Diversity increasing among Niagara’s elected officials
Nine women will serve on regional council
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“We did it. We broke the eight barrier,” said Diana Huson, laughing after counting the number of women who will serve on Niagara Region council for the next four years.
“That’s wonderful.”
Huson, who was re-elected as Pelham’s regional councillor in Monday’s election, said it’s the first time regional council has included more than eight women serving their communities as both mayors and regional councillors.
However, she said the nine women elected still falls slightly below the minimum representation targeted by the United Nations, which recommends at least 30 per cent representation by women “to have some equity in terms of having a voice on a government body.”
“We’re at 28 (per cent). Oh, we’re so close,” she said.
Huson said that UN target should be 50 per cent, “but it just seems like such an unattainable number, and I don’t know why.”
She will be joined on regional council by Laura Ip and Haley Bateman representing St. Catharines, Joyce Morocco from Niagara Falls, Leanna Villella from Welland, Andrea Kaiser from Niagara-on-the-Lake and Michelle Seaborn from Grimsby, as well as mayors Sandra Easton from Lincoln and Cheryl Ganann from West Lincoln.
Including municipal councils across Niagara, there could be as many as 41 women elected, depending on the outcome of a tied vote between Angie Desmarais and Eric Beauregard, who each received 342 votes in Ward 2 in Port Colborne.
There were previously 35 women serving at the municipal and regional levels in Niagara, not including school boards.
“This is the benefit of having a women’s advisory committee, even if you don’t have the distribution in terms of people in seats you still have a strong voice in choosing policy and even interacting with some of important actors — senior administrative leaders of departments,” said Huson, who led the committee during this recent term of council.
The committee encouraged more women to run for office, including recommending establishing a Niagara’s Seat at the Table program with funding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which set up a series of workshops to address barriers that women and gender diverse people face when running for municipal office.
Niagara District Council of Women played a role as well, hosting an online forum for female regional council candidates.
The organization’s past-president, Gracia Janes, said it’s “good to see more women” elected to office.
“We thought they were wonderful,” Janes said, referring to candidates who participated in the forum held in late September.
“They were brilliant. They were dedicated, they were knowledgeable. They weren’t just pie in the sky.”
The outcome of the election, she said, demonstrates that “we’re pushing things and we’re being accepted.”
“The public wants us. We’re making progress.”
Saleh Waziruddin from Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association is thrilled with the election results across the region as well, noting at least two new candidates from racial minorities were elected to office, including “significant victories” by Sharmila Setaram representing Ward 3 in Welland and Mona Patel who was elected to Niagara Falls city council.
He said Setaram, who was born in Canada of Indo-Guyanese heritage, has a history of being involved in equity issues.
And Patel, an immigrant from Southeast Asia, is one of very few BIPOC representatives to have been elected in Niagara Falls in decades.
Setaram, the past-president of Amnesty International Canada and former chair of Equal Voice — a national bipartisan organization that encourages women to run for elected office — said she has “always been a human rights advocate and champion working on these issues in the community, and at a national level looking at policies and procedures, behind the scenes and also on the front lines at marches and protests.”
She said it has been at least 20 years since a woman has been elected in the ward she represents, and “it’s my understanding, too, that I’m the first person of colour to be elected to serve on city council here in Welland.
“It is incredible to win against incumbents. I had a huge uphill battle,” she said.
Meanwhile, Waziruddin said most candidates who failed to understand issues of racism and diversity did not win the seats they were vying for, adding the association published information about candidates affiliated with political parties that have racist platforms, and with few exceptions those candidates were defeated.
Others who supported the association’s efforts to address system racism were elected, he said.
Although many more strong candidates did not win their elections, Waziruddin said some of them — such as Tapo Chimbganda who ran for St. Catharines city council and regional council candidate Trecia McLennon — fared extremely well for their first time running at the municipal level.
“I’ve told people who have run and lost that many people get in the second time,” he said.
Huson said she’s hopeful the diversity among Niagara’s political leaders will increase in years to come.
“I feel like it’s a generational thing,” she said. “As a society we’re evolving in terms of our values and I think we’re getting there.”
She said the diversity of candidates who opted to run for office is an indication of those changing values.
“If you look at especially St. Catharines and the diversity of the candidates and the different voices they represented, I don’t know if we’ve ever had a slate like that before, and it really speaks to a reflection on who is representative of our population and who feels that they’re under-represented in terms of having a voice and wanting to have a seat at the table, per se,” she said.
“Just the fact that we had those people come out and realistically saw themselves as having an opportunity to participate in political discord and where we’re taking our government and who we’re representing, I think that’s a huge accomplishment.”
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