Bonnie Crombie – A New Energy in the City of Mississauga in a Talk with Meena Chopra

Bonnie Crombie – Councillor Ward 5, Mississauga

In a Talk with Meena Chopra

StarBuzz Weekly, Toronto-Meena Chopra: How does it feel to be a Councillor after being a Member of Parliament?
Bonnie Crombie: You know that is an excellent question. People have been asking me that and truly I think that being a councilor I deal with those issues that effects people in their daily lives, it’s the meat and potatoes of their daily lives. You know I got asked once when I was door knocking as a federal member what have you done for me directly to impact my life? Well I said that I spoke out in parliament for you, to help keep your taxes low and to deal with foreign relations and on visas and have given visas: he says no, no I haven’t needed a visa for my family so tell me what have you done for me? Then I said well, I did not build your community centre your city councilor did and he said ‘thank you very much’ and closed the door. So now I am here to say that I am going to build the community centre for people, dealing with issues like snow removal, waste disposal, where fences are permitted to be built, traffic safety, community safety – these are the issues that effect peoples lives directly every day and these are the issues I will be dealing with and to help people in their daily lives and help build vibrant communities.

MC: Now you are the Councillor here, what new do you think you would like to bring to the city of Mississauga?

BC: I will bring my energy and passion of course but there is so much that I want to accomplish for Ward 5 because Ward 5 has been neglected for a long time – they have been abandoned, frankly, particularly the beautiful community up in Malton, as they are isolated because of the airport and the industry so I have such plans for my community to improve traffic, to improve community safety, to bring greater accountability for myself as the councilor to the people; so I am going to help with a residents association, we are going to meet regularly. I am going to attend. They are going to tell me what their problems are and the next time we meet I will have to tell them what I have done to improve their lives. Of course it increases the accountability of the Councillor to the people. I want to be the champion for economic development and job creation. So those are some of the principles I bring with me from when I was a federal MP. This will be a big principle for me up in Malton because we know that there is a lot of crime in Malton, we know that there is poverty in Malton and the best way to address this and to bring hope is to create opportunity and to create jobs and so I am going to be a champion for economic development and also for small businesses as well – we will have a business improvement area both in Malton and Britannia. We can promote our local businesses and create jobs too. So I have a lot of plans and I am eager to get going and we have already set the ball rolling. Soon we will have ‘town hall’ meetings in both the communities. So we will meet and they will give me feedback and we will be working hard for them.

MC: OK, I am from Ward 5

BC: That’s fantastic! And I knocked on your door one day. It was a chance meeting but a lucky chance meeting.

MC: What are your views on Hazel McCallions’ inquiry, though she has apologized.

BC: She has and I am glad that she has apologized and I think that was the right thing to do. You know I have so much respect for the mayor she has built our fabulous city, she has been our leader for 33 years it is through her strong stewardship that we have had strong fiscal solid management that we’ve been debt free, we have kept our taxes low, we’ve got the best quality of life in any community, one of the safest, in fact, it is the safest city in Canada, Canada is one of the safest countries in the world. We all owe that to her. She has had 33years you know, she has had a stellar record and a perfect career and you know this is a little smirch to be frank, to be fair. But she has apologized. The judge found that she did not break any laws any conflict of interest laws. However we all felt that as she did apologize, maybe in private time there was a suggestion that something had been done that shouldn’t have been but that’s all been cleared up the inquiry is behind us. But to be honest with you we spent $7 million on the inquiry that I would rather have invested it in Malton. Because we had the same verdict, the same result the same judgment was given in a $50,000 opinion that the lawyers gave us we already knew the same recommendations the same opinion that was given that Judge Cunningham gave we had already received in a legal opinion. So we didn’t need to spend the $7 million, we could have built the health care centre in Malton; we could have built the Goreway Bridge. This is money that I feel was taken away from the city. So much more could have been done with it. But it is past us now, the mayor has apologized and we have moved on.

MC: Some candidates from Ward 5 say that you overspent during your election campaign. What are your comments?

BC: Well, of course, I have always lived to the letter of the law and conducted myself with the utmost integrity. What’s at issue here is the $200 poll that I did previous to registering as a candidate and the law says that you can not spend money until you register. But I didn’t spend money on the election campaign – what I did was research. I did research my candidacy was viable and if I had name recognition. Maybe if the other candidates had done so they would have realized that they were not viable. In fact, to be honest with you there were people trying to tell me not to run. We did the poll so that we could  say: look you have no name recognition, don’t run. So this was completely research done  ahead of time. This is  legal and legitimate and it will be proven  so.

MC: Councillor, my next question to you is what is your take on diversity?

BC:  Oh my goodness! Diversity is our strength. It makes us the great city that we are. We are a beacon to the world. We are a people who can live together harmoniously. We live together, we pray together, next door to each other, we have entertainment together, we shop, we go to school. We are a beacon to the world. How do we do  this harmoniously and we learn from each other, we have respect and tolerance for each other as a result of this and we gain from each others strengths. These are business skills, language skills, these are skills that we can learn to do trade with other nations whether it is Pakistan, India or Poland for that matter. This is why we are such a strong community. Because of the diversity we bring and I think we show the world how people from everywhere can live peacefully and in harmony. I think we are much richer for it.

MC: What do you think of arts in Mississauga? The City has been conservative about spending on arts.

BC: Well we are a conservative city spending, I can grant you that. I have had the pleasure of serving on the Arts Task Force. The mayor had a blue ribbon panel on the arts to decide how we could provide funding to some of the major arts groups on a long term sustainable basis and a lot of research went in that and so we decided and recommended to create a Office of the Arts and a Director of the Arts that is leading, stewarding the arts community. And for myself I am a big promoter of the arts. I believe in public art, I believe that in any new development there should be works of art in the building, on the exterior, whether it be sculptures or paintings or carvings or water structures or gazebos, whatever it might be. I think arts is an important economic driver as well for any community and it should be taken very seriously. We could do more for the arts, clearly. I think we should have an arts incubator. We could bring some artists into maybe some space maybe in the living arts centre and have them work out of that area. You know certainly more can be done for the arts and I will work closely with the office of the arts to see what some of those things could be.