Dear editor,
I was saddened to learn of Mandi Olson’s resignation from council of the Town of Fort Frances and have struggled with whether to provide some supportive comments in response to her heartbreaking message to the community. Here’s what I can offer:
Mandi brought a unique, valuable, long overdue, and under-represented perspective to council – as a person with a young family, with ties to local Indigenous communities, and who is close to many social issues impacting our community and region. It was refreshing to see her leadership at council, where she has commented on MMIWG and the addictions crisis in our region.
While our lived experiences are different, Mandi’s open letter to the community reflects some of my own struggles as a minority voice on a “status quo” council. I am disappointed that circumstances have not improved since the last term.
It seems that we continue to have a council that talks about diversity but does nothing to empower diverse voices, that speaks of reconciliation while declining to take meaningful action, and that claims to want younger voices at the table while marginalizing them in debate on serious issues facing the community. Illustratively, with Mandi’s departure, council is again reduced to mostly white seniors who are busying themselves writing a “reconciliation policy” while simultaneously suing First Nations.
Mandi’s open letter to the community shares my concerns about this council’s astronomical waste of taxpayer dollars on its racist litigation campaign for the Point Park – which it will likely lose. The Town’s legal position is opposed by the province and federal government. Their litigation appears designed only to enrich lawyers and to appease an out of touch, old guard in the community. It does so with the shrugging complicity of a dumbfounded council, and at the cost of validating ongoing anti-Indigenous racism and the wrongs of local colonial history.
It is also apparent from Mandi’s letter that the so-called governance reforms (implemented at the urging of municipal staff, at great cost to taxpayers) have turned council into a rubber-stamp for the wishes of administration rather than a forum for accountability and advancing the political views of the community.
This resignation is another symptom of having recurrent council majorities that seem unaware of what their job is, who they work for, and what their constituents need.
Douglas W. Judson
Councillor (2018-2022)
