Mike Matulewicz
When people feel safe in their neighbourhoods,
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when emergency services arrive,
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when no one goes hungry or homeless or forgotten,
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when health care and social support are present and working,
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communities become resilient.
They become places worth protecting. Worth belonging to.
They close the door on criminal recruitment, radicalization, and the politics of blame.
The promise that drew people to Canada, a safer life, a fair chance,
a country that includes, rather than excludes, is not a sentiment.
It is Canada's strength, it's future and it's sovereignty.
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My Folding Chair Driveway Campaign.
With Luke my golden retriever and my folding camp chair,
I will come to any driveway, sit for a few minutes and discuss any of these issues with you and your neighbours.
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I will not ask for donations,
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I will not ask for help canvassing,
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I will not try to convince you that I am right.
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I only offer my opinion and will listen to yours.
This is your campaign, it is your community needs that are the issue.
This is a community grass roots movement.
To get the Province to change its priorities.
It will spread to other cities.
I will speak to any group within Mississauga or to schedule a driveway chat.
Contact me at : matulewiczmike@hotmail.com
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Why Zero Dollars Mayoral Campaign?
Breaking the rules to hold the province and the region to account.
Some people 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.
The One Rule I Am Breaking
I am breaking one rule, and only one: the unwritten rule that says you must raise and spend money to be taken seriously.
I am breaking no law and no trust.
I am refusing a rigged game.
Provincial politics is a machine that runs on millions of dollars. It respects one thing only: votes.
Money it can match. Advertising it can outspend. Community Resolve it cannot buy.
Holding the Province to Account
For every dollar of need, Mississauga gets back far less from the province than the average Ontario community — about 37 cents, against a provincial average near 76 cents.
That gap costs every resident roughly $578 a year.
Our families pay for it in longer waits, higher costs, and thinner services.
The City has documented this. City Council has endorsed it, without a single vote against.
The number is not in dispute. The action is.
Holding the Region to Account
Mississauga funds about 62 percent of the Peel Regional Police budget. Brampton funds about 38 percent — with a nearly equal population. We carry a share that does not match the math.
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.Everyone Already Agrees on the Problem
For decades, Mississauga’s own mayors — Hazel McCallion, Bonnie Crombie, and today Carolyn Parrish — have said the same thing, across different parties and different times: this city does not get its fair share.
The evidence is overwhelming, and the harm to families is real.
Everyone agrees on the problem. The only question left is how to make the province and the region finally act on it.
What 100,000 Votes Does
A mayor elected by 100,000 residents, with zero dollars spent, is the answer.
That number cannot be waved away as good marketing.
It is proof of the one thing money cannot manufacture — a community that has had enough and has decided, together, to be heard.
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.
If Mississauga Can Do It, Every City Can, the Province will listen!
This is not a Mississauga problem alone.
Every growing city in Ontario is shortchanged by the same formula and the same machine.
If we prove it can be done here — with nothing but resolve and a ballot — we hand every city in the province the same key.
This was never about a campaign.
It is about safety, health, and a fair chance to get ahead — what this community has already paid for, and deserves to finally receive.
Michael Matulewicz spent 34 years with the Toronto Police Service — as a detective, supervisor, and planner of front line operations — and is based in Mississauga.
Share this page. Talk to your neighbour. Send it to two people you know in.
Mississauga.#GetReadyOntario
PRINT THIS PAGE COPY LINK SOURCES City of Mississauga, Council-endorsed fiscal gap analysis: Mississauga receives roughly 37 cents in provincial return on each dollar of need, against a provincial average near 76 cents — a shortfall of about $578 for every resident, every year. Endorsed unanimously by Mississauga City Council. ↩Peel Regional Police 2026 budget and City of Mississauga budget figures: Mississauga funds roughly 62% of the regional police budget; Brampton roughly 38% — with a comparable population. The Peel police budget has grown about 81% over five years. ↩getreadyontario.com · matulewiczmike@hotmail.comThe Hybrid Police-Military Reserve Program (HPMR) is a separate federal initiative and does not form part of this municipal platform.
