By Amanda Pratt
With previous experience as a poverty rights lawyer, David MacDonald says his concern for the underprivileged and a desire to get back to helping them are what made him decide to run for city council.
“I really miss not being able to help people on the front lines,” he says. “I think I give a voice to many of the people in this community who haven’t been heard before.”
Now working for the federal government in the Intellectual Property Office as senior trade-marks examiner, MacDonald says he formerly represented tenants who couldn’t pay their rent, dealing with landlords so his clients wouldn’t be evicted.
One of his main goals as councillor would be to increase the number of affordable housing units in Somerset Ward.He says one way of doing this is to encourage home ownership through tax incentives and increase the number of affordable housing projects in the city.
“For many people, they get caught in the rent cycle and it really is a cycle of poverty,” he says.
“So instead of paying $800 a month in rent, we can get them on their way to owning their own homes.”
MacDonald says his plan’s effect would be twofold, creating wealth for homeowners and more space in the rental market as more people buy their own homes.
He says this will decrease rents, alleviating an unhealthy situation.
“Most people are paying 50 per cent of their take-home pay in rent and you can’t survive on that,” he says.
Another key objective for MacDonald is to make sure “every tax dollar is spent wisely.”
He adds that an independent auditor should be appointed to review the city’s financial decisions.
“I want people to be able to say, ‘You voted on this, you’re responsible for it,’ and if they don’t like us, they can boot us out,” he says.
Born in Montreal, MacDonald owned and operated a small business in Toronto for five years before coming to Ottawa in 1993 to get his law degree from the University of Ottawa.
His business was an indoor playground where parents took their children to socialize. Parents would come, relax and chat with other parents while their children played together.
MacDonald says the playground became a big part of the community and he used it to host many charitable events and raise awareness for the less fortunate.
He says he sponsored a year-round non-perishable food collection for a Toronto food bank and raised the second most food, next to the Toronto Fire Department.
MacDonald says his biggest goals are that “the area becomes prosperous and visually beautiful . . . it’s important that we take pride in the city.”
“Because of my background in business and working on the front lines with people who are powerless in many ways, it gives me a balanced approach to what we can be doing in the city and how we can help people,” he says.