And so it was a great opportunity feeling to be involved in as vibrant a community as we are here in Kingston.

Mark? Yeah, I guess my introduction into politics, probably around 2004, 2005, before that municipal election in 2006, a good friend of mine worked at KEDCO.

And this was right around the time that KEDCO was going through a lot of turmoil in terms of its trying to identify itself.

What we're seeing recently is actually just a coming full circle again.

But there was quite a bit of... uh anxiety in the community over KEDCO and and this was also around the time that the city was looking at building the um LVEC which is now the KROC center downtown and there was just a lot of discussion going on in the community about that and and my friend who worked at KEDCO we used to get in a lot of debates over various different issues and I can remember the emails that we would send back and forth just debating various different things going on in the community and then finally um when the election was nearing, I thought, you know, maybe I'll run for city council.

And yeah, and so I put my name in, in the Portsmouth district, which I'd lived actually just outside of it at the time.

And after I was elected, I ended up moving into the district.

How have you found that experience working as an MP in Ottawa and comparing it to your time as a city councillor and mayor?

[gentle music]

Traditional thought on this was always, "Don't say anything because you're just giving it oxygen.

You're only fe- you're only fueling the narrative.

You're getting that person more attention.

People go to it." And there are times when that works, and there are times when that makes sense, but there are also times, and more and more often now, when that doesn't make sense in my opinion.

Because people are consuming information in a way that they never did before.

In the...

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