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WHAT HAS BEEN CUT
Health Care, Social Services, and Education in Ontario:
The Facts
Governments often say they are spending more. Sometimes that is true.
But spending more is not the same as keeping up.
When costs go up 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 political opinions. They are reported facts.
Health Care Ontario
Funds its hospitals at the lowest rate in Canada.
20 hours average wait time in Ontario emergency rooms for admission
Source: Ontario hospital unions, 2026.
Government target is 8 hours.100% increase in surgical wait times since 2019 Source: CUPE Ontario Council of Hospital Unions,
2026 ..2,000 patients treated daily in hallways and storage rooms due to lack of beds
Source: CUPE research report,
January 2026 ... 4,080 bed shortfall projected in the Ontario hospital system
Source: CUPE research report,
January 2026....1,000+ hospital jobs being cut in North Bay, Hamilton, Ottawa, Niagara and the GTA
Source: CBC News,
April 2026....4 in 10 nurses plan to leave their job or profession within the next year. Source: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions survey,
2024... 4 in 5 nurses show clinical symptoms of burnout
Source: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions survey,
2024... Long-term care beds were promised too. 15,000 new long-term care beds promised by 2023..... 2,385 beds actually added
Source: Ontario Health Coalition, 2024.
At the current rate: 125 years to reach the promise.
The government gave hospitals a 4% funding increase for 2026-27.
Hospitals need 6% just to stay at current service levels.
The difference is paid for by cutting staff and closing services.
Social Services
Social services include mental health support, housing help, disability support, child protection, and Ontario Works.
... 17.8% real cut to social services funding from 2018 to planned 2028 spending..
Source: CUPE Ontario,
adjusted for inflation and population growth, March 2026.. $3.7 billion shortfall in social services funding identified by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office
Source: Financial Accountability Office of Ontario,
2024... $1.8 billion projected annual shortfall in social services by 2026-27
Source: Financial Accountability Office of Ontario,
2024... Ten out of seventeen supervised consumption sites in Ontario were ordered closed by the province.These sites keep people alive while they seek treatment.
Closing them does not end addiction. It ends the safety net around it.
Ontario Works pays a single adult up to $390 per month for shelter.
Average Ontario rent passed $2,200 per month in 2024.
That gap has never been bridged. It has only grown.
By 2030, Ontario's debt interest payments are projected to exceed total spending on all social services combined.
Source: The Hub, analysis of Ontario 2026 Budget,
March 2026... Education
The government regularly claims it is setting historic funding records for education.The numbers tell a different story when you account for inflation and more students.
$6.3 billion total underfunding of public education since 2018
Source: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, cited by CUPE,
2026... $1.4 billion cut to per-pupil education funding in 2025-26 school year alone
Source: Ontario School Board Council of Unions,
2026... 10% effective cut in per-student funding since 2018, adjusted for inflation
Source: Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation,
April 2024... $2 billion missing from core education funding in 2024-25 vs. 2017-18 levels
Source: Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation,
April 2024... These funding gaps are showing up in classrooms right now.
Toronto District School Board: cutting approximately 607 teaching positions for 2026-27
York Region District School Board: cutting 249 positions including educational assistants and library technicians
Multiple boards across Ontario warning of further layoffs when collective agreements expire in August 2026
Mental health professionals leaving school boards for the private sector because of inadequate public funding
Post-secondary education funding projected to decrease at minus 2.7% annually through 2028-29
Educational assistants support students with disabilities and special needs.
Library technicians support literacy.
These are not administrative positions. These cuts reach into classrooms.
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 hospital emergency rooms.
When mental health supports are cut in schools, more young people reach crisis.
When addiction services close, more people end up in shelters and emergency wards.
When hospital staff are burned out and leaving, 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.
It lands on your family. In your emergency room. In your child's classroom.
It lands on your kitchen table.
