'Crisis to crisis' — Matt Fleury, kid councillor now Dad, on the need to pause
Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen
May 12, 2022 • 6 hours ago • 3 minute read
Mathieu Fleury was first elected in 2010 as a fresh-faced lifeguard, not long out of school, age 24.
To considerable surprise, Fleury — still annoyingly fresh-faced — announced this week he won’t be running for mayor, nor will he contest his current job as councillor for Rideau-Vanier.
The kid is now a dad and, as they say, the world doesn’t look the same when you’ve grown another heart.
Possibly, we should have seen this coming. During the trucker blockade in February, he appeared at times to have his youthful idealism knocked for a loop.
There was the infamous meeting in which Diane Deans was — suddenly and with ceremony — plank-walked as chair of the Police Services Board in a council session that took on the appearance of a collective nervous breakdown.
Online streaming to an already jittery city only added to the drama.
Fleury was a little overwrought, lamenting the plight of his friend and ward-mate, Rawlson King, who was resigning his board seat in solidarity with Deans. The fresh face was absent that evening, as was council’s goodwill in firing its own lieutenant.
He spoke only vaguely about it, but Fleury admitted around the same time there were threats made to some councillors during the Freedom Convoy, hardly a thing to be taken lightly in a city feeling under siege.
“The short answer is no,” he said this week, when asked if the stress of the trucker blockade played a significant role in his decision to step away from public office.
“The more complex answer is I’ve lived on the frontline of non-stop crisis since the sinkhole.”
Fleury divided his career into two phases: the period between 2010 until 2017 when life was sunny in the Watson circle; the period from 2017 on, when it was less so.
His is not a sleepy rural ward, but home to the city’s most vexing problems: homelessness, the opioid crisis, a transitioning ByWard, poverty, housing intensification, bar-scene drunkenness, crime, Indigenous integration, Panda party madness, retail closures, it goes on and on.
Now throw into the mix the LRT’s shocking Rideau Street sinkhole, the Salvation Army’s plan for a Vanier “mega-shelter,” the Château Laurier’s mega-meh addition — and for good measure — cue the pandemic in March 2020.
“I feel like I’m running from crisis to crisis.”
He described a term in which he was not executing a reasoned game plan, but putting out fires. There were issues day and night, seven days a week, and he was chairing Ottawa Community Housing, a massive low-income landlord with myriad of its own problems.
The pervasive reach of social media did not help, crisis or not.
“It’s come full circle with social media. Now, we’re the call centres and it shouldn’t be that way.”
(He recalled a 6 a.m. message on the weekend about garbage in Strathcona Park, like he was a surrogate trash collector, too. I mean, where does it end?)
He admits he was schooled in the Watson mold of “show up at everything” but five nights a week does not mesh well with a five-year-old.
In pre-pandemic times, he could mix work and home life, taking the family to cut ribbons or open the fun fair. COVID changed all that.
So he’s taking a pause, and good for him. Lord knows we have enough political lifers in this town.
He remains positive and optimistic about the city he grew up in, and keen on public service. It is one of the reasons, in fact, he chooses not to dwell on the Freedom Convoy threats.
“I want people to run for office and I feel like speaking of any threats is real, but it’s a reason for someone not to put their name forward. And I want the opposite. I want a lot of folks to run for office.”
He’s proud of his accomplishments — too numerous to list here — and has gained real insight into the messy world of political deal-making, without turning into that awful thing: a young cynic.
I do wonder, though, whether his experience points to how these “close-to-the-people” elected positions inevitably lead to burnout. Being “a good guy” to anyone with a problem may be an admirable “skill set” but it’s also a recipe for exhaustion.
(And making “hard boundaries” in political life is just that — it’s hard.)
So yes, take a breather, take the kid to the splash pad, take your own long swim — the river will always be there.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-291-6265 or email [email protected]
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...-need-to-pause
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