After a term on council, Michelle Boileau hopes to bring future-focused leadership to the mayor's seat.
Boileau is one of three candidates vying to be Timmins' next mayor in the Oct. 24 municipal election.
"I don’t believe there’s an advantage to dwelling on what happened in the past, on decisions that council’s made in the past. We just need to be looking forward to the future and we need to make sure that our decisions are not only founded on the outcomes in the next year or the next election cycle, but that we’re thinking about what the outcomes of our decisions will be for future generations,” she said.
First elected to council in 2018 as a Ward 5 councillor, she is the College Boreal employment and immigration service manager.
In the next four years, her top priorities are population growth, housing and healthcare.
To stop raising taxes, she explained the city has to grow its tax base or reduce services.
"I don’t think anyone wants services to be reduced so we need to focus on growing our tax base and not only because that would help relieve some of the stress on the cost of living for our current residents, but also because it will help the economy,” she said.
For housing, she supports looking at the city building department's policies, lobbying upper levels of government for housing initiatives and supporting public and private partnerships.
"We need to look at different ways we could be incentivizing that other than just …. ‘cutting the red tape,’ when it comes to permits and whatnot,” she said.
By creating relevant housing to meet the needs of health professionals, students or people with disabilities, she said the overall rental market in town would be relieved.
While healthcare is beyond the municipality's scope, she said the city can narrow in on attracting more health professionals by making sure there's housing, supporting community partners working to bring in more services and expressing support for initiatives to upper levels of government.
Boileau also wants to invest more in tourism. She said the budget line for Tourism Timmins is "pretty slim" and limiting the city's competitiveness to bid on big events—from sports tournaments to concerts or conferences.
Attracting bigger events means having the right facilities.
Because the updated recreational master plan isn't available yet, she's hesitant to comment on specific buildings that may be under or overused or that aren't feasible moving forward.
“We know that there are some of our arenas that are getting to end of life. That it’s just costing more to maintain them than it would be to close them and perhaps use that money elsewhere. These are all possibilities. I don’t want to say that I want to close arenas, I just want to make sure that we’re using them at their best capacity and that they’re sustainable and if they’re not sustainable we have to look at what else we could be doing,” she said.
When it comes to investing in recreation, with the changing demographics she encourages diversifying.
"So that people who are looking at Timmins as a potential destination, as a potential place to make their home, that they see themselves here. That they see themselves being able to enjoy their lives here,” she said.
As a taxpayer with a young family, Boileau says she is feeling the impacts of inflation and rising taxes.
"But I want to make sure that when we’re making decisions we’re not saving ourselves a few dollars just to make our kids have to pay the big bills in 10-20 years from now,” she said.
If she's elected to the top seat, she'd like to see more respect for decorum in council chambers.
"Not just in our past term, but in past terms, I feel like perhaps we’ve strayed away from proceedings and how they should be going at council,” she said.
She believes being fluently bilingual is also an asset.
“I don’t necessarily think that the city needs to become officially bilingual but there are ways to continue to improve access to French-language services and by having a council leader who is fluently bilingual, I think would only benefit the city and its residents,” she said.
Connect with Boileau by stopping by her campaign office located at 177 3rd Ave., emailing [email protected] or calling 705-531-2764. Her website is michelleboileau.ca.
The other Timmins mayoral candidates are Joe Campbell and Richard Lafleur.