What I Will Do as Mayor
A mayor cannot control provincial funding decisions. But a mayor can be honest about what is happening.
A mayor can hold the province accountable publicly and persistently.
And a mayor can make sure that every city dollar spent on health, social services, and education is measured by one standard:
Did it make life better for the person it was meant to help?
I will push the province every year to close the gap between what it promises and what it delivers.
I will require plain-language annual reports to residents on outcomes, not just dollars spent.
I will use the mayor's platform to name the problem clearly so voters can hold every level of government to account.
Good government is not measured by announcements.
It is measured by what happens to real people in real communities.
Your vote is the only currency this campaign accepts.
Check the above facts yourself and form your own opinions.
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Mike Matulewicz
When and who decided this was okay?
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When did we accept that an ambulance might take thirty minutes?
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That a family doctor is now a luxury?
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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're wrong.
Community First. It's that simple.
A Mississauga that is safe, that you can afford, and that leaves no one behind.
That last part isn't charity. It's 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 ,
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as a detective, a supervisor,
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and a planner of front-line operations.
I've lived in Mississauga for over forty years.
Now I'm running for Mayor.
Look at what we've quietly accepted:
Six to twelve hours in an emergency room.
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Police buried under 911 calls they can't reach.
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More than one in five of us without a family doctor.
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Food banks busier than ever — half a million visits last year, a third of them children.
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Seniors who spent forty years paying off a home, now unable to stay in it.
These aren't policy problems.
They're your neighbours' lives.
What I stand for .... 3 promises.
1. Safer streets, done smarter. A Community Response Unit: 305 trained professionals handling the 40% of 911 calls that don't need a gun and a badge. Faster help for you. Police freed to fight real crime. About $38 a year per resident — a jail cell costs over $300 a day.
2. A fair deal, and a home you can keep. For every tax dollar you send up, Mississauga gets back 37 cents. The provincial average is 76. You paid for that gap twice — once in taxes, once in services that never came. I'll fight for our share. And no senior should lose their home to a tax bill, so we'll bring in the proven B.C. deferral.
3. Nobody left behind.
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Homelessness is not a crime — and it is cheaper to house a person than to police them.
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A woman escaping violence deserves a safe bed, funded and waiting.
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A child deserves good food, because healthy children become healthy, working adults.
This is not softness.
It's how a city stops paying for the same problem twice.
There's more — ask me at your driveway:
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affordable starter homes built on city land,
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city-run medical clinics,
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a prepared city that acts before trouble arrives,
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a small gas levy for transit, and
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holding the insurance, gas, and telecom companies to account in front of Council.
Strong communities are not a luxury.
They are how we: get through what is coming.
One mayor can't force the Province to change.
One hundred thousand voters can.
Your vote is the only currency this campaign accepts.
getreadyontario.com · matulewiczmike@hotmail.com
All content reflects the personal opinion of Michael Matulewicz.
Please fact-check and form your own conclusions.
Think about this, one more time!
When did our community, the seat of all levels of government, quietly surrender its right to have its essential needs met?
When did the interests of political parties become more important than teachers, nurses, doctors, police officers, affordable housing, good jobs, and food on the table?
Who decided that too few ambulances was acceptable, that your neighbour could wait thirty minutes for help that should arrive in eight?
Who decided that too few police officers, too few teachers, too few family doctors was simply the way things are?
Who decided that children in struggling families should go hungry, and carry the shame of poverty as though it were their fault?
You and I did !
Not because we are indifferent. Not because we don't care.
But because we were told, again and again, that nothing can be changed, and somewhere along the way, enough of us believed it.
All content reflects the personal opinion of Michael Matulewicz. Please fact-check and form your own conclusions.
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Has the government kept its promise of a safe, healthy and prosperous community?
The $500 Million Dollars Mississauga Communities Are Owed.
For every dollar you pay in taxes, Mississauga receives about 37 cents back in services. The Ontario average is 76 cents.
That gap is $500 million every year, for 20 years = $10 billion .
