Tay Valley Deputy Reeve Candidates

Wayne Baker

Wayne Baker describes himself as an “Independent candidate” for Deputy Reeve, underlying what he said is a “quite different from most other municipal elections, I think”.

He is currently one of the councillors from South Sherbrooke Ward, after being elected in 2022, and is not affiliated with the group of 7 candidates supporting Reeve candidate Roxanne Darling and Deputy Reeve candidate Frank Johnson, or the group of five candidate that outgoing Reeve Rob Rainer has endorsed, which includes Reeve candidate Marilyn Thomas and Deputy Reeve candidate Greg Hallam.

“If I am elected, I can work with whoever else is at the table, just like before. I won’t have anyone telling me which way to vote,” he said. “As Deputy Reeve, I see myself with a bigger role to play, at the county level and within the township, which I am ready for after learning the ropes as a councillor for four years.”

He thinks the current council has done well, with a few exceptions, including some of the details around budgeting

“This council has been a success, for the most part. It has accomplished quite a bit. The purchase of 78 acres for waste management and public works is one of them. Out ten-year capital looks very good, we have contributed to reserves pretty well. We will need to contribute more to our waste reserve, however, as we need to purchase scales and a new compactor. We will need to find some money for those items.”

He voted against two of the budgets over the last four years.

“I thought we could have done better, and kept the tax increase a bit lower. We had an 8.5% increase in 2025, and a lot of that was because we had not done pay equity in 16 years. But we found an extra $635,000 from the 2023 audit, and council voted to split it into three reserves. I made a motion to take some of it, $100,000, towards the 2025 budget, which would have helped out with a slightly lower increase, but that was voted down.”

Some of the issues that have been controversial among critics of the current council have been exaggerated, he said, but he thinks changes should be made anyway.

“I have no issue with any of the work of our integrity commissioner, but the perception of bias because he is part of the same law firm that we use, could be addressed by making a change in one or the other,” he said.

He is involved in the Diners program at the Maberly Hall, with his wife Michelle, and said that increased funding for programming at the hall came about as the result of a delegation he was part of at hios first year at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) conference.

We met the minister for seniors and he was impressed by what we talked about and came to the Hall to see for himself and witnessed a yoga class. That ended up with the hall being designated as a senior centre, with $50,000 in ministry funding. The hall is used every day of the week.”

He said that he does make any promises, he is committed to provided reasons for every vote that he makes at council.

“If I vote one way or another on anything, I let everyone know why I am voting that way. That’s one promise I can make.”

Wayne Baker has lived in Tay Valley for 13 years, with his wife Michelle and their dog Jule. They retired to a 30-acre rural property from the town of Crysler, on the other side of Ottawa. Wayne worked for the municipality of Ottawa Carleton for much of his career, and the Ottawa Hydro for the last thirteen years, designing hydro line installations.

Greg Hallam

s a Burgess ward councillor in Tay Valley Township for three different four-year terms, going back to 2010. The only term that he has missed over that time was the very close 2018 election, He finished third in that election where the top two vote getters were elected. He was, only 24 votes behind the second-place candidate, and 31 votes behind the first-place candidate

He is running for Deputy Reeve this term as next step for him.

“I see it as an opportunity to further the business of Tay Valley Township at the county level, and with the provincial government as well. I found this past January at the ROMA [Rural Ontario Municipal Association] meeting that there was some advocacy I would like to have been able to do for the township to provincial officials, but only as a member of council I could not speak for the township.”

I’m proud to run alongside Marilyn Thomas, whom I strongly support, while remaining committed to working collaboratively with all elected members of Council, respecting different perspectives and always bringing my own voice and experience to the table for the betterment of Tay Valley Township.

“Out of all my terms this has been the most productive and positive council term that I’ve been on,” he said. “We were able to close a years long roads issue, the Maberly Pines one. Now their road is done, will be taken over and looked after by the township. And we can address the other roads issues over time.

He said that the Blueberry Creek issue ultimately had a life of its own, and council made clear-headed decisions in that case.

“Years ago, I met with Robin Mulcahy, the owner of Blueberry Creek, and I offered to do anything I could to help resolve it. Then, they took Tay Valley Township to court and those conversations ended.”

He pointed to the purchase of a 78-acre parcel for improvements to the waste management system, and to the programming at the Maberly Hall and other recreation programs that are funded through grants and user fees, where possible, as positives.

He said that the pay equity process, which this council implemented for the first time since 2008, resulted in pay increases for unionised and management staff. But is has had a positive impact on hiring and staff retention.

“We have had employees leave, some have retired and some have moved, and it was hard to find replacements when we were not paying market rate salaries. But now that we are, we have a better response when we post jobs.”

Greg Hallam lives on Black Lake, in the Narrows Lock area, with his wife Margot (who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital Foundation). He runs his own security and telecom company, which he said allows him to manage his time well, to attend any meetings and events required of the Deputy Reeve.

Frank Johnson

Frank Johnson has never run for Tay Valley Council before now, but he has been politically active in the township for years, as a member of the former working group on the thorny ongoing issue of funding a resolution to issues pertaining to about 20 unassumed roads in the township, and as the long serving chair of the Little Silver and Rainbow Lake Association.

He has been a seasonal resident of the township since 2005, where he has a four-season home on Little Silver. He lives in Ottawa when he is not in Tay Valley. He is an engineer by training, with en entrepreneurial streak. One of the companies he was most closely involved with was RVR Global, a manufacturer of Oceanographic equipment. He passed that company over to his son ten years ago, but is still connected to it as an engineer.

He originally from the UK, came to Canada to go to university in medical engineering in the late 1960’s, and, in 1985, when an opportunity came up to move to emigrate to Canada, he jumped at it. He is based in Kanata when he is not in Tay Valley.

Through his role on the lake association, he became involved with the township by joining the working group on the environment, and later with the working group on un-assumed roads. He was also very good friends with the late Andrew Kendrick. Kendrick was elected to council in 2022, and ran into conflict with both council and senior staff. Kendrick left council for health reasons in 2024, and died in 2025.

Johnston is running for council as a response to the current direction of council, and he was instrumental in putting together a group of 7 candidates who have a similar perspective on how decisions are made by Tay Valley Council.

He said that in the spring he talked to Korinne Jordan, a first term councillor from Bathurst ward who has bucked the majority view of council on a number of occasions, about running as a Reeve/Deputy Reeve pairing. When Roxanne Darling, who finished a close second in a run for Reeve in 2022, said she was willing to run again, Johnson decided to run for Deputy Reeve and Jordan for re-election as a councillor from Bathurst. Four more council candidates came on to join the group, and two of them have since been acclaimed in South Sherbrooke.

On a web page he has put up, Johnson pointed to seven core issues that the 7 candidates agree need to be addressed.

They are: curtailing tax increases; “scrutinizing” staffing levels and curtailing salary increases to “top executives”; ensuring that the integrity commissioner is not affiliated with the legal firm working for the township; ensuring that working groups can access council directly instead of reporting to the CAO; cutting legal costs; upgrading the live feed of council meetings; and addressing the ongoing issue of maintenance on “unassumed township roads, with “transparent consultations”.

He said that his experience in the private sector, buying and turning businesses around, will come in handy if he is elected, with a cohort of like-minded fellow council members in place