Nova Scotia- The newest candidate for mayor wants to brand Halifax the "Vegas of the East" with more strip clubs and casinos.
David Boyd would also like to see the satellite sin city moniker pushed through the sale of liquor in corner stores after midnight, and permitting bar patrons to have "take-out" drinks at closing time.
It’s all in aid of making Halifax "a party city" – a goal that the mayor wannabe puts smack at the top of his priority list.
"Halifax is a port city and we need to entertain our guests," he said Monday.
The city doesn’t currently have any selling points to draw tourists, he said in an interview.
"No wonder there aren’t any Americans coming here anymore. Why should they? There’s nothing here for them. We only have one strip club and it’s not even in Halifax, it’s out in the outskirts of Dartmouth, so we shouldn’t even expect tourists to come here."
Currently, he’s working on securing $5,000 to launch a credible campaign with lawn signs and banners.
"I have to put up the money first instead of just hoping it will fall from the sky. If I can’t reach my financial goals then I’m not going to run."
Some of the other platform promises for the tow truck driver and computer technician relate directly or indirectly to the cab industry, which has employed him for a number of years.
They include: permanently shutting down several downtown streets to traffic to facilitate better public transit and taxi service; setting up a public transportation and communications board, and making more bike, bus and taxi lanes throughout the city.
He’d also like to see people who assault taxi and bus drivers pay for their crimes through more jail time.
"We need to protect our public transit drivers (taxi cab and school bus and city transport drivers) by making stiffer sentences for attacks on them and give them more power to act in self-defence."
Mr. Boyd is no stranger to politics. He’s run in provincial and municipal elections in this area for years, the last time just eight months ago in a byelection in Woodside-Eastern Passage.
The seat was vacated after former councillor Becky Kent won a provincial nod for the area as an NDP MLA.
In that election, Mr. Boyd secured 25 of the 1,301 votes cast. It was a similar outcome to his stab back in 2003 at the provincial riding of Fairview when he pulled in about 94 votes of the approximately 7,000 ballots cast.
He’s hoping that people might remember him from those political outings.
"People are looking for a change, they’re looking for something, and sometimes you need a little spark to get people to pay attention," he said.
His candidacy in the Oct. 18 municipal election throws an interesting curve ball into a race that so far includes current mayor Peter Kelly, and Sheila Fougere, the councillor for Connaught-Quinpool.
Despite Mr. Boyd’s irreverent style and party-centric platform, Mr. Kelly said Monday it’s the voters who will make the decision on Oct. 18.
"I know he’s been involved in politics for some time," he said in an interview.
"He’ll bring his issues and platform forward and the public will choose whom they wish to have in place."
The mayor says he definitely wouldn’t condone some of Mr. Boyd’s ideas, like corner stores being all-night liquor outlets or bars being able to sell drinks "to go."
"As a result of the process with the Mayor’s Roundtable on Violence, some of the issues being promoted would certainly take us back many steps and they certainly wouldn’t be ones I would be promoting."
The impetus for the roundtable was the stabbing death of an American sailor outside of an Argyle Street bar in late 2006.
Subsequent surveys and input from police, politicians and the public revealed that some of Halifax’s late-night problems can be traced to the sale of dollar-drinks at late-night drinking establishments.
"There are some challenges we are trying to deal with and we are actually trying to make them better, not make them worse."
