Andrew Poirier said he’s running on his experience with municipal government in his bid to become mayor.
“I’m running on three terms of my record. Some will agree and some won’t that I've done good things,” said Poirier, a current city councillor. “I feel that I have that experience in that background professionally and personally to take on this role and start to be mayor on Nov. 16.”
Poirier has served two other terms on Kenora council over the past two decades. He also ran for mayor in 2010, when he came second to Dave Canfield.
Now retired, Poirier said a lot of people have approached him to run in this upcoming election.
“I've been toying with this idea for an awful long time and I feel that now is the right time for those reasons to jump into the race,” he said. “I have a great appreciation and understanding of what it's going to take to be mayor.”
Poirier said social issues found on the streets, specifically downtown, are the top ones for Kenora.
“We have a homeless issue and we also have a major drug problem in our community, and I hear that time and time again, I’ve seen that while I’ve been on council. We’ve tried to deal with it in a variety of ways. And nothing at this point seems to stick, it just seems to get worse and worse,” he said.
“If I’m elected mayor and [with] a newly elected council, I believe that’s one of the first things we have to begin to grapple with. And we have to reach out with other organizations and stakeholders and we need to start coming up with some solutions as crazy as they maybe we have to get to try different ideas to see if we can actually turn this thing around.”
Poirier said the issue is spreading out from downtown into other neighbourhoods, and the suburbs.
“It's gotten out of hand quite frankly,” he said.
A solution Poirier mentioned includes increasing police foot patrols in the downtown core. He said the local police services board, of which he has been the vice chair, has already asked the OPP for this and would continue if he is elected.
“When people would see police or police officers in downtown core walking the streets, there was a sense, a small of sense, of security and safety but we need to expand that substantially.”
Another solution Poirier identified was to continue to build more supportive housing with wraparound service for addictions and mental health and figure out why so many people from out of town are coming to Kenora. He said the city still needs to work with other levels of government to figure out a long-term solution.
Poirier says he’s been political junkie since he was young and he thinks that as one person in a collective, he can make a difference.
“As much as people bash politicians and professions in politics, I still think it's a good way to make change in the city of Kenora and in the region.”
