With a little over a month before election day, the mayoral race is starting to heat up as Josh Morgan released his official campaign platform on Wednesday.
Standing on stage on the second floor lounge of the Grand Theater on Richmond Street, Morgan outlined his promises should he be elected and answered questions from the media and the public.
Josh Morgan addressing the crowd about his electoral platform. (Mike Lacasse / XFM News)
The physical copy of the platform comes out to 24 pages of campaign promises that are broken down into five different sections, or “key pillars” as his team put it:
Housing and affordability
Mental health and addictions
Inclusive city and safe, vibrant neighbourhoods
Climate change
Economic prosperity
Among some of the more ambitious promises includes building 50,000 new homes over the next decade, with 10,000 of them expected for the core, maintaining low property taxes despite ongoing inflation and developing a Rent-to-Own program under a federally-funded program.
“We’re going to be making a big commitment to helping out the province meeting a provincial-wide goal on housing and I think, in turn, the province needs to recognize that we need help in provincial healthcare dollars in support of housing,” says Morgan.
Josh Morgan being interviewed after his speech. (Mike Lacasse / XFM News)
Morgan also promised an increase of at least 200 new housing spaces for the most vulnerable in the city with built in “wraparound” services to help care for them as well as adding new mental health facilities and a mental health emergency centre in the city.
“Creating 200 wraparound spaces is not something the municipality can do alone,” says Morgan. “It’s something that the municipality and the federal government tend to partner with on capital bills and capital infrastructure. Organizations […] provide wraparound supports and they do so with provincial health dollar support.”
Part of his platform is also more support for the London Police Service which recently said they’re going to be requesting funds for an additional 52 officers.
“What you have is a London Police Service who has said ‘you have to redeploy the COR unit, Community Oriented Response, to deal with front line crime,” says Morgan.
The COR unit was dissolved last year when the officers were re-assigned to front-line duties to help with the growing backlog of calls, which the LPS claims has only gotten worse.
Further pledges made by Morgan include $4 million investment into accelerating the city’s Parks and Recreation Master Plan, expediting the construction of the Southeast Community Centre and advocate to the federal government for London to receive an ‘Indigenous Community’ designation which would bring more funds in by the federal government to reduce homelessness in the city.
Morgan also supports the transition to electric vehicles, which includes making the switch over for our city buses from diesel. This plan is already in place and the first electric buses are expected to roll out mid-2024.
When asked to sum up his vision for the city if elected, Morgan said that he envisions London’s future as “a dynamic, vibrant, growing city with a place for all.”
The full campaign platform can be downloaded here.
Election day is on October 24.
https://youtu.be/SVC0s3AR_QQ
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