By: Linda Saxon, The Burg Watch

Now that the initial election excitement has settled and elected officials have been certified, we need to talk about what these results actually mean for the everyday lives of Amherstburg residents with disabilities.

Looking past the victory speeches and the political spin, last week’s vote completely reshaped our local council and brought the town’s structural approach to civic accessibility into sharp focus.

First, let’s look at the tremendous victory. Jen DeLuca capturing the absolute top spot in the councillor race with 5,597 votes is not just a personal win—it is a historic public mandate.

The community voted for change, sending a clear signal that table-level accountability matters.

With Keith Boussey also securing a seat, the disability community now has two clear, verified allies holding actual legislative power to introduce motions, demand compliance, and challenge municipal barriers from day one.

However, because Jen DeLuca owns the Waterfront Ice Cream parlour downtown, she will have to declare a conflict of interest under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act whenever Open Air street closures or downtown business layouts are discussed or voted on.

This means that while she is a powerful ally for town-wide policy, the specific fight for downtown sidewalk layouts and Open Air barriers will require Keith Boussey to take the lead, backed by the pressure of public watchdog tracking.

But we must also face the stark reality of the rest of the ballot.

The Burg Watch accessibility audit concluded that Mayor-elect Gibb and Councillor-elect Ewer chose to defend the traditional status quo – passing files back to a powerless accessibility advisory committee or waiting for staff reports before acting.

This defensive script played out on Wes Ewer’s campaign page. When The Burg Watch commented about his willingness to maintain a 24-year-old accessibility committee structure and the outgoing Mayor’s declaration that the town failed to be compliant, Ewer seemed impatient.

Instead of addressing the structural failure of the status quo, he chose to tone-police the scrutiny.

He then relied on the ultimate establishment shield, arguing that the watchdog does not speak for every person with a disability and pointing to the volunteers on the town’s Accessibility Advisory Committee who believe in the process.

This is a classic example of toxic positivity in Amherstburg politics. Weaponizing local volunteers to defend a system that has failed for 24 years is just a shield, not a solution.

When an elected official claims they want to work together but treats baseline policy criticism as a personal attack or a semantic disagreement, it proves how deeply entrenched the gatekeeping remains. Listening doesn’t mean passing the buck back to a powerless advisory loop.

The real mystery of this council lies with the block of candidates who chose to ignore The Burg Watch accessibility audit entirely.

Together, Bill Petruniak, Molly Allaire, and Peter Courtney command a huge portion of the voter turnout, yet they chose not to make any concrete accessibility commitments. Courtney committed to participating in the accessibility audit but failed to do so.

We are already seeing what this wall of silence and conditional empathy looks like in practice.

Looking back to her previous term on council, Allaire raised public concerns regarding accessibility issues at our local library. Yet she repeatedly ignored direct questions seeking the actual factual basis for those library statements and has continued to ignore some community comments on her Facebook page.

When directly questioned in an email regarding downtown Open Air barriers, her written response was a shocking admission of political avoidance, stating: “Open air does remain a contentious issue. You mention barriers that deny people with disabilities equal access to the community. I do not know of these specific barriers you speak of. Could you please explain so I can make an educated response.”

The irony here is alarming. Allaire is the councillor who previously made the motion to refer the town’s Open Air resident survey to the accessibility committee—a survey where accessibility was explicitly listed as the number one complaint in town.

Furthermore, Allaire sat at that council table for four years while I delegated and sent detailed emails explicitly pointing out systemic physical barriers, including emails to CAO Critchley regarding the Movati pool barriers.

She had full access to years of data that remained unaddressed until she personally experienced a temporary injury and needed crutches.

The recent River Town Times article regarding park washrooms exposes the flaw in this approach.

In a CTV interview during her campaign, Allaire explicitly stated, “I started by focusing on improving our parks and green spaces, and now I’m ready to take on bigger priorities like roads and infrastructure.”

Despite spending four years on council focusing on parks, handling surveys where access was the top complaint, receiving emails regarding barriers, and Mayor Prue declaring the town was not compliant by the 2025 AODA deadline, Allaire’s surgery suddenly made her realize how “inaccessible our town is.”

Even more frustrating is the bureaucratic response from town hall. According to town staff, the accessibility advisory committee is a “legislated committee” that will continue to meet if there is a triggering condition.

Let’s be completely clear: being a legislated committee simply means the town is legally required by the province to have one. It does not change the fact that it remains a purely advisory body. It has zero legal authority to pass by-laws, enforce budgets, or order a single door button to be installed. Its only role is to advise.

Instead of council simply using its own actual legislative power to order the automated buttons installed, the file was bounced down to a committee under the guise of conducting a parkland audit.

The director of parks even admitted that administration already knows exactly which buildings lack automated door openers.

Why are we sending an advisory committee on a washroom-by-washroom mission when administration already possesses the data?

Public records reveal that on May 4, 2022, the Amherstburg Accessibility Advisory Committee explicitly discussed these parkland audits, with the town clerk stating at the time that creating the resource was a goal of his.

Bouncing the file back down over four years later to “study” it is the ultimate delay tactic.

When an elected official claims they “do not know” about systemic barriers that have been presented to them via public surveys, emails and delegations for years, it raises a massive red flag about true transparency.

Taxpayers did not elect individuals to sit in silence, plead ignorance, or hide behind endless audits. Since these non-participants chose to remain quiet during the campaign, The Burg Watch will be documenting their very first council-table votes with absolute transparency.

So, what does this mean for the next four years?

It means the issue of physical and digital access in Amherstburg is now directly on the council floor. Voters have placed specific individuals at the table who have publicly committed to change, but whether those commitments translate into real action remains to be seen.

Because the council remains deeply divided on these issues, The Burg Watch will be keenly watching every single vote.

Every infrastructure budget, every sidewalk configuration, and every transit review will be tracked by its actual impact on residents with disabilities—not by political rhetoric.

The election is over, but the tracking of our new lawmakers starts today.