Now that the election is over, the standard public relations scripts are already rolling out, with a defeated candidate sharing his own post highlighting local volunteer recruitment to keep up appearances.

But we need to look past the glossy town photo and look at the actual municipal building being promoted.

Recently, Dhaval Prajapati shared a post advertising that approximately 5,000 people visited the Gingerbread Warming House at Toddy Jones Park last year, inviting more families to stop by this season.

While encouraging volunteers and supporting youth camps is always positive, inserting oneself as an outside coordinator to organize local volunteers provides a highly political backdrop that ignores a massive, ongoing barrier—one that The Burg Watch exposed last year, pulling in over 10,000 views according to Facebook page insights.

The Gingerbread House features the blue International Access Symbol sticker prominently displayed right on the front door. Yet the pavilion completely lacks an automated push-button door opener.

When the town’s official communications channels promote these spaces, and defeated candidates pass those curated images along without addressing the physical barriers, it normalizes performative compliance.

Slapping an accessibility sticker on a heavy door without installing the actual mechanics to open it tells residents with mobility devices that they are accommodated on paper, but leaves them physically locked out in reality unless they have someone to open the door for them.

If a public pavilion expects thousands of visitors, accessibility cannot be treated as a decorative sticker. Amherstburg does not need more staged municipal photo ops.

We need systemic, table-level enforcement that ensures public buildings are actually accessible, not just treated as backdrops for political public relations.