Tay Valley Election – A Different Election Campaign
This week, we are wrapping up a month of election coverage in the Frontenac News with profiles of candidates for reeve and deputy reeve in Tay Valley.
In this election, there is a public conflict between the current council, and some of the candidates who are running for election. There are two groups of candidates running. No one wants to call them slates, but the one featuring reeve candidate Roxanne Darling, and deputy reeve candidate Frank Johnson, as well as the two acclaimed candidates in South Sherbrooke, Mike Champagne and Martin Whan, has a website (tvtelections2026.ca) which lists issues in common, and includes photos and profiles of a total of 7 candidates.
This group is promising change and opposes some of the actions of Council and senior Staff. There is a website from a non-candidate, John Lang, which we covered in September, that outlines a list of complaints, many of them including speculation about motives and relationships, that are not verified.
In their own candidacy, however, Roxanne Darling, who has long experience in Tay Valley politics,, is running on her previous record and a commitment to look into what has happened over the last four years, when she has not been on council.
Frank Johnson, whose experience is solely in the private sector, is more willing to spell out his objections to the status quo. On the tvetelections2026 website, he says that if voters elect a “majority of like-minded members” to council, they will be able to “reverse the policies and errors of the last four years”.
Both Darling and Johnson were open about having spoken to some of the candidates who are listed on the website, before they entered the race.
This kind of open and public alliance between candidates, which looks a lot like a slate, is not common in rural Ontario municipal politics, and until now it has been unheard of in our area.
There have been alliances, and arrangements between candidates in the past, and there are a few in this election as well, in the Frontenac County elections, but they are not extensive, organised, or open, as this one is.
In addition, the out-going Reeve, Rob Rainer, has published his own recommended list of 5 candidates, including Marilyn Thomas, who is running for reeve, and Greg Hallam, who is running for deputy reeve. While neither Thomas nor Hallam said they are part of any larger group of candidates, they expressed support for each other's candidacy.
Wayne Baker, also a candidate for deputy reeve, identified himself as an independent candidate.
Voters can support one side or the other, or ignore it and pick candidates solely on their merit, as they wish.
But the two groups offer fundamentally different perspectives on the township, and there are facts that support each of their perspectives.
The Darling/Johnson group rightly points out that the township has been defeated in court over the Blueberry Creek issue, and has had a setback at the Ontario Land Tribunal over its initial solution to the “unassumed roads” issue. And, salaries for senior Staff have jumped in recent years, as has the tax rate.
The Thomas/Hallam perspective is that this council finally dealt with these three expensive issues that previous councils put off for over a decade, and the net impact of their efforts has been to resolve them or move closer to resolution, resulting in cost savings in the long run.
Taxes have gone up significantly in Tay Valley over the past four years. When compared with neighbouring municipalities in Lanark County, however, the 2026 Tay Valley rate is marginally higher than the rate in Drummond-North Elmsley, marginally lower than the rate in Lanark Highlands, and significantly lower than the Town of Perth.
It is also about the same as the rate in North Frontenac, and lower than Central Frontenac.
The long-term implications of the upcoming vote are not easy to determine, but one of the targets of the Darling-Johnson group is the relationship between senior Staff at the township office and Council, so a vote for them carries a promise of change in process, or perhaps personnel.
Editors Note on the 2026 Election
I would first like to thank all of the 46 candidates, across 5 townships, who answered my call for an interview. Without exception, each of them was open and honest in their responses to my questions, and willing to enter into a conversation about their candidacy. Similarly, everyone who was invited to attend an all-candidates meeting did so, and did their best to answer questions posed by the public, at those meetings.
Our intention by publishing the profiles and organising the meetings is to provide an opportunity for candidates to have equal access to the public, and for the public to have access to the candidates.
There were certainly some errors in our coverage, but these are the most obvious ones. In the profiles published on October 1st, for North Frontenac, Councillor Wayne Good was listed in the wrong ward. He is running in Ward 1, which is the ward he has represented since 2006.
There was also a mistake in Gord Boulton’s first name, running for councillor in South Frontenac, which is definitely not Doug, but that was in the online version of the article so it has been corrected.
An election mailing, with a PIN, has been delivered to all eligible voters. Anyone who has not received a PIN, should contact their local township office to make sure they get registered to vote.
Telephone and online voting runs from Monday, October 19 to Monday, October 26, at 8pm.
Results will be announced shortly after that, and will be posted at frontenacnews.ca as soon as possible. Full results will be published in our October 29 print edition. Best of luck to all the candidates
