Terry Kilrea
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Terry Kilrea (born 1957 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) is a politician and a court enforcement officer in Ottawa.
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[edit] 2003 election
Kilrea ran for mayor of Ottawa in the 2003 municipal election with a right-wing platform that included opposition to light rail expansion, opposition to official bilingualism, abolition of the ban on smoking in public places, and an increase of police officers. Kilrea has received quite a great deal of media attention in Ottawa from his right wing policies but drew heavy criticism from many groups including light-rail supporters and poverty activists.
Despite never having previously run for municipal office, he finished in second place, largely because of support in rural areas that tend to be more conservative. He also benefited from dissatisfaction with the amalgamation process of Ottawa.
[edit] Conservative Nomination
Kilrea also ran for the Conservative Party of Canada nomination in Ottawa South for the 2004 federal election. He lost the nomination to Alan Riddell, who was defeated in the election by Liberal candidate David McGuinty.
[edit] 2006 election
Kilrea had vowed to run again for mayor in the 2006 municipal election. He had been trailing a distant third behind Bob Chiarelli and popular former city councilor Alex Munter with a very low percentage. Both front- runners had at least twice the percentage vote over Kilrea in most of the polls and were narrowly ahead of new candidate, Calian chairman Larry O'Brien.
On August 30th, Kilrea abruptly withdrew from the mayoral race and threw his support to Chiarelli. Kilrea's reasons included his lack of fundraising success, which might leave him with a significant debt. He also stated that his supporters feared that Kilrea's campaign might split the centre/right vote with Chiarelli thus aiding left-wing candidate Alex Munter's campaign. [1] [2] [3] Kilrea's surprise endorsement of Chiarelli had little apparent effect; Chiarelli continued to slide in the polls and finished a distant third behind Munter and the victorious O'Brien.
On February 10, 2007, The Ottawa Citizen reported in detail claims from Kilrea that he had met with O'Brien in July 2006, (before O'Brien entered the race), and that O'Brien had offered him up to $30,000 if Kilrea would withdraw from the race and support O'Brien. Kilrea says he considered the offer for 25 days and then met with O'Brien again and declined. According to Kilrea the money was offered to cover Kilrea's campaign expenses to date, possibly including debt incurred in the 2003 campaign.
Kilrea made these allegations in a legal affidavit, sworn on December 20, 2006, and according to the Citizen story, subsequently took and passed a polygraph test on his conversations with O'Brien.
For his part, now-mayor O'Brien admitted to meeting with Kilrea twice, and inquiring about Kilrea's campaign debts, but says he did not offer him money in exchange for withdrawal, although "he might have offered to buy his opponent's website". Kilrea denies they discussed his website.
When asked why he had waited until after the campaign to go public with these allegations, Kilrea explained in part "I would have had something to gain. I was also very disappointed in myself for taking 25 days to refuse the offer for me to withdraw as a candidate for mayor...I failed to do the right thing and I had an obligation to publicly declare this regardless of public perception or consequences. I have nothing to gain now except a clear conscience..."
Kilrea's allegations suggest an answer to the mystery of why, when leaving the race, he backed his longtime foe Chiarelli instead of O'Brien, whose right-of-centre positions on campaign issues seemed much closer to Kilrea's than did Chiarelli's.
[edit] Mayoral Platform
[edit] Crime and Drug issues
Before his withdrew from the mayoral race, he planned a tough policy that would have remove all drug dealers, panhandlers and vagrants off of downtown streets especially in the downtown core particularly around the Rideau Street area where a homeless man was recently killed in an altercation.
However, his plan of removing panhandlers and vagrants wasn't greeted well by a group of homeless people that are located in an underpass tunnel beside the Rideau Centre, which was the location of the aforementioned stabbing. What created this uproar is that Kilrea mentioned to a local newspaper that there won't be panhandlers and vagrants sleeping on city streets while adding a significant number of police officers (the latter as requested by Councilor Bedard). Members that are commonly located near the underpass mentioned that they group together and are helping out each other disliked Kilrea's plan.
Kilrea mentioned that removing bus shelters on Rideau Street in front of the Rideau Centre (which Ottawa Councilor Georges Bédard planned but rejected) would have solved the problems of drug dealing in the area.
Though, a few weeks later, Kilrea promised to help drug addicts for treatment. He planned to scrap the city's crack pipe and needle exchange program in order to save 1 million dollars.
[edit] O-Train expansion
As for the O-Train project, Kilrea had criticized its potential to create a major financial burden to Ottawa taxpayers and mentioned it may also be a failure due to a possible lack of ridership when the North-South Line expansion will be completed in 2009 from the University of Ottawa to Barrhaven. He has also criticized that the project will hinder activities on the Rideau Canal, thus a large portion of the tourism industry during the winter periods when the rail will be built. However, Kilrea praised the concept of bus rapid networks as one of the best in North America [4] The project was later cancelled on December 14, 2006 by City Council.
[edit] Police Chief Nomination
When Ottawa Police Chief Vince Bevan decided to retire earlier in the summer of 2006, Kilrea mentioned that it is not important for his successor to learn the French language since he is opposed to the city's bilingualism policy.
[edit] Council Platform
On August 30, Kilrea announced his nomination for council in Bay Ward against incumbent Alex Cullen, which he said was supportive of then front-runner Alex Munter. However, Cullen defeated Kilrea with a substantial margin. [5] [6]
[edit] Plans for Seniors
While running for Bay ward, he promised to give free access to public transit for all seniors. He also promised a new recreation centre which would have included a senior's centre and a swimming pool. He was against a multi-functional francophone center, citing that it would have been a waste of taxpayers money and also said that they should go to existing community centres.
[edit] Crime Issues in Bay Ward
Crime issues was the main object of his campaign and he promised to adopt tougher policies involving drug trade and gang wars. Bay Ward includes the Bayshore, Britannia and Lincoln Heights areas which had a history of gang, gun and drug crimes as well as assaults and robberies. The ward had occasionally the highest crime rate in the city of Ottawa but a recent study by Crime Prevention Canada revealed that Bay Ward, did not rank in the top four areas of the city in that category.[7]
[edit] Family
Terry Kilrea is the nephew of the Ottawa 67's hockey team's coach Brian Kilrea. He has an older brother, and a sister.
