Waterloo Region Municipal Election 2010 Information
Well, the October 25 election campaign is underway, and once again it withers in obscurity. Once again I got suckered into doing some hyperlocal coverage of the election, and this page documents the results.
I have been attending some of the debates, and I have some writeups. However, I will refrain from publishing those writeups until September 20, because I am helping organize some all-candidates meetings for October 12, 13 and 19; I don't want my misguided opinions colouring the candidate reactions at those debates. Once again, censorship wins.
I will use the site http://waterlooregionvotes.ca as my starting point. I had hoped that this site would become a hub for information about the election, but it is not clear that they are interested in publishing updates from outsiders. This page will consist of supplementary material that does not appear on that site; if they accept information from these pages, then the information on these pages will likely disappear.
I am happy to collect information for any of the races in Waterloo Region, but I am not prepared to research them all. Since I live in Kitchener Ward 10, I am most focused on the politics around that area. If you have additional information please contact me .
In addition to the elections there are referenda that are getting very little coverage.
I am also happy to hear from you if you find this information useful; it takes a lot of time to do this election coverage, and I am hoping others actually find it useful.
Candidate Questionnaires
I consider candidate questionnaires (which are often run by advocacy groups) to be the second-best source of candidate information. The best source are all-candidate meetings, in my opinion.
The pro-transit group TriTAG has a candidate questionnaire related to transit issues.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Real-Estate board has a candidate questionnaire that covers a variety of topics, including property standards, traffic and amalgamation.
The Waterloo Votes Voter Support Committee has a questionnaire for Waterloo candidates.
The Waterloo Region Labour Council has some kind of questionnaire as well as candidate endorsements floating around, but I cannot find them online.
There are some candidate questionnaires related to poverty issues on the Waterloo Region Votes Candidates page.
The Cambridge Chamber of Commerce has videotaped a series of candidate interviews for Cambridge and North Dumfries candidates.
The Record has some textual candidate profiles which include a bizarre question about criminal records.
All-Candidate Meetings
In addition to the listings on http://www.waterlooregionvotes.ca the City of Kitchener website has been carrying debate listings as well. The City of Kitchener has been accepting my update requests, so I only include information that is on neither of those two sites.
The Record has an election page which includes video of the debates they have held.
Amalgamation Referendum
Kitchener and Waterloo are being asked whether the two cities should discuss amalgamation. This referendum has received pitifully little coverage, as far as I can tell.
- Let's Talk KW seems to be the main advocacy side for the YES side.
I wish I could find the competition.
Fluoridation Referendum
Waterloo is having a referendum on fluoridation. This has gotten a fair amount of attention.
One anti-fluoridation site is Waterloo Watch .
The official Region of Waterloo stance appears to support fluoridation. (PDF format)
Candidate Websites
There was a minor kerfuffle over linking to websites: city websites published the names, e-mails and addresses of candidates, but refused to link to candidate websites.
The most complete listings are on the Wonderful Waterloo forums, in the municipal election sections. The first post for each forum has links to websites for each of the candidates.
There is an aggregated Twitter feed for a bunch of candidates here: http://twitter.com/jeffieCanada/lists/elections2010
Other Resources
The YWCA of Kitchener-Waterloo has published a guide to the election which provides a reasonable (if biased) overview of the issues: http://www.ywcakw.on.ca/pdf/A%20Guide%20to%20Participating%20in%20the%202010%20Municipal%20Elections.doc (beware: Word document)