By Diana Hart
With the municipal election less than two months away, four candidates fighting to represent Somerset Ward are gearing up their campaigns.
This year, incumbent Coun. Diane Holmes faces three first-time candidates: Luc Lapointe, Georges Guirguis and Karen Dawe.
Holmes, who has represented Centretown on regional and city councils since 1982, says she wants to be re-elected to continue working on the projects most important to her.
“There are so many things still to do. We’ve made progress and there is still more to make,” she says.
Holmes says her goals for improving the city include making the streets safer by having local businesses work with police to report crime, developing commercial areas such as Bank, Sparks and Somerset streets and creating more affordable housing.
She says her years of experience make her the best person to represent Somerset, adding that she loves what she does.
However, Holmes’s opponents say Somerset Ward needs a new voice on city council.
Luc Lapointe, The Lung Association’s director of public affairs and the owner of two local restaurants called Hot Peppers, says the city needs new creative ideas to live up to its potential as both a city and tourist destination.
“It’s a great destination, but people pass by here to go to Montreal and other cities. I mean, in my restaurant, if people left when they still had full plates, I’d want to find out why,” he says, adding he wants to help protect Ottawa’s small businesses.
Lapointe came to Ottawa 25 years ago from Lac-St-Jean, Que. His experience in working with politicians includes acting as an economic advisor to different parliamentary committees over the past 12 years.
Lapointe says this experience inspired him to run for a seat on city council, adding this will allow him to give more input.
“Your 30 seconds at the microphone doesn’t give you enough time to really make a difference,” he says.
Lapointe says he wants to make the city safer by investing in programs that will stop desperate people from turning to crime. He says since Ottawa has such high taxes, it needs to use its money better.
Another candidate who says the city isn’t spending its money properly is George Guirguis, a mechanical engineer who first ran in the 2003 provincial election as an independent.
Guirguis says through his heating repairs business, he became inspired to help seniors.
“I’d like to see the city invest in seniors’ homes. These people deserve to be respected. The city is wasting so much money right now on things like the light rail,” says Guirguis.
He says he decided to run for city council because he felt his concerns were being ignored.
“I tried calling Diane Holmes’s office before and she did not call us back. I just got told she was busy. It’s time for her to go,” says Guirguis.
Also eager for change is Karen Dawe, an advocate for Ottawa’s homeless. She says she is running to have her voice heard.
Dawe says after sitting on Ottawa’s Task Force on Homeless in 2004, she thinks council needs some changes. She says the city didn’t work well with activists during this time.
“I felt like the city council was working against us. They were very antagonistic towards us,” says Dawe.
She says she wants to improve the city’s welfare system, especially the Children’s Aid Society, which she feels isn’t doing enough to help Ottawa’s children.
“There are so many things to be done, I don’t know how much I can change but I want to try,” she says.
In the 2003 election, Somerset Ward had the lowest voter turnout in Ottawa with 25 per cent of residents coming to the polls. Holmes won with 62 per cent of the vote against the seven other candidates.