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Community First

 

Mike Matulewicz for Mayor of Mississauga

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Community First.   It's That Simple.

 

A Mississauga that is safe, that you can afford, and that leaves no one behind.

 

That last part is not charity.

 

It is the cheapest, smartest way to run a city — because a neighbour who is housed, fed, and safe never becomes the emergency we all pay for later.

 

I spent 34 years with the Toronto Police Service — as a detective, a supervisor, and a planner of front-line operations.

 

I have lived in Mississauga for over forty years.

 

Now I am running for Mayor.

 

What Is Happening in Your Community Right Now

 

• Emergency room waits of six to twelve hours.

• Police buried under 911 calls they cannot reach.

• More than one in five of us without a family doctor.

• Paramedic and firefighter shortages — help that arrives too slowly.

• Food banks busier than ever: 503,705 visits last year, nearly one in three a child.

• Seniors who spent forty years paying off a home, now unable to stay in it.

• Trade disruptions threatening up to 500,000 Ontario jobs.

 

These are not policy problems.  They are your neighbours' lives.

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The Deal Is Broken — The Fair Share We Are Owed

 

For every dollar you pay in taxes, Mississauga gets back about 37 cents in services. The Ontario average is 76 cents.That gap is about $500 million every year — roughly $578 per resident — and it has held for two decades.

 

You paid for the shortfall twice: once in taxes, and again in the services that never came.

 

The City has documented this. City Council has endorsed it without a single vote against. The number is not in dispute. The action is.

 

There is a second gap, closer to home. Mississauga funds about 62 percent of the Peel Regional Police budget; Brampton funds about 38 percent — with a nearly equal population.

 

A fair share is owed at both levels: by the Province that sets the formula, and by the Region that splits the bill.

 

A fair share is not a favour. It is arithmetic.

 

For decades, Mississauga's own mayors — Hazel McCallion, Bonnie Crombie, and today Carolyn Parrish — have said the same thing across different parties: this city does not get its fair share.

 

Everyone agrees on the problem. The only question left is how to make the Province and the Region finally act.

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Why a Zero-Dollar Campaign

 

Some say a campaign that spends no money cannot be serious.

 

I understand why — we have been taught that the side with the biggest signs and the most ads is the side that means it.

 

The opposite is true.

 

I am breaking the unwritten rule, that you must raise and spend money to be taken seriously.

 

I break no law and no trust.

 

I am refusing a rigged game.

 

Provincial politics runs on millions of dollars and respects one thing only: votes.

 

Money it can match.  Advertising it can outspend.

 

A community's resolve it cannot buy.

 

 

A mayor elected by 100,000 residents, with zero dollars spent, is proof of the one thing money cannot fake — a community that has had enough and has decided, together, to be heard.

 

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I will not fight on the field they own, where the deepest pockets win.

 

I will fight on the one field that beats them: the ballot.

 

No one can outspend a vote.

 

And if it can be done here, every shortchanged city in Ontario gets the same key.

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That will get the Provinces attention!

 

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What I Stand For

 

1. Recover the money we are owed. Fight the Province, every year, to close the 37-cent gap — and put what we recover back into the health, policing, and city services families have already paid for.

 

2. Safer streets, done smarter — a Community Response Unit. 305 trained civilian responders for the roughly 40 percent of 911 calls that are not crimes. Faster help for you, police freed for real crime. (Full plan below.)

 

3. Let seniors keep their homes. A property-tax deferral so no senior loses the home they spent forty years paying off — based on a plan the City of Ottawa already runs.

 

4. Homes you can afford — and keep. A Community Land Trust that keeps housing affordable permanently, built on city land at no cost to taxpayers. (Full plan below.)

 

5. Food as infrastructure. Claim Mississauga's share of new federal food funding and build local food production — not just another charity drive. (Full plan below.)

 

6. A safe bed for every woman fleeing violence — funded like fire and ambulance, not by donations. (Full plan below.)

 

7. Open City Hall. An independent Auditor General and city business published by default, so you can see how your money is spent. (Full plan below.)

 

8. City-run medical clinics. A model already working in B.C., where a city clinic in Colwood (population 20,000) drew 100 doctors within weeks of opening.

 

9. A prepared city — one that sees problems coming and acts before they arrive, not after.

 

10. Press for a transit levy. Push the Province to let Mississauga put a small fuel levy toward public transit, as Victoria and Montreal already do.

 

11. Mississauga as a national training hub — for Canadian Armed Forces, doctors, nurses, and cyber specialists — building the local economy while serving the country.

 

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The Community Response Unit (CRU)

 

Faster police response to real crime.  Better care in a crisis.

 

Right now, a large share of the calls our police answer are not crimes — a wellness check, a mental-health crisis, a noise complaint, a fender-bender with no injuries.

 

The officers we need fighting crime spend hours on calls that do not need a badge and a gun.

 

The person in crisis gets an armed response when they needed care.

 

The real victim waits longer.

 

And the taxpayer pays the highest-cost responder for the lowest-risk call.

