Ward 4 candidate Leon Leclair

I am married to Colette, father of three and have never left Chatham-Kent.

I currently manage a large diverse agriculture business growing tomatoes, sugar beets, seed corn, beans, corn and wheat. Also to help complement better staff and equipment use, I run a custom plant, spray and harvest business and I am partners with the largest sugar beet harvest group in Ontario.

Presently my time is spent on various boards, co-founder of bridge committee, founding member of Chatham-Kent agriculture development committee, chair of food hub committee, vice-chair on agriculture committee with Chatham-Kent Chamber of Commerce, and many more. I am seeking second term as there is much more to be accomplished with bridge committee, and as chair of food hub my goal will be to aid in establishing new food value-added businesses.

Would you support a tax freeze or rollback if it meant reduced staff or services?

Yes only with proper discussion; no if services are vital.

Would you support an OPP costing study?

Yes, we have the OPP report tabled in 1998 and price it out accordingly; therefore no need for Chatham-Kent police to update their bid.

Do you believe we should continue our ongoing efforts to attract economic investment from China?

China, India, North America, we need to keep looking, however don’t forget about small businesses that we have here already.

Would you support contracting municipal services to the private sector if those services can be delivered more efficiently?

Yes, again only with meaningful discussions.

Would you support investigating amalgamation of fire/ambulance/police services to reduce costs?


Yes.

Would you support a municipal tree-cutting bylaw if it contained incentives for woodlot owners to retain/increase tree cover?

Not until I see what impact on taxes would be. It’s easy to say bylaw is the way to go,

However in saying that I believe trees should be planted around urban areas and have the school aged /young adults take responsibility in growing the newly planted trees

Do you believe we need a municipal ombudsman or ethics commissioner such as London and Windsor have added?

Not sure what London and Windsor have done and why.

Would you consider developing a usage benchmark for municipal offices, arena and libraries and closing those that don’t meet the standards?

Yes.

Do you support development of a community-wide multipurpose recreation centre?

Yes.

Do you support an adopt-a-park program in which service or volunteer groups assume some maintenance (grass cutting) of some municipal facilities?

Yes

Do you support investigating a reduction in the number of municipal councilors?

Yes for investigation only at this time.

Platform

As an agriculture producer, innovator, businessman my platform leans towards agriculture as you can imagine. In council I’ve stated that the ag sector is underutilized, what I mean is we have some of the most productive land in the world, a climate that allows us many options for different crops, fresh water to draw from and I believe a need for food that has some of strictest rules (possibly the strictest in the world) of what can be applied on them.

On average, every dollar earned in the Ag sector, 93 cents is operating expense. My vision is to help as a councilor and as chair of food hub committee grow the value added side of agriculture, meaning I would like to see every crop grown in Chatham-Kent (at last count we grow 72 crops) have an added process done to them. This could be making our own hungry man dinner with Chatham-Kent produced items, to canning, freezing, boxing and selling to the world. With all these processes comes added value by being a made in Chatham Kent product on average 93 cents of extra value to the crops will stay in Chatham Kent.

Infrastructure, big word, big cost – as co-founder of bridge committee, in the last 18 months the committee along with engineering division have identified cost avoidances on ways we build and replace bridges, that will benefit all the residents of Chatham-Kent. As a group, we have seen structures designed by out-of-community consultants only to be redesigned in house with a much more cost-efficient and time efficient structure. More than one has seen a cost reduction of more than $250,000.

I believe that the work of the committee and engineering staff will show that by empowering our staff the use of consultants will drop, therefore decreasing the burden on our constituents, therefore building/replacing more structures with less money.

I also would like to have a report done on taking advantage of the “low” cost of borrowing money. If a structure today cost X amount to fix and it doubles every five years, would it not be prudent to fix/repair now.

Question on fire – having the privilege to be on selection committee for a new fire chief, I believe that the new fire chief will be able to find cost avoidances within his workforce that will benefit both fire staff and our citizens. In saying that, if we cannot find cost reductions, or the arbitration system is not overhauled, I would support a system where composites are used, and there are many examples out there that are successful and could be used within Chatham-Kent.

As a businessman, I support our economic development staff to search out new business, however, in saying that in Chatham-Kent we have thousands of small businesses, would the community support and help grow these said businesses so that they needed to hire, (thousands of small businesses each adding one new employee equals how many new jobs)?

To finish on the question on number of councillors, I would entertain such discussion and only after said discussion would I make my views known.