The Coast candidate questionnaire answers
For the past few weeks we here at The Coast have been hard at work doing deep dives into each district in the 2024 municipal election in Halifax. All 16 districts are now live and those district spotlights can be found here.
Before getting into the candidate survey, a little bit of election administration. Advance polls are now open until October 16, and eligible voters can now cast ballots by phone or online. Advance in-person polls are open on October 12 and October 15, between 12 p.m. and 8 p.m. On election day, October 19, polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information on that, please visit Halifax.ca/elections.
There are a lot of issues in the HRM, and luckily, we live in a city with mostly competent bureaucracy working hard to correct or mitigate most, if not all, of those issues. The questionnaire was designed to see if the candidates read the municipal plans and have a general understanding of the issues at play in the city.
Its second role was to inform a follow-up interview. If the answers were general, the questions started general. If the answers were detailed enough, such as District 8’s Anika Riopel, who almost caught the trick question when she clocked the fact that the linked “Suburban Plan” was in fact the “Suburban Housing Accelerator Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy.” The former is currently being drafted and coming to council early next year. And, as we all know, the latter was attachment C of the housing accelerator fund bylaw changes passed in April and only applies to specific sites. Nevertheless, if someone answered that level of detail, the follow-up questions could probably start right in the weeds.
With the questionnaire answers and interviews about policy, The Coast tried to figure out who would be good at shaping policy for a better Halifax in 2050. All the guides should be read through that lens.
If you love homework, you can take the exam right here.
There are a few candidates who answered not in Google Forms. You can find their answers attached as PDFs below. Otherwise, all of the answers received from candidates can be found right here.
