He wants to be a councillor because he has fallen in love with the area since he arrived in the area three years ago.
“I was attracted to Hawkesbury because of its strategic location, » he said, during an interview June 27. “My roots are in Quebec but I love living in Ontario so this is the best of all worlds. I fell in love with the community and with Hawkesbury, so now I want to give back. It’s an old cliché but that’s what it is. »
What helped Malo fall in love with the town was his job as a journalist, which took him to every corner of the region, and to meet the people who live here.
Before moving to Hawkesbury, Malo worked as a journalist in a French-speaking minority setting in Ontario for over 30 years.
« It was a conscious choice to serve Francophones in a minority setting with the only credible means of information available to them, » said Malo.
For him, the priority issues are the housing crisis, the labour shortage, the environment, culture, but also the political immobility at the local level.
« In general, it is often said that Hawkesbury has a lot of potential, but nothing is happening,” he said. “We assume there is a lot of potential, but what do we do with it? It’s time to do something with this potential, to make it concrete. I will work with the mayor and the other members of the council regardless of their political leanings, I think we can work as a team to move the city forward, which has been in decline for the past 20 years.
According to Malo, the council’s mission is to create an environment conducive to social, economic and cultural development.
« The job of a council is essentially a governance role that consists of setting the table so that investors feel welcome here,” he said, “that they are given the means to do what they want to do for the general good of the community. Both investors and newcomers. We need to attract people because there are jobs to be filled.”
Malo also attaches great importance to the environment and culture.
« The municipality is the level of government closest to the population,” he said. “It is the level of government that must be the most sensitive to the well-being of the population. A municipality must absolutely do everything it can to reduce climate change by doing very down-to-earth things like maintaining or even improving forest cover, protecting wetlands. The municipality can and must quickly electrify its fleet of vehicles, and put in place all sorts of measures that go in that direction. These are things that the municipality can do, should do, but hasn’t really done until now, and we should start doing it. »
