In the week leading up to the 2026 Municipal Election, we will be featuring profiles for candidates running for Mayor in Niagara's three largest municipalities - St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland.
Today's profile is Ann-Marie Zammit, who is running in St. Catharines. Born in St. Catharines to Maltese immigrant parents, Zammit grew up in Port Weller before moving to Fort Erie. An Ontario Scholar, she earned a Bachelor of Biology from McMaster University before building a career in the public and private sectors. A full member of ACTRA and voting member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, she is active in the community, volunteering with children’s charities, serving as incoming president of the Kiwanis Club of St. Catharines and as a director with Garden City Productions. She also chaired her daughter’s elementary school parent council, helping raise $90,000 for a new community playground.
What is the single biggest issue facing St. Catharines right now, and what is the first concrete thing you would do as mayor to address it?
The first thing I want to address is the failing infrastructure that we have. We saw widespread flooding at the end of July and beginning of August and this is a known issue. It's been long identified and unfortunately the leadership has failed to address it appropriately. While no infrastructure is foolproof, I really believe that had the structural issues been addressed long before the floods, we might have had better outcomes.
Niagara continues to grow. How should your municipality handle new development and housing while making sure infrastructure and services can keep up with that growth?
I really believe that the province needs to be an active partner in this. The province has the mandate to build homes faster, which is great, but the infrastructure has to be matching that growth. And recently the Ford government has decided to waive development charges. Now development charges are used to build the infrastructure for these new builds. So that still has to happen. So where is that money going to be coming from? The only place municipalities can get money is through the property tax levy. We can't support that as property taxpayers. This is something that I hear far and wide that property taxes are killing us and that's not an exaggeration. So what I would love to see is the province. provide the appropriate funding, especially since Niagara as a whole in terms of infrastructure has about a billion dollar backlog. That's something we can't pay for that through property taxes. So the province has a much larger purse than we do at the municipalities and the municipal level, or even at the regional level. And the province needs to open up its purse. I'm happy to build homes faster, but we need somewhere for those toilets to flush, right?
Property taxes are a major concern for many residents. How would you balance keeping taxes affordable with the need to maintain roads, infrastructure and municipal services?
I believe that the money is there. It's just a matter of allocation and prioritization. I really want to build the budget from the ground up. I want to start at zero and look at the priorities and put those on the list 1st and work my way down. So it is legislated that the mayors are responsible for the budget. However, I am truly a believer in working in partnership with other council members. and with staff at the city to really examine the priorities and how much of that budget should be allocated. And if we start that way, rather than saying, okay, this is the money that we have. We need to look at the issues on how much money should be applied and then work towards the solutions. And the provincial downloading is one of the biggest reasons why the taxpayer is getting so much pressure through their property taxes. With continual provincial downloading, that will only increase the pressure on the average citizen. So we need to look at ways of pushing back on the province and saying, again, yes, we will do this mandate, but there has to be the dollars attached to it. As far as roads and snow plowing and garbage and all of those things, that's a very, very small portion of the tax levy. The largest portion that we pay is for policing. So again, that is mandated by the province. police officers are supposed to be delivering to us for services. So we need to push back on the province and say, sure, if you want police officers to do X, Y, Z, then the dollars have to come with it.
What do you believe Niagara's municipalities and the Region should be doing differently together, and what would you personally do as mayor to improve regional cooperation?
With a restructuring of regional governance, we're only going to be seeing 12 regional councillors, which are the 12 mayors of the municipalities of Niagara. So there is going to be the need to unify, really look at the services that we will provide as regional councillors across the region and see where we can find those partnerships and shared resources. This is something that has been talked about over the years. And I think a lot of the issue of amalgamation, people say, why do we have this region if it costs so much money? Why can't we share fire services or why can't we share services that right now the municipalities take care of individually? And I think that is a really valid question that needs to be examined. And that is going to take the work of not only the regional councilors, which are mayors, but the staff at the region and find those ways to really synchronize and leverage the power of the region. The whole reason the region like that upper tier of government was installed was to leverage the buying power and leverage, you know, the mass ability to provide the services. And I think we've lost our way over the, I believe it's been 50, 50 some odd years that the region has been in existence. So the role of the region really should be in partnership and not a separate entity. In terms of in terms of operational things. Yes, the regional government is responsible for things that the lower tier level is not responsible for. But. One has the effect over the other. So there has to be a partnership. And now with the mayor being the only seat for St. Catharines, we're going to see that need amplified because that's it. As mayor, I would be the sole representative for St. Catharines at that regional table.
If elected, what is one thing you would change about how St. Catharines operates that residents would actually notice within your first year?
The infrastructure prioritization. Also addressing housing and housing from top to bottom, whether it be addressing public housing and increasing the supply attainably priced housing for people who are trying to enter the market. And of course, looking after our unhoused citizens. That is, those are very important issues to me. So it's a tie. And infrastructure and housing are tied together. So I feel like it's the same issue.
Four years from now, what do you want residents to be able to point to and say, "That's what this mayor accomplished"?
I want them to be able to point to the confidence in the infrastructure and to see that there has been a real change in terms of how many people are sleeping on the street, how many people are able to afford rent. I want that pressure alleviated and I want people to look back and say yes it's because of those policy decisions that led us in this new direction and we are seeing the better outcomes for it.
Zammit is one of eight candidates running for Mayor in St. Catharines, alongside incumbent Mat Siscoe, Jimmy Jackson, Anthony Adeoye and Henry Bosch.