Candidate: Kelsey Carriere

Who are you?

My name is Kelsey Carriere. I love bikes and I love this city. I am co-founder of Streets are for People! and one of the organizers for the Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market. I also just completed an environmental studies/urban planning degree.


Why are you running?

There's just one thing I want to fix about Toronto: our car problem. It's not that I don't care about anything else. I do very much. But I also believe that there are a lot of other problems that we don't even know where to begin to tackle - like violence, apathy, and hopelessness - that all come from the way we've shaped our city on the principal of private property, and mostly, the private automobile. By fixing the car problem we will not only clean our air, but repair the fabric of our communities that has been ripped apart by roads and expressways, reclaim so much of our city space that has been devoted to the car, make transit better and our neighbourhoods more lively. We will begin to talk to each other on the street with more than honks and angry gestures. We will begin to care about each other, and about our city.


What should a City Councillor be?

A councillor should recognize and take advantage of the powerful position for making change that they are in. A councillor should never let by-laws or regulations get in the way of realizing a vision. After all, those rules are only there because someone just like them, years before, recognized that they had the power to make important decisions, and used it.

We need new leaders.