 

A Community Response Unit is a team of 305 trained civilian responders who take the roughly four-in-ten 911 calls that are not crimes in progress or threats to life: mental-health crises and wellness checks, collisions without injuries, noise complaints and neighbour disputes, found property and lost persons.

 

The CRU adds responders.

 

It removes no officers and no dollars from the police budget.

 

It works in partnership with Peel Regional Police, who keep every call involving a crime or a danger.

 

Our officers are freed to do the work only they can do — and they get to it faster.

 

This is not defunding the police. It is backing them up.

 

It costs about $27.4 million a year — close to $38 per resident — less than the hidden cost of sending our most expensive responder to calls that never needed one.

 

It is built to qualify for funding that already exists (the federal Building Safer Communities Fund and Ontario's Community Safety and Policing and Mobile Crisis grants), and I have already written to the Ontario Solicitor General and the federal Minister of Public Safety to confirm the fit.

 

The City can act now.

 

Ontario already requires every city to have a Community Safety and Well-Being Plan, and Mississauga has one.

 

Under the Municipal Act, Council can set this up and pay for it without a new law or the Province's permission.

 

The City already wrote the plan. The CRU is how we keep the promise.

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Care is not charity.   It is the infrastructure of a safe city.

 

Food as Infrastructure  

 

Feed our people today. Grow our own food tomorrow.

 

Last year there were 503,705 visits to food banks in Mississauga — a record.

 

Nearly one in three was a child.

 

A food bank was meant to be an emergency. It has become a fixture.

 

Charity hands out food when people are already in trouble.

 

Infrastructure makes sure the food, the jobs, and the supply are there to begin with.

 

We will do both.

 

Fund food security like a public good — not a year-to-year drive that runs short every winter.

 

Claim Mississauga's share of the new federal food money — $750 million for greenhouses, $1 billion for food hubs — with applications opening in 2026. A city with a plan gets a share. A city without one does not.

 

Open careers in food for young people, with Sheridan College and our school boards.

 

Modern food production is high-tech work — real skills, real wages.

 

Grow food at every scale: home gardens, co-op greenhouses, container farms, and commercial growers the city helps make possible.

 

Answer the energy question first — waste heat, solar, off-peak power — so a greenhouse can pay its way through a Canadian winter.

 

##...Require food-growing space in large new buildings, the way we already require parkland.   It costs the taxpayer nothing.

 

A mayor does not run farms. A mayor clears the path — through zoning, city land, partners at one table, and a hand on the federal money before other cities reach it.

 

Our opponents are arguing about the size of the food-bank line.

 

We are building the city that needs a smaller one.

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Housing — You Pay Either Way

 

Homelessness and unstable housing are not free.

 

We pay for them every day — in emergency rooms, shelter beds, police calls, court time, and the work and school a family loses when it loses its home.

 

We will pay either way.

 

The only question is whether we keep paying for the crisis, or start paying for the solution.

 

The cheaper choice is also the humane one.

 

The national At Home / Chez Soi study found that for the highest-need residents, every $10 spent on housing-first saved about $21.72 elsewhere — fewer hospital stays, fewer arrests, fewer emergency nights.

 

A home costs less than a crisis.

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Affordable homes

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A Community Land Trust is land the community owns and keeps affordable permanently.

 

The Trust holds the ground; homes and shops are built on it; and because the community owns the land, the affordability cannot be flipped away.

 

One Trust can do several things at once: affordable rental homes for working families, a path for small local investors, ground-floor shops that keep rents stable, room for community clinics — and right-sized bungalows for seniors.

 

That last one matters. Many seniors live in family-sized homes they can no longer manage and will not leave, because there is nowhere dignified to go.

 

A bungalow in the Trust gives them somewhere to land, in the community they helped build. One move. Two families housed.

 

This costs the taxpayer nothing.

 

The City already holds the levers: surplus city land offered to the Trust instead of the highest bidder, affordable-housing requirements where provincial law allows, and community-benefit agreements on large developments.

 

Where the Province has limited these tools, I will use what remains and press for the rest — as advocacy, never as a promise I cannot keep.

 

We can begin with the levers we already hold.

 

A home is the foundation everything else stands on — and we are paying for it either way.

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A Safe Place to Go

 

In Mississauga and across Peel, a woman fleeing violence often cannot find a bed, because the shelters are full and funded by donations instead of by government.

 

A shelter bed is a safety service, like fire and ambulance. It should be funded the same way: in full.

 

A mayor does not run the shelters, but the office holds real levers.

 

I will:

 

• Use the Mayor's seat on Peel Regional Council to push for full funding of victim services every budget year.

• Press Queen's Park to fund shelters to match the emergency it has already declared.

• Fast-track shelter and transitional-housing projects, and waive or reduce municipal fees for them.

• Offer suitable city land to build safe beds faster.

• Direct city grants to the agencies keeping women safe.

• Keep the shelters, the Region, Peel Police, and our MPPs and MPs at one table, reporting to Council every year.

