Before the Ballot- With Ward 2 Councillor Candidate Brian Lewis

Welcome to this instalment of Before the Ballot featuring Ward 2 Candidate Brian Lewis.

What motivated you to run for council, and why do you believe now is the right time for new leadership in your ward?

Ward 2 is not a political opportunity for me. It is where I come from.I was baptized at St. Lawrence Church in the North End. My first holy communion was at St. Mary’s. As a teenager, I lied about my age to get a job delivering the Globe and Mail at 4:30 in the morning along Duke and Robinson streets before most of the city was awake. My mother lived in the North End until she passed away in 2007. My brother lived in the family home until he died in 2018. I have a brother who still lives in the North End today.

These are not talking points. It’s who I am.

The North End I grew up in was proudly working class. The Ward 2 of 2026 is something richer and more complicated — artists and tradespeople, young families and long-time residents, new Canadians and people whose grandparents built this city brick by brick. From Corktown to Durand, from Beasley to Central, from the North End to the few memory-filled blocks of Stinson — every corner of this ward has a story, and every resident deserves to be heard.

The private investment downtown is real. The progress is real. But so is the frustration — residents who feel unsafe and unheard, infrastructure that is visibly failing, and public money that isn’t always being used the way residents were told it would be. Acknowledging what’s going right is not the same as pretending everything is fine.

Ward 2 deserves a councillor who sees the whole picture clearly. Who celebrates the wins honestly, confronts the problems directly, and answers to the people who live here — not to a political brand, a preferred ideology, or an election-year agenda.

Every ward has its own unique challenges. What do you believe are the top three issues facing residents in your ward today, and how would you address them?

Safer Streets According to Hamilton Police Service’s own statistics, Ward 2 records the highest volume of violent crime of any ward in the city — consistently, year after year. That is not acceptable, and it demands real leadership.
The current councillor sits on the Hamilton Police Services Board and has voted against the police budget every single year, without meaningful justification. Residents deserve better than ideology dressed up as fiscal responsibility.

 
I will work with the Hamilton Police Service — not against them. That includes pushing to expand the Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team (MCRRT) to 24-hour coverage with sufficient teams to meet actual demand, so that people who need medical help get it — rather than a criminal record. I will also address the retention crisis that is bleeding experienced officers out of Hamilton to less demanding postings elsewhere. Hiring is happening. Net staffing is not keeping pace. Those are not the same thing.

Your Tax Dollars Ward 2 is 76% renters. Apartment dwellers pay property tax every month — it’s just called rent — and in many cases at up to two and a half times the effective rate a homeowner pays per square foot, without ever seeing the bill directly. They deserve to see that money used properly.
The Ward 2 Capital Discretionary Fund was established for tangible infrastructure — sidewalks, roads, and small lasting repairs. Less than 3% of the most recent motion went to actual infrastructure. Meanwhile, residents are told their sidewalk repairs are years away. Community organizations that genuinely serve this ward deserve support — but that support should be determined by need, not politics, and discretionary funds should never become a substitute for the infrastructure residents were promised.
I will work to keep tax increases as close as possible to the cost of living — and I will hold that line through genuine consultation with Ward 2 residents, including town hall meetings specifically focused on the budget. Not a press release. An actual conversation, in your community, before decisions are made.

Affordable Housing The funding exists. The projects are ready. The problem is that by the time the city works through its own approvals process, funding windows close — and the money goes back to the government that committed it. People who could have been housed are still waiting.
My priority is simple: dramatically reduce the time between a funding announcement, city approval, and shovels in the ground. The approval bottleneck at city hall is a shared problem — it slows non-profit affordable housing projects and private developers equally, and it needs to be fixed for both.
I will work with non-profit organizations to ensure they have adequate funding from all levels of government, with the city as a genuine partner in completing projects —not an obstacle course standing in the way. For private developers: faster approvals demand action. Sitting on approved land for years, waiting for better profits, isn’t acceptable when people need homes now.

Municipal government often requires balancing competing interests and difficult budget decisions. How would you approach making tough decisions at City Hall?

Honestly — and with the people who are actually affected by the decision. That sounds simple. In practice, it rarely happens. Too often at City Hall, consultation means a press release after the fact, or a meeting where the outcome was already decided before anyone walked in the door. That is not consultation. That is theatre.

 
My approach starts before the decision, not after it. It is my intention to establish community committees in every neighbourhood in the ward — along with dedicated groups for tenants and small businesses. These are not rubber-stamp committees. They are the mechanism through which Ward 2 residents have a genuine voice in the decisions that affect them.

Let me be clear about what consultation is and what it isn’t. It informs my decisions. It doesn’t make them for me. I am not interested in governing by poll — I am interested in governing with the full picture in front of me.

The urgency of a decision shapes the process. If a response is needed within a couple of weeks, those groups get consulted directly and quickly. If it is a major decision — the annual budget being the clearest example — each neighbourhood gets its own community meeting. Not a single town hall where the loudest voices dominate, but neighbourhood-level conversations where residents can speak plainly about what they need, what they can absorb, and what the hard choices actually mean for their street, their building, their family.

 
On the budget specifically: residents deserve to understand the trade-offs before councillors vote on them, not read about them in the paper afterward. I will hold that line.

Beyond process, the standard I will apply to every difficult decision is straightforward: is this the best use of public money, does it reflect what residents actually need, and can I defend it plainly to the people who sent me there? If the answer to any of those is no, I am not ready to vote yes.
And when a crisis lands on the council table and needs a resolution this week, the process changes. That is where leadership and trust come into play. My question in those moments is simple: what is genuinely in the best interest of the people I represent and of Hamilton as a whole? That will be my decision — made clearly, and defended openly.
Tough decisions are part of the job. Making them without listening first is not leadership — it is just noise.

What experience, skills, or perspective do you bring that distinguishes you from other candidates seeking the same council seat?

 
I have been politically engaged at all three levels of government since I was twelve years old. That is not a talking point — it is simply true. I understand how the system works, where the pressure points are, and what residents should actually expect from the people they elect. That kind of institutional knowledge takes decades to build, and it cannot be faked on a campaign flyer.

I grew up in Ward 2. The North End shaped me. But this ward is more than the North End — it is Corktown, Durand, Beasley, Central, Stinson — and every corner of it deserves a councillor who understands that governing means listening to all of it, not just the parts that are easiest to reach.
My professional background is in logistics. I helped lead the Canadian operations of a major multinational carrier, with anywhere from 75 to 500 people reporting to me, directly or indirectly, at any given time. Following September 11th, I was part of a North American working group that helped develop the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) and the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), security and trade frameworks that govern how goods move across the borders of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. ACE remains mandatory on every commercial shipment entering the United States today. It was practical work, done under pressure, with real consequences — and the result is still running.

 
That experience translates directly to what Ward 2 needs — a councillor who can walk into a room with an MP, an MPP, a developer, a non-profit, or a police chief and have a real conversation about getting something done. Not a photo opportunity. A result.

I completed a certificate in Labour Studies at McMaster University in 2025, because I believe you should keep learning, especially before asking people to trust you with their community.
What distinguishes me is straightforward: I know this ward, I know how government works, I have managed real operations with real accountability in the real world, and I am running because I genuinely believe Ward 2 deserves better than it has been getting. Not as a slogan. It’s a commitment.

What is the best way for voters to contact you and/or learn more about you?

 

There are a number of ways — please feel free to check out my website at brianlewis.ca (updated every day or so as we move into campaign mode), and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter. You can email me at brian@brianlewis.ca or call me at 289-674-3534.

 

Thanks Brian for engaging with Hamiltonians on The Hamiltonian!