That is the plan. Getting it in front of people costs money, and every dollar comes from a neighbour.
Chip inIn twenty years the typical resident of this town went from 42 years old to almost 55. The young people Hawkesbury raised are building their lives somewhere else. Here is the plan that gives them a first job at town hall, a real seat at the table, and a reason to come home.
In 2001 the typical Hawkesbury resident was 42 years old. Today the typical resident is almost 55. Across Ontario, that number barely moved. The typical Ontario resident is 41.6 years old. Nearly one resident in three here is 65 or over. And before somebody at the coffee shop says it for me, yes. I am doing my part for that number myself. Here the graduation photos and the moving trucks show up in the same month, every June.
Every family in this town can name a kitchen chair that sits empty on Sunday. Somebody's work, somebody's school, somebody's first apartment is in Ottawa or Montreal now. About one resident in seven here is between 15 and 29. My housing plan (Point 4) tells the story of a town that shrank for twenty years while almost every neighbour grew.
And when somebody shrugs and tells you young people just leave small towns, remind them what this region used to have. Ontario's only French-language agricultural college stood in Alfred, twenty-some minutes down the road. In 2014 the university that ran it closed it to save money. About sixty students were still there. When a region loses its campus, it loses the easiest reason a nineteen-year-old ever had to stay. Nobody fought hard enough that time. I am not built to shrug.
Go look at the Town's own careers page. The day we checked, it carried five postings: a rink monitor, a lifeguard, an information desk clerk, an aquafitness instructor, a crossing guard. All part-time or seasonal. Read the whole page and you will find no student program, no co-op placement, no internship, no apprenticeship spot. There is no door. Meanwhile, the groups that speak for Ontario's town halls have been warning about this since early 2024. Town halls across the province are losing their people to retirement. Their own numbers say only about one new hire in five starts working at a town hall straight out of school. Every town in Ontario will soon be fighting over the same young people. I intend to get there first.
The day we checked, it carried five postings: a rink monitor, a lifeguard, an information desk clerk, an aquafitness instructor, a crossing guard. All part-time or seasonal.
The association of Ontario's municipal clerks and treasurers runs an eight-month municipal internship with Mitacs, a national research group: any Ontario municipality may apply, up to two applications a year, and Mitacs pays half the cost.
The federal Digital Skills for Youth program puts up to $30,000 toward a digital placement inside a public body, applied for through a partner organization.
Our own high schools run co-op: the Town of Caledon placed eight co-op students in the summer of 2025, in departments from animal services to fleet to facilities.
Those doors already have names and prices, and none of them is new. The association of Ontario's municipal clerks and treasurers runs an eight-month municipal internship with Mitacs, a national research group: any Ontario municipality may apply, up to two applications a year, and Mitacs pays half the cost. The federal Digital Skills for Youth program puts up to $30,000 toward a digital placement inside a public body, applied for through a partner organization. And our own high schools run co-op: the Town of Caledon placed eight co-op students in the summer of 2025, in departments from animal services to fleet to facilities. The first job I would hand a summer student is to try every Town service online, from a phone, the way a nineteen-year-old does, and write down where it breaks. The second is a table in the lobby, two mornings a week, where a student helps a resident do online, at their own pace, the thing they came in to do at the counter. Nobody is sent away from the counter. Some people will simply find they never need it again. And the youth committee gets that same errand tour as its first task, so its first report to council has something in it.
Every regular Town job stays open to every applicant of every age. That is the law of this province, and I would defend it if it were under attack. This plan builds doors that do not exist today: internships, co-op placements, summer jobs, apprenticeships. Every level of government in this country already runs the same kind of programs for young people. Seniority stays seniority, and the collective agreement stays the collective agreement. That is the contract between the Town and its unionized employees. Anyone who tells you this plan reserves regular Town jobs for young people is describing some other plan.
For years I have kept people half my age close to me, in business and now in this campaign. I let them argue with me. I lose more of those arguments than I care to admit. I have negotiated with banks, contractors and suppliers for thirty years. Then a kid on this campaign took about four minutes to show me why nobody under forty ever saw what we posted. I can price a foundation from the truck window. I also still type with one finger while my thumb supervises. They understand technology, speed, and the way people really talk to each other today, and on all of that they run circles around me. Their ideas and my experience belong at one table. Right now, town hall has no chair for the young half of that table.
If you want proof of what young talent can do, you are looking at it. The posters, the cards, the page you are reading right now. You didn't think I designed all this myself, did you? Young people on this campaign built our look from the first sketch, and it shows. My own contribution to the design meetings was nodding, asking what a "reel" is, and paying for the pizza. The plans are mine. The polish is theirs.
On the Town's own website today, you can buy a parking permit for the boat launch online in two minutes. A building permit still travels by email or on paper to Town Hall. A bingo licence starts with a note to the Town Clerk's office. A business licence ends with a walk to the counter to pay. Fixing that gap takes a young hire with a login and a clear job to do, plus a supervisor two doors down with thirty years of judgment. No consultant, no million dollars. Bringing this town's whole toolbox up to date, honestly and securely, is its own chapter of my platform. You cannot modernize a town hall you never let the next generation into.
In 2025 this town learned what happens when the volunteers run out. A downtown car show that drew about five thousand people a year went dark for a summer. The volunteer club behind it ran out of hands, and it could not carry the insurance on its own. My Main Street plan (Point 2) already showed the deeper problem. The Town's own tourism budget line reads zero. The young people this plan hires are the same ones with the energy to carry a festival and the instinct to fill a street with a thirty-second video.
A real program gets designed in public, with real money set aside for it in the Town's budget, and I will not invent a price per video on a campaign page. Paid summer jobs for students who run the calendar, the social media, and the sponsor calls for the town's festivals and its Main Street businesses. Volunteer credit toward the forty hours, for the ones who want a seat before they want a paycheque. And a certificate with the Town's name on it that a seventeen-year-old can put on a résumé.
Today, training after high school means an hour or more on the road, or a moving truck. I intend to bring that training, the trades included, closer to home than that. That is its own piece of work. I will present it properly, in my own words, when it is ready. Every lever on this page gets stronger the day a student can study near home, and every plan I have points the same direction.
Every promise on this page comes from the left column. If you ever catch me promising from the right column, hold it against me.
I cannot promise that a hundred kids move home next year. A town's age changes slowly, and anyone who promises otherwise is selling something. What I can promise is to try for them one at a time, and to show you the count. I cannot put a dollar figure on this plan before it has earned one. And I will not use young people as scenery. If the only young people you ever see around me are in the photographs, hold it against me. The proof of this plan is payroll, posted positions, and seats at real tables. Every one of those can be checked. This town spent twenty years getting older, one moving truck at a time. It will turn around the same way, one at a time: one summer job that becomes a career, one apprentice who buys a house here, one kid who finds out her home town wants her ideas.
I build for a living, and the best thing I ever built is the crew of young people around me. Every good business runs on that mix of grey hair and new eyes. A town needs the same mix, or it wears out. Hawkesbury has the grey hair. This plan goes and gets the new eyes. It pays them fairly, hands them real work, and lets the rest of the province wonder where our energy came from.
A first job. A real seat. A reason to come home.