Sixteen names. Eight chairs. One week!

I keep hearing one thing, and it’s wrong.

Justin Towndale is not being acclaimed. Nicole Spahich filed her nomination papers on May 25. Go look at the list yourself, it’s right there on the city’s website. So there will be a ballot on October 26, and you will have a choice, and nobody is walking into that office unopposed.

Now. Is two people a race? In a city of 47,000?

And is an opponent that amassed merely 2% of the votes in 2018 really competition? I’ll let you decide on that one. Nonetheless, there is a contender.

As for councillors, out of the current ten, so far, five of them are running again: Todd Bennett, Dean Hollingsworth, Elaine MacDonald, Fred Ngoundjo, Denis Sabourin.

Five are most likely done. Maurice Dupelle, Syd Gardiner, Sarah Good, Carilyne Hébert, Claude McIntosh. They chose to go, or life made the choice for them. With the level of scrutiny Hebert faced this term, I’m not surprised. Gardiner was away close to six months with health problems so serious that when he finally came back in May he told the room, “I had almost passed away.” Dupelle announced his exit during a youth committee presentation. Good, who initially announced her intention to challenge Towndale, pulled out of the mayor and council race altogether after the social media machine spun out of control, resulting in viscous attacks on her.

The pie is getting smaller too. Council voted last October to go from ten councillors down to eight. So we’ve got sixteen people running for eight seats. Two to one.

In 2022, twenty seven ran for council and four for mayor. In 2018, thirty ran for council and four for mayor. In 2018, 12,488 of us voted, about 38 percent. In 2022, 10,166 ballots and 28.6 percent. Part of that was the city’s own fault, there were four polling stations that year instead of ten and people stood in line and gave up and drove home. Towndale flagged it himself before election day and I give him credit for that. Hopefully this is resolved this year.

But seven out of ten of us didn’t vote. Seven out of ten! And now barely anyone wants to run. But do I blame them?

Hell no!

Think about what we’re offering. Give up your evenings and your weekends. Read hundreds of pages of agenda packages. Sit through meetings until eleven at night. Get called a crook on Facebook by people who have never once opened an agenda. Have your neighbours stop you at the grocery store to yell about a pothole. And now, on top of all that, sign up for a system where the province has handed the mayor powers that a chunk of your own council thinks are undemocratic.

Who’s lining up for that? Sixteen people, apparently. Sixteen. And I’m grateful for every single one of them, including the ones I’ll probably disagree with by November.

Now let’s talk about the last four years, because you can’t ask about scandal in this town without somebody saying the name Dupelle.

In September 2025, council suspended his pay for ninety days after the Integrity Commissioner investigated his absenteeism and his failure to finish mandatory cybersecurity training. Commissioner David Boghosian also looked into concerns that Dupelle had solicited more than $30,000 in personal loans from constituents and from city staff. Only the training issue was found to be a Code of Conduct breach. Council pulled him off the Police Services Board, off the Eastern Ontario Health Unit, off Glen Stor Dun Lodge.

Read that again. Thirty thousand dollars in loans from residents and staff, and the thing he got sanctioned for was the training module.

I’m not saying Boghosian did anything wrong, codes of conduct are narrow and he applied the one he was given. But if that’s the strongest tool we have, then the tool is broken and we should say so out loud instead of pretending the system worked. Dupelle said his absences came from health and personal struggles and I have no reason at all to doubt him. He also gave this city sixteen years and clearly loves the kids on that youth committee. All of that is true at the same time.

But the real story of this term isn’t Maurice Dupelle. It’s a park.

November 2023. Diane Hebert, 67 years old, found dead in a tent in Lamoureux Park. And Towndale put out a statement that I still have not forgotten. “We failed her. I failed her.”

That took guts. Most politicians would have hidden behind “jurisdiction” and “provincial responsibility” and whatever else they keep in the drawer.

But saying it is the easy part. Look at what came after. A winter plan announced days later. Twenty beds in a former nursing home on a seven month lease. A supportive housing project that got shouted down by neighbours. A petition in January 2025 with 238 signatures asking the city to shove the encampments out near the wastewater treatment plant, five kilometres from the food banks, and 93 of those signatures came from outside Cornwall entirely. Hollingsworth was the one who actually checked. Somebody from Toronto. Somebody from Labrador City. Telling us where our poor people should sleep.

The city says 74 people have been housed since 2023 and I believe it, that’s 74 people with a locked door and I’m not going to sneer at it.

But this past April, Sabourin asked for encampment updates at every regular meeting instead of every three months. Council said no. Too much staff time. Three years after the mayor stood up and said “I failed her,” a progress report every two weeks was too much paperwork.

So how has our mayor done?

He works hard, he shows up, he’s not corrupt, and he inherited an inflation spike and a police budget squeeze and a province that keeps dumping responsibilities on cities while lecturing us about efficiency. Fine. All true.

But the 2026 budget raises the tax levy 5.41 percent. On an average house assessed at $176,700 that’s another $165.94 out of your pocket. Water and wastewater, up 6.81 percent on top of it. “It’s a tough budget year,” he told council in December. It was a tough year last year too. And the year before. At some point “tough year” stops being an explanation and starts being a habit. This is not a rich city! People here are choosing between hydro and groceries and the city keeps mailing them a bigger bill.

Then there’s the strong mayor thing. Queen’s Park handed those powers to 169 municipalities including ours in May 2025. Hollingsworth asked a tough question: If a mayor abuses this, what do I do, “do I have to go hire a lawyer?” Former mayor Brian Lynch called minority rule a dangerous precedent, and he’s right.

To be fair, Towndale had the veto in January and didn’t use it. He let council’s amendment stand. Good. Credit where it’s due.

But I don’t want a mayor who chooses not to use bad powers. I want a mayor who stands up and says these powers dont belong in a city of 47,000, take them back. Restraint is a personality trait. It retires when he does. Whoever sits in that chair next inherits the same veto, and none of us voted for it.

Nominations close Friday, August 21 at 2 p.m. Election day is October 26.

So yes, maybe somebody surprises us this week. Somebody usually wanders in on the last afternoon with a folder and a dream. I hope so.

But if nobody does, let’s not stand around blaming the sixteen who bothered. We’re the ones who complain about the potholes and the taxes and the tents in the park all year long, and then seven out of ten of us can’t even find twenty minutes to vote.

City Hall is at 360 Pitt. The clerk’s office closes at four thirty.

So, I ask… what exactly are you waiting for?

About the Author

Julia Lucio

Contributor

Julia Lucio is the Managing Editor and Publisher of The Seeker Newsmagazine, and a passionate, unapologetic voice in local media. She writes boldly on politics, social justice, community events, and the everyday moments that shape our lives.

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