Whitehorse Coun. Kirk Cameron has confirmed his run for the mayor’s chair in the wake of Mayor Laura Cabott’s decision to not seek another term and speculation that he would go out for the job.
“You know what, I pretty much made up my mind. This is going to happen. I have so many ideas about our wonderful city, I've got to get out there and put my thoughts in the hopper, and let's see where that goes,” he said.
“This is me saying, yes, I will be running.”
Cameron's bid for the mayor’s chair begins as he grapples with a few intense recent council meetings brought about by discussion of the war in Gaza.
A point of order that Cameron launched struck a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza tabled by Coun. Michelle Friesen from the agenda and led to considerable backlash from about two-dozen residents who appeared as delegates the following meeting.
On both the Gaza matter and other challenges like the city’s funding relationship with the Yukon government, Cameron feels the solution is dialogue. He said he’s willing to change city bylaws and procedures to allow more of it.
“I think, City of Whitehorse especially, we need to figure out how we want to build and do our governing here that is far more receptive to input from our community, and we don't have that in place yet, and it's nobody's fault. It's just a fact that we have a procedures bylaw that we need to update and make useful for the City of Whitehorse in today's context. It's not there yet. We need to really focus on that, and that's one of my pillars.”
City rules got in the way of a “full discussion” on Gaza with the delegates who presented at the June 3 meeting in Cameron’s eyes.
“We were hamstrung by our procedures bylaw to say we can't. We're there to ask polite questions to people who are going to come to us to speak on incredibly important issues in front of us. And frankly, they did, and so I'm not criticizing them, I'm just saying there wasn't the machinery in our procedures that allowed us to have a full discussion with the people that came before us.”
He raised the possibility of creating a forum other than council or committee meetings that allow two-way dialogue, rather than just questions between city residents and elected officials. He said he did not pose questions to any of the delegates speaking to the Gaza motion because no question he could ask “would help to explain or bring clarity to what we were dealing with.”
“I was just saying, look, this is not appropriate for us to side with one or the other. People are dying, children are dying, women are dying. Everybody is trying to figure out something that will make this horrible event go away.”
He maintains that the motion that was tabled made council take sides but acknowledged that not allowing it to go to council for discussion and refinement might have been a mistake.
“We cannot be supporting one side, even though, yes, there may be travesties that are bigger on one side than another. The frank reality is, it's not up to us to wade in on this stuff. Can we ask for peace worldwide? I'm there, always, always. But don't put me in a position where I have to support one side or the other.”
As he sets the groundwork for a mayoral run, Cameron sees city infrastructure as a key item that the next mayor and council will have to deal with over the next term. He said there are a quarter-billion dollars in projects the city will have to complete in the coming years. He offered the examples of a permanent fix to the sliding escarpment above Robert Service Way and water-treatment upgrades as work needed to meet the needs of a city that is growing fast.
“Good intergovernmental debate with Yukon government (YG) and with federal government to make sure we have money that can support those kinds of developments,” he said.
“We’ve got to protect the health of our citizens. These are the infrastructure basics that we have to be completely supportive of and focused on, and that's why I continue to say that intergovernmental discussion with YG and the feds is so fundamentally important.”
Cameron says he will strive to avoid putting the cost of the planned work on Whitehorse taxpayers.
Asked about past breakdowns in cooperation between Whitehorse and superior governments such as the abandonment of its Canada Winter Games co-hosting bid with the Yukon government, Cameron said he thinks the best remedy is to just keep the conversation going.
“Solutions often come from just staying belligerent about talking and when you don't like what somebody's saying, then you need to talk more,” he said.
The mayoral hopeful noted lots of experience working with various levels of government. He is semi-retired from a career as a governance consultant and has served two partial and one full term on council.
Cameron won a city council by-election in 2011 and then won the seat back for what was to be a full term in 2012. He resigned in early 2015 amid the firing of two long-time city administrators. Cameron made his return to municipal politics in 2021, winning his seat for the council term that ends with this fall’s election.
He is making the jump towards the mayor’s chair because he thinks government experience is an important qualification for the role. It seemed to him, based on conversations behind the scenes and recent announcements from Cabott and Coun. Ted Laking, who also isn't running in the municipal election, that such experience might be absent from the ballot come October.
“And so I'm saying, I'll put my name forward, because I believe we need somebody with municipal experience in that chair. It's important, very important, for our city,” he said.
— With files from Stephanie Waddell and Myles Dolphin.
Contact Jim Elliot at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com
