Shari Flett - Councillor Candidate
249 Lake Range Drive
Kincardine, ON N2Z 2X3
Phone: 519-955-0813
Email: sflett@hurontel.on.ca
Biography: I grew up in London, Ont and graduated from Centralia College of Agricultural Technology as an Animal Health Technician in 1988. My first job was at the Port Elgin Veterinary clinic, which introduced me to the agriculture and small town life style of Bruce County. My husband is from Teeswater, where we were first married and started our family in 1990. We have two grown children with their own small families, fortunately in the area, allowing us to spend lots of time together.
Over the years, I also kept busy in my husband’s carpentry business when we lived in the London area, assisting in whatever way that I could. In 2003 we made the decision to raise our children in Bruce County. We were drawn to the busy town of Lucknow, where various service groups provide countless activities and fund raisers to benefit all. It seemed that if someone in Lucknow was on one committee, they were on two or three! We were happy to be included in the service groups from the start, putting us a fast track to getting to know people in the area.
I found myself starting my own business as a self-employed custom house painter, “The Paint Fairy”, which kept me extremely busy for 10 years. Not only did I provide painting services for individual home owners but for several contractors as well.
I went back to school in 2013 for a career upgrade and now work in nuclear, in Radiation Protection, currently at the Douglas Point site. This field has allowed me to contract in various nuclear locations within Ontario and New Brunswick.
I am very blessed to call the beautiful community of Point Clark my home. I have been living in Point Clark with my husband, Blake, since 2016. Prior to that we lived in Lucknow for 13 years.
Why are you running?: Over the years, I have held many volunteer positions – Girl Guides Spark leader, Scouts Beaver leader, Minor Hockey positions, Lucknow Kinettes-various positions including president, and Lucknow Strawberry Summerfest. Since my work no longer takes me away from home, I am able to become involved in my community again. Serving on council would be challenging and a way to participate in my community. Community service provides me with great personal satisfaction and is one of the best ways to get to know your neighbours. Many hands make light work.
Being from a “carpentry family”, I hear from many people that work in the industry as well as from homeowners with building projects. It’s a struggle in this area to find skilled trades and once found it’s difficult to navigate the building process. Finding solutions to increasing the size of our trades community and making it easier to get jobs done would be a valued service for all.
What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing the municipality? : I feel that our biggest challenge is not enough people to fill the jobs and the lack of housing/high housing prices. Everywhere one looks, there are Help Wanted signs. Canada has an aging population with an insufficient replacement birth rate. Local employers are struggling to find workers, this trend shows no sign of reversing. We need to get ahead of the issue, plan for the future to support our current communities and levels of services. Keeping our youth in this area, to grow their own families, needs planning to support them, to keep them here. This includes drawing workers to our healthcare, our service industry, our trades, our tourism and definitely our local farms.
Our area houses contractors from all over this province and beyond. While those workers are here to work their shifts, they require suitable, affordable housing, which is difficult to find. There is a limited supply of bachelor or 1 bedroom units available in the area. The Bruce Power refurbishment program relies on workers performing at peak performance. They need arrangements that allow them to get the rest and sleep necessary to perform safely. To keep them here, instead of at other work locations, we need to provide cheap, quiet, safe housing. Properties with secondary living spaces provides mortgage affordability for the owners and spaces for multi-generational living. We can help our younger generation get set up for success and keep them in the area if they can afford the mortgages, supplementing their income with rental suites is an option. Home owners wanting to incorporate secondary dwellings or granny flats into their properties need help navigating the building application process, to work with the building bi-laws to accomplish this.
Supporting new construction projects to house contractors, will also free up residences that the rest of our communities can then use, such as our younger generation starting out or our seniors downsizing.
We all want to preserve our small town rural Canada feeling, but we also want to maintain a certain level of services that we are accustomed to.
Rural access to medical care - wait times, specialists, surgery etc :
A recent Angus Reid poll shows how worried all of us are about access to healthcare.
Access to Health Care: Free, but for all? Nearly nine million Canadians report chronic difficulty getting help - Angus Reid Institute Promotion of our area to graduates of various healthcare disciplines is a must. Even better would be having our young residents return from postsecondary health care education to work and raise families here. I recently had a conversation with a young nurse. She made it clear that understaffing is causing significant burnout in staff. Finding staff willing to stay in healthcare is becoming difficult, even if the government does supply more health care funding. She also explained that facilities need to work with their staff, to provide schedules to work with the young families, to explore options such as job sharing. We need to compete with bigger centers to draw staff here. Investment in our youth to promote health care as a career option, with an incentive program to come back to our area to work is vital.
Increasing demand for spaces and services at nursing homes and the rising costs of service: . Nursing home expenses can be out of reach, our county may need to explore the options of more subsidy options, more geared to income or life lease facilities. People want to stay in their own homes for as long as possible. Options to contribute to this could include more home care workers and driving services to medical appointments.