Matt Saunders, a candidate in Ward 4, discovered what he considers to be a glaring error in the way our park and conservation lands are counted. He says some land is counted twice and we do not have as much parkland as we think. If he’s right, our mayor has a lot of explaining to do about why and how we failed to update the parkland dedication bylaw when we had the chance.

Susan Watson raised the issue of parkland dedication at the start of the election campaign. It did not get much traction. Now it is back. It needs to be discussed in greater depth than saying Saunders doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We’re running out of time.

Which of the candidates has the political will to defend and enforce regulated development?

Crime and Driveway Widths

While Guelph is one of the safest communities in Ontario to call home, petty theft and other property crimes have increased. These are fuelled by the opioid crisis gripping most of Canada. Drug addiction is an illness. We can’t police it out of existence. We have to restore full funding to the social service agencies trained and equipped to deal with it.

I find it comical that people who claim to be tough on law enforcement are also in favour of suspending inconvenient bylaws that might cost them votes. If the law governing driveway widths is inadequate or out of date, it needs to be studied, assessed and fixed.

If some candidates want to make an issue of law and order, they cannot credibly begin by ranking the laws, saying these ones need to be enforced, those ones don’t.

There’s nothing like a looming election to make a tough law and order guy want to have his cake and eat it too.

Integrity

Admittedly, Mlynarz is new to public life. She cut her teeth as a provincial candidate and is now the only person running for mayor whose name is not Cam Guthrie. She has never done or said anything that would lead us to question her motives or her integrity.

Guthrie, on the other hand, said at an all-candidates debate that he hopes 13 like-minded people can be at the council horseshoe after the election. That’s his excuse for campaigning door to door with a cobbled together slate of like-minded candidates. At another debate he said "the mayor must vote when a motion comes from the floor." This was in answer to a question about why he participated in a vote to increase the mayor’s salary which he is campaigning vigorously to receive. His answer was wrong. What he must do is declare a pecuniary interest and excuse himself from that portion of the meeting.

Six months ago, it looked like we were in for a boring election. Quite the opposite has come to pass.

Alan Pickersgill was a regular freelance columnist for the Guelph Tribune, 1995 to 2014, and now observes local politics in the comfort of retirement. This column originally appeared on his website alanpickersgill.ca.