 

We pay for this violence either way — in shelter beds today, or in police calls and funerals tomorrow. I would rather pay for the beds.

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Open City Hall

 

You pay for this city.

You should be able to see how it is run and how your money is spent — without filing a form, paying a fee, or waiting a month.

 

As the mayor's office gains more power — to hire, to fire, to set the budget — the independent watching of it must grow too, not shrink.

 

Hire an independent Auditor General — one no single mayor or council can fire — shared with neighbouring cities to keep the cost low.

 

Publish by default: budgets, contracts, expenses, and audit reports posted online before anyone has to ask.

 

Keep a public FOI log: when one resident receives a Freedom of Information report, publish it so every resident can see it.

 

Power that works in the open earns trust.

Power that works in the dark spends it.

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What Has Been Cut by the Province.

 

Governments often say they are spending more. Sometimes that is true.

 

But spending more is not the same as keeping up.

 

When costs rise and population grows, a smaller increase is still a cut in real terms.

 

The numbers below come from Ontario's own financial watchdog, hospital unions, and school boards.

 

They are not opinions. They are reported facts — check them yourself.

 

Health Care

 

Ontario funds its hospitals at the lowest rate in Canada.

 

Average emergency-room wait for admission: 20 hours. The government target is 8. (Ontario hospital unions, 2026)

 

Surgical wait times have doubled since 2019. (CUPE Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, 2026)

 

About 2,000 patients a day are treated in hallways and storage rooms for lack of beds; a 4,080-bed shortfall is projected. (CUPE research report, January 2026)

 

More than 1,000 hospital jobs are being cut across North Bay, Hamilton, Ottawa, Niagara, and the GTA. (CBC News, April 2026)

 

4 in 10 nurses plan to leave their job or profession within a year; 4 in 5 show clinical symptoms of burnout. (Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, 2024)

 

15,000 long-term-care beds were promised by 2023; 2,385 were added.

 

At that rate, 125 years to keep the promise. (Ontario Health Coalition, 2024)

 

Hospitals received a 4% funding increase for 2026–27.

 

They need 6% just to hold current service.

 

The difference is paid for by cutting staff and closing services.

 

Social services (mental health, housing help, disability support, child protection, Ontario Works)

 

A 17.8% real cut from 2018 to planned 2028 spending, adjusted for inflation and population. (CUPE Ontario, March 2026)

 

The Financial Accountability Office identified a $3.7 billion shortfall, with a $1.8 billion annual gap projected by 2026–27. (FAO of Ontario, 2024)

 

Ten of seventeen supervised consumption sites were ordered closed by the Province. Closing them does not end addiction — it ends the safety net around it.

 

Ontario Works pays a single adult up to $390 a month for shelter. Average Ontario rent passed $2,200 a month in 2024. That gap has only grown.

 

By 2030, Ontario's debt-interest payments are projected to exceed total spending on all social services combined. (The Hub, analysis of the Ontario 2026 Budget)

 

Education

 

$6.3 billion total underfunding of public education since 2018. (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, cited by CUPE, 2026)

 

A $1.4 billion cut to per-pupil funding in 2025–26 alone; a 10% effective cut in per-student funding since 2018, adjusted for inflation. (Ontario School Board Council of Unions / OSSTF, 2024–2026)

 

Toronto DSB is cutting roughly 607 teaching positions; York Region DSB is cutting 249, including educational assistants and library technicians — staff who support students with disabilities and literacy.

 

How these cuts connect

 

These are not three separate problems.

 

They are one problem with three faces.

 

• When social services are cut, more people end up in emergency rooms.

• When school mental-health supports are cut, more young people reach crisis.

• When addiction services close, more people end up in shelters and wards.

• When hospital staff burn out and leave, wait times grow for everyone.

 

Every cut in one place creates a cost somewhere else.

 

The cost does not disappear. It moves, and it grows — until it lands on your kitchen table.

 

A mayor cannot control provincial funding decisions.

 

But a mayor can be honest about what is happening, hold the Province accountable publicly and persistently, and require plain-language annual reports to residents on outcomes — not just dollars spent.

 

Good government is not measured by announcements. It is measured by what happens to real people in real communities.

 

When Did We Decide This Was Okay?

When did we accept that an ambulance might take thirty minutes?

That a family doctor is now a luxury?

That a child in a struggling home should go hungry — and feel ashamed of it?

 

You and I decided. Not because we stopped caring, but because we were told, again and again, that nothing can change.

 

The Province is counting on us believing that. They are wrong.

 

One mayor cannot force the Province to change.

 

One hundred thousand voters can.

 

Strong communities are not a luxury. They cost less than a broken one.

 

They are how we get through what is coming.

 

Share this site. Talk to your neighbour.

 

Send it to two people you know in Mississauga.  

 

Your vote is the only currency this campaign accepts.getreadyontario.com · matulewiczmike@hotmail.com · #GetReadyOntario All content reflects the personal opinion of Michael Matulewicz. Please fact-check and form your own conclusions.