Corey Bagdon – McKellar Candidate
- Businesses are frequently the targets of crime and on the front line dealing with societal problems in the area; what steps do you think should be taken to ensure businesses are protected and our community is safer to explore, shop, work and play in.
Creating safe streets is more an issue of addressing the needs of all individuals who make up those communities. When those individual needs are not being met, the consequences affect every member of the community. I believe that the best way to address the issues of societal problems in the area would be to address the individual needs of every member of the community. We need to come up with strategies that can allocate resources in such a way so that every member of the community’s needs are being met. This can only be done by interacting and engaging with all community members and working collaboratively and cooperatively to ensure that everyone can have access to the public goods and services available.
- What is your impression of the Fort William Business community? What is one thing that is done well and what is one thing that needs to improve?
My impression of the Fort William Business community is primarily focused around tenacity. I feel that the Fort William Business community has been incredibly resilient in the face of a number of difficult challenges over the past few decades. One area where I feel the Fort William Business community can improve is in reaching out and engaging with the community members of the Fort William Business area directly. Instead of trying to entrepreneur up these business ideas that look great on a business plan, the business community should be doing more to engage with the members of the community and pay more attention to servicing the actual
Demand that is present within the Fort William community.
- With the revitalization of downtown Fort William project underway there is no planned community center for the area after the project is completed. Victoriaville provided an important and safe gathering place. What vision do you have to recreate a similar environment for community connectivity?
I believe that it is not my responsibility as a Ward Councillor to decide what our communities look like. I do not have a vision of what that community environment should look like. My vision rests on ensuring that the members of the public are the ones who are deciding what that environment should look like. I believe strongly that it should be entirely up to those community members who will be using that environment to decide what that environment looks like. As a public servant it is my responsibility to listen to the needs of all members of the community and facilitate the process of, and support those community members in, creating the welcoming environment that makes them all feel validated, accepted and safe.