Candidate Interview: Allan Foster

By Katy Anderson

<1. What do you think the big issues in this election are?
2. How are you planning to address the city’s crime problem?
3. What can the city do to ease the crunch on affordable housing?
4. What transportation infrastructure need would you address first?
5. What separates you from the other candidates?

1. Affordable housing, the crime rate in this city, public transportation, the infrastructure. And basically, I think the engineering mistakes in this city have cost us millions of dollars.

2. By looking at how many police we are short in this city. I know right now the mayor has all the numbers and is saying, since he has been in office, he has hired 300 and something officers, but he neglects to tell us how many they have hired and how many they are short.

3. I don’t think the secondary suites are the way to go. I think it would take care of the homeless but will destroy some of the established neighbourhoods we have now by reducing the amount of parking and increasing the amount of garbage in alleyways. Most established neighbourhoods don’t even have alleys.

4. To the transit? The roads they have been building now, when they’re done, it will reduce a lot of traffic time, but the engineering mistakes they have made–especially down in the southeast, we’re I live, coming out of Douglasdale at Bow Bottom Trail trying to get off Deerfoot [Trail], especially by Southland is just a parking lot. What they did down there is just a mistake. So we have to try to get people to ride the transit and I know there are people with a C-Train rail near their house that won’t ride it and that will reduce a lot of traffic if we can increase the amount of transit that we have in this city.

5. I am looking out for the people. I am listening to what their concerns are and want to deal with those concerns. Over the last six years, we have dealt with somebody that has told us what they felt, what he felt that we have needed and not dealt with the people’s concerns.