which, Craitor said, was only made public a year later and that committed the city to do everything it could to help the project move forward.
Mansour cited a Globe and Mail article in which, she said, the developer stated investors expect to be reimbursed for their expenses if the project is eventually turned down.
She said “Diodati did what he had to do. He thought it was a great step to try to bring something new to our city” but, she added, he “didn’t know all the capacity we were dealing with.”
In her work at an international investment firm, she said, she has learned Chinese businesspeople are tough negotiators focused on earning a profit.
If the project falls through and the city is sued, she said, it was be a “big catastrophe.”
Craitor agreed a lawsuit would hit the city hard, adding “now (the developer) is proposing to only develop a certain part of the land. But you still have that whole end of town — you’ve got Chippawa that has flooding problems, and the sewage goes that way, and in the south end you’ve got traffic problems.
“People can’t move around on McLeod Road, Drummond Road. There’s a real world out there for the citizens who live there, and you’re trying to shove down into that area .… a city within a city, and our city can’t handle what it has.”