About Michael

Candidate for City Council, District 7 — Kingscourt-Rideau Heights

"Working for you (so let's chat)"

I am a lifelong builder — of homes, of businesses, and of community. I trained as a carpenter through a formal apprenticeship, then spent over a decade running my own kitchen and bathroom renovation company. An injury led me to retire early from the trades, started and ran a building supply product sales agency, and in 2018 I made Kingston my home. That transition gave me firsthand experience with the very systems, healthcare, housing, and accessibility, that I now work to improve.

Long before I ran for office, I put my own hands to that same belief in community. In July 1993, I volunteered on the Habitat for Humanity build in Waterloo, Ontario, Jimmy Carter's very first Habitat trip outside the United States. Later in the 1990s, I served as lead finish carpenter on a Habitat for Humanity project in Hamilton, where I installed the kitchen for the family moving in, and in 2005, I returned to a Carter-led build in Windsor-Essex, where I watched President Carter sign the wall studs himself before the drywall went up. Those moments never left me. They're part of why I still believe the most meaningful work often happens with your hands, alongside your neighbours, not from behind a desk.

My career took me from the workshop to the boardroom. I held senior sales, executive, and business development roles across the plumbing, building supply, and industrial sectors. As a former Corporate Director and Vice President, I managed multi-million-dollar budgets and complex financial portfolios for both corporate and not-for-profit organizations, working directly with C-suite executives and government officials on everything from RFP strategy to national distribution. That same discipline shapes how I approach municipal governance: careful stewardship of public dollars, clear-eyed oversight, and a refusal to let big decisions get made behind closed doors.

Beyond business, I have built a reputation as a dedicated community health advocate and governance practitioner. I currently serve as a Board Director for the FLA Primary Care Network Corporation, Resolve Counselling Services Canada, and Independent Living Centre Kingston, and I previously sat on the Board of Kingston Community Health Centres. As Community Spokesperson and Ambassador Program Lead for the Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Ontario Health Team, I champion the principle of "nothing about us without us," ensuring lived experience shapes health policy rather than being an afterthought.

My advocacy has produced real results for Kingston and for Canada. I helped fight, speaking in Queens Park before Legislators, for and win a national law preventing loyalty points from expiring, personally advocated to bring hip resurfacing procedures to Ontario and then all of Canada, and took a disability parking petition all the way to the House of Commons and the Ontario Legislature. Over the past four and a half years, I have also coordinated more than $580,000 in food and essentials for Kingston families through local food security partnerships, and in recognition of this service, I was honoured with the King Charles III Coronation Medal.

Now semi-retired, I bring decades of business acumen, board governance experience, and grassroots advocacy to my campaign for District 7. I believe municipal politics should stay free of party lines, that council business belongs in the open rather than in camera, and that city-wide decisions must connect the dots between wards rather than being made in silos. For Kingscourt-Rideau Heights, that means a councillor who already knows how to manage budgets, hold institutions accountable, and fight, successfully, for the people I represent.