You paid for the shortfall twice, once in taxes, again in services that never came.
That is a broken deal.
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Safer, healthier and prosperous communities in our city is my goal.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN YOUR COMMUNITY RIGHT NOW
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Emergency wait times in local hospitals run six to twelve hours.
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Police unable to cope with 911 calls for services.
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Too many crimes, too few detectives.
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Paramedic shortages, ambulances unable to respond quickly.
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Firefighter shortage, unable to respond as per safety guidelines.
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More than one in five Canadians has no family doctor.
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Food banks in Mississauga are reporting demand they have never seen before.
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Seniors who spent forty years paying off their homes cannot afford to stay in them.
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Trade disruptions threaten up to 500,000 Ontario jobs.
These are not policy problems.
They are your neighbours' lives.
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WHAT I AM PROPOSING
1. Recover the $500 million provincial shortfall. If successful, this could reduce your taxes by 8 to 15 percent while improving health, police, and city services. Money owed to you.
2. A Community Response Unit. 305 trained community professionals responding to the 40 percent of 911 calls that do not require a police officer. Better outcomes. More time for police to focus on crime.
3. Tax deferral for seniors. Based on the proven British Columbia model. So that seniors can stay in their homes and afford food and other necessities.
4. Municipal medical clinics. Already working in British Columbia. A city-run clinic in Colwood, population 20,000, attracted 100 doctors from Canada, the United States, and Britain within weeks of opening. We can do this.
5. Affordable housing. The city leases land at carrying cost only. Developers build homes for $500,000 to $600,000. Existing home values are not affected.
6. A gas windfall tax of 2 cents per litre to support public transit, as Victoria and Montreal already receive.
7. A prepared city. A city that sees problems coming and acts before they arrive. Not after.
8. 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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Strong communities are not a luxury. and they cost less than a broken one.
They are how we get through what is coming.
getreadyontario.com.
Share this web site with friends and neighbours, a safer community is your reward.
Your vote is the only currency this campaign accepts.
All content reflects the personal opinion of Michael Matulewicz. Please fact-check and form your own conclusions.
Who says democracy can't be engaging and fun too.
Food as Infrastructure
Feed our people today. Grow our own food tomorrow.
Last year there were 503,705 visits to food banks in Mississauga. That is a record. Nearly one in three was a child.
A food bank was meant to be an emergency. It has become a fixture.
There is a difference between charity and infrastructure.
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.
Our Plan
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Fund food security like a public good — not a year-to-year charity drive that runs short every winter.
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Claim Mississauga's share of the new federal food money — $750 million for greenhouses, $1 billion for food hubs. The first applications open now, in 2026. A city with a plan gets a share. A city without one does not.
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Open a future in food for young people — partner with Sheridan College and our school boards. Food production today is high-tech work. Real skills, real careers, real wages.
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Grow food at every scale — home gardens, community co-op greenhouses, container farms on rooftops and lots, and commercial growers the city helps make possible.
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Answer the energy question first — waste heat, solar, and off-peak power, so a greenhouse can pay its way through a Canadian winter.
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Require food-growing space in large new buildings — the way we already require parkland. It costs the taxpayer nothing and turns every new tower into a possible producer.
What a mayor can actually do.
A mayor does not run farms. A mayor clears the path — through zoning, city land, bringing partners to one table, and putting our hand on the federal money before other cities do.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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COMMUNITY FIRST.
A Community Response Unit , "CRU" for Mississauga.
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 person in a mental-health crisis. A noise complaint.
A fender-bender with no injuries.
The trained officers we need chasing real crime spend hours on calls that do not need a badge and a gun.
That is bad for everyone.
The person in crisis gets an armed response when they needed care. The victim of a real crime waits longer for help.
And the taxpayer pays the highest-cost responder we have to handle the lowest-risk call.
"CRU" ...... The right responder. For the right call.
