David Byers, who also goes by David Kitt, said he got the idea of running for mayor about 40 years ago after a mentor had suggested it when he was teen.
“I’ve always come to the conclusion that you never want to do something until you’ve completed everything that you’ve wanted to do before you wanted to actually give back.”
He said he didn’t run earlier as he had kids to raise and a business to run.
“When you look back in the times and you say I wish I would have done this or I wish I would have done that, this was the time to do that,” he said. “I see the struggles that we have and I want to get involved.”
He said Kenora has a pandemic in its streets and an opioid crisis.
“It’s hurting us, and we need to start fighting back.”
Byers said the provincial and federal governments “dropped the ball when they downloaded this all into [Kenora].”
“We get a download of people that are coming that are facing addictions and have problems and find themselves in situations where they’re incarcerated in our local jail because the other jails in the north don’t have facilities available and then turn release on to our streets,” he said.
“I think the big term that everybody says is that they’re homeless, but I never believe people are homeless. I’ve always said when they come from somewhere else and they end up here, they’re kind of misplaced,” Byers said. They don’t know where they’re going in their journey of life, and they’ve got a few bumps on the road to get over. So we’re not really homeless, we’re just misplaced.”
“We need protection for the vulnerable. The people that are hurting, we need to let them know that we are coming for them,” Byers said.
He said he’s undecided about the idea of a supervised injection service being explored for the area, adding that more study needs to be done. However, he said he’s “never been a believer of being an enabler. I think if you enable somebody to keep on carrying on doing what you are doing, how would anyone want to see progress or change?”
Byers said the community needs an emergency protection shelter that could be hospital affiliated and provide a variety of services.
“But we need our provincial or federal government to realize that we have a problem. They officially haven’t realized this as a problem. But they know it’s here,” he said. “They just haven’t walked down the streets yet. So we’re hoping we can get them down here. We need them to step up, we need emergency help now.”
He said, if elected, he’ll keep calling until they show up.
Byers said he’s had lots of coffee shop discussions about politics over the years with people “that really had a lot of great ideas and great opinions, but never brought them out. They were hard-working blue-collar guys, just like me.”
“I’m hoping people will vote for me because I want to represent them. I want to be the voice of change. I want to be the voice of their ideas and their opinions,” Byers said.
