Change Starts Here
This is a page for research and collaboration. If you have knowledge, please contribute. If you’ve got an opinion, let us know. As we build this site, we will add in tools for discussion, help sheets for understanding issues, and links to find out what other municipalities are doing for this very important election.
We're just getting started
We’ll be working on this site right up until the election. Right now we’re collecting people’s ideas on choosing the most important issues for discussion. All contributions are welcome, and we have published some preliminary ideas below. This page is being maintained by Get Concerned Stratford, with the help of vounteers from the other Stratford environmental organizations. More on this soon.
If you have questions, or if you’d like to help out, please use the contact box below
Picture taken at Stratford’s Canadian Tire, summer 2025. Nobody touched the bird’s nest.
It's a collaboration...
How We Can Work Together
Stratford voters come from different generations, different backgrounds, different cultures, and we have a wide variety of perspectives. This makes us eminently qualified to tackle these issues. We can start by using site as a sounding board, a resource centre, and a discussion site.
Once we learn as much as we can about the issues, we can get together and form some good questions. When we have the questions, we can do a mass mailing that will get the message out to voters and encourage their participation in the all-candidates meeting in the fall. We’ve got lots of time to do this, and if we do it together it won’t be much work.
If you’re interested in helping out, please let us know through the form at the bottom of this page.
ISSUES
COUNCIL
- How can we provide a framework for councillors to deal with the demands of increasing environmental change?
- Nationwide, councils are coming under pressure from organized media campaigns. What can we do to counteract this?
- Do we need a change in the composition of our council? Fewer councillors? More wards? Something else?
RESIDENTS
Wellbeing frameworks and practices provide a way to re-imagine our values to cope with present day challenges. What questions can we ask to be sure our councilors understand the goal of balancing goals for economic growth with the wellbeing of people and planet?
DEVELOPMENT
- Farmland is under attack in Ontario. How can we find a way to help young people find homes without creating sprawl?
- How can we make sure resident voices are heard when decisions are made on large projects like the Grand Tunk site (theCooper site) or the Krug Factory site?
WATER
Water is a critical problem for many of our neighbouring communities. How do we learn from our neighbours to put in place practical conservation guidelines, and how can we assure these guidelines will be followed?
TRANSPORTATION
Our transportation problems centre on car dependence, gaps in public and accessible transit, limited intercity options, and incomplete support for walking and cycling. All of these have heavy impacts on our environment. What kinds of questions will we ask of candidates to assure they will see the importance of these issues?
INFRASTRUCTURE
- Infrastructure is a crucial topic for the environment. Municipalities cause the most emissions, and we own the infrastructure that causes it. The push for growth will only intensify the problem. How do we resolve this?
- Our taxes are among the highest in Ontario, ranking 4th overall. At the same time, much of our infrastructure is outdated. How can we begin a dialogue with the new council to work out an affordable solution?