What a Community Response Unit Is
A Community Response Unit — a CRU — is a team of 305 trained civilian responders who answer the roughly four-in-ten 911 calls that are not crimes in progress and not threats to life.
They take calls such as:Mental-health crises and wellness checks.
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Collisions with no injuries,
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Noise complaints and neighbour disputes
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Found property, lost persons, and quality-of-life calls
They are trained, dispatched, and accountable, the right help, sent fast, by people equipped to give it.
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 that involves a crime or a danger.
What changes is : 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.
What It Costs
The CRU costs about $27.4 million a year , close to $38 per resident.
That is less than the hidden cost of the system we have now, where the most expensive responder we have is sent to calls that never needed one.
How It Is Paid For
The unit is built, on purpose, to qualify for funding that already exists:
The Building Safer Communities Fund — Federal Government
The Community Safety and Policing Grant — Ontario Government
The Mobile Crisis Response Team Enhancement Grant — Ontario Government
I have already written to the Ontario Solicitor General and the federal Minister of Public Safety.
The ask is narrow and reasonable: confirm that a unit built this way aligns with these programs.
Not a handout a fair reading of rules already on the books.
The City Can Do This Now
Ontario already requires every municipality to adopt a Community Safety and Well-Being Plan.
Mississauga has one. The commitment to this kind of work is already made — on paper, in council minutes.
And the City already holds the authority to act.
Under the Municipal Act,
Council can establish and fund a service like this without a new law and without the Province’s permission.
The City already wrote the plan. The CRU is how we keep the promise.
What Comes Later
Once the CRU is proven on the street, a second phase can follow — a conscious-consent response capability and an emergency medical responder practicum, built with Peel Paramedic Services.
I name it as a later phase, not a day-one promise, because you deserve the difference stated honestly.
Care is not charity. It is the infrastructure of a safe city
Michael Matulewicz spent 34 years with the Toronto Police Service — as a detective, supervisor, and planner of front line operations — and is based in Mississauga.Share this page.
Talk to your neighbour.
Send it to two people you know in Mississauga. #GetReadyOntario
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COMMUNITY FIRST
You Pay Either Way
Housing as the foundation of an affordable city and a Community Land Trust that keeps it that way.
Homelessness and housing insecurity are not free.
We pay for them every day. in emergency rooms, in shelter beds, in police calls, in court time, in the work and the 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!
There is a simple idea, tested here in Canada, called housing first.
You give a person a stable home first , then the supports to keep it.
It sounds backwards.
The evidence says it works.
The national At Home / Chez Soi study found that for the highest-need residents, every $10 invested in housing first returned about $21.72 in other public costs avoided — fewer hospital stays, fewer arrests, fewer emergency nights.1A home costs less than a crisis.
A Community Land Trust
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 a few years later.
It is not a one-time subsidy that vanishes on resale. It stays.
One Trust can carry several streams at once:
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Affordable rental homes for working families
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A path for small, local investors, neighbours, not numbered companies
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Ground-floor shops and commercial space that keep rents stable
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Room for community clinics and services
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Right-sized bungalows for seniors..
Right-Sizing for Seniors!
Across Mississauga, 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: smaller, accessible, in the community they helped build. They stay rooted, and a family-sized home opens up behind them.
One move. Two families housed.
That Costs the Taxpayer Nothing
The City does not have to buy its way out of this.
It already holds powerful levers — and using them costs residents nothing:City-owned and surplus land, offered to the Trust instead of the highest bidder
Affordable-housing requirements on major transit lands, where provincial law allows.
Community-benefit agreements negotiated on large new developments
I will name this honestly: the Province has limited some of these tools.
Where it has, I will use what remains — and press for the rest as advocacy, never as a promise I cannot keep.
The City Can Do This Now
Community Land Trusts already operate across Ontario.
The City controls its own land, its zoning, and its development approvals.
We can begin with the levers we already hold — no new provincial law required to start.
A home is not a favour we grant.
It is the foundation everything else stands on — and we are paying for it either way.
MORE TO COME
