Shaheen Mujahid
*Responses are posted unedited and have not been fact-checked*
Housing: I'm proud of the work council has done in embedding increasing the amount of affordable housing within our strategic plan. This has led to the creation of an affordable housing reserve, with a stable funding source, which my advocacy (in part) led to increased funding during this past term. That has also led to the creation of the City of Waterloo's first ever affordable housing strategy, with 6 goals and 30 actions aimed at creating and retaining affordable housing over a 10 year period. If re-elected, I will support the implementation of this plan to ensure the City is doing it's part to ensure affordable housing is available to all residents of the City of Waterloo along the entire housing spectrum.
Public Safety: As a City Councillor, the majority of the jurisdiction and authority over these decision making lies with the Region, however I am broadly supportive of the vision and comments pertaining to reimagining public safety in our community. As a city councillor I would continue to use my platform to advocate and work within my area of influence to work towards this vision.
Indigenous Sovereignty: Although much of the above specific questions pertain to Regional and/or City of Kitchener lands, I am broadly supportive of the vision. I believe a key part of Indigenous reconciliation includes ensuring that there is development consultation on large projects and parcels of land, particularly those owned by the municipalities, in addition to consultation on broad plans such as the Official Plans of the municipalities. I could not support the last two questions, as I'm not certain of the legalities associated with them, but I think they are interesting ideas worth exploring. I'm proud of the creation of our Anti-Racism, Indigenous Reconciliation and Accessibility team at the City and am eager to support them in our journey of reconciliation.
Social Services: Again, although most of these questions pertain to the Regional jurisdiction (social services, public health, child care), I am broadly supportive of the vision. Where appropriate I am committed to support these initiatives through the local municipality lens. I'm proud of the expansion of public washrooms that has been made in the Uptown core and am eager to continue exploring drinking water access, while noting that Provincial rules in light of the Walkerton drinking water crisis may make this challenging.
Transportation: Safe streets and sustainable transportation is a priority for my campaign. I know how important it is to the residents of Ward 2, having participated in walkabouts at elementary schools across the ward. The City of Waterloo committed to Vision Zero principles as part of our most recently approved Transportation Master Plan and I'm committed to tackling this issue through active transportation improvements, traffic calming implementations and more. I have been a strong advocate for reducing the speed limit to 30km/hr on all residential streets and am proud that it was approved at Council. I believe it will be the catalyst to help drive change in how our streets are designed and operate and is a big piece of the puzzle in achieving our goals. While I am not in support of full winter maintenance on all sidewalks, I do believe that we need to look at the creation of priority routes around schools, transit stops and other high priority locations and have advocated as such. We need to do better on this issue to ensure our pedestrian/cycling network works well for our most vulnerable road users.
Other: I would just like to take a moment to address Climate Change, as it is one of the priorities of my campaign, not directly touched upon in the survey. We only have two Council terms remaining to achieve our 50% greenhouse gas emission reduction target by 2030. We need to ensure that Waterloo is a leader in transitioning to a low-carbon future, building a resilient city and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. I'm proud of some of the steps taken by Council to date, including the development of an energy road map, which shows us what we need to do in order to achieve these targets and (in Ward 2) the creation of Sustainable Development Guidelines as a requirement of sale in the new West Side Employment Lands industrial park. I am committed to tackling the Climate Crisis in the next term of Council.
Housing: Increase eligibility and monitoring measures to assure more transparency and service need for all applicants and continuous evaluations of all beneficiaries.
Public Safety: Decriminalizing and stopping punishing drug use shall be supervised and managed based on cause & effect education-based, psychological analytical, and gradual punishing system.
Indigenous Sovereignty: We need to engage with open and futuristic positive attitude leaders of Indigenous peoples, as well as all other Canadians from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, Canada nowadays is completely different even from 50 years ago.
Social Services: Increase the contributions from the private sector.
Transportation: Introduce more technology-based systems to control speed limits in certain areas and intersections, as well as during certain times of the day.