Sport Aurora All-Candidates Meeting

Sport Aurora hosted their all-candidates meeting yesterday.

It was a lively affair with not only the Mayoral candidates answering questions, but also a session for the candidates for Council to answer questions.

The format was modified slightly from the previous events, in that after the Mayoral candidates gave their opening remarks, questions were then directed to a particular candidate and the others were given the opportunity to offer a rebuttal.

While not a full-out debate, it did allow the candidates to provide points of differentiation.

Obviously, the focus was on sports and volunteerism, and I wish to thank Sport Aurora for giving us the opportunity to address this important element of life here in Aurora.

The general consensus is that sport is very important in Aurora, and in my opinion, we need to focus more on the long-term benefits.


My Perspective: We should be looking at how to attract tournaments. The positive economic and cultural benefits are too important to overlook. For example, there was a discussion on the benefits of building a facility to host some of the baseball games for the Pan-Am games that are coming in 2015.

With the these games being the driver of the all-day GO train, there is certainly good reason to look at developing a business plan around this to see if it is feasible.

One point of discussion that did not come up was the “Every Kid Can Play”. This is a program that recognizes that even in affluent Aurora, not everyone can afford to have their children in organized sport. If elected Mayor, I commit to bringing this very valuable program forward for public review.

My thanks to Sport Aurora for organizing this event.