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 David Clow, who is running for Mayor in Welland. Clow has run to be Mayor of Welland before in 2018, and has also run for Niagara South MP for the Green Party in 2015. Clow is often present throughout areas of Downtown Welland and beyond in the City, and has done daily livestreams on Facebook throughout the campaign.
What is the single biggest issue facing your municipality right now, and what is the first concrete thing you would do as mayor to address it?
Well, it's currently lawlessness on the streets of Welland. The streets just aren't safe. The city is being held captive by an army of addicts in varying states of drug psychosis. And I'm going to be implementing a Kidmap Safe Zone. It's already live on the internet now. This is not part of my campaign. It is, but it's not with my name attached. It's already available. It's already running. It's at kidmapsafezone.com. And basically, it's a website that's going to be showing parents, bylaw enforcement, and Niagara Regional Police where there's open-air drug use, where there's weapons, where there's encampments, and where there's people in states of drug psychosis. And then I'm going to implement a four-door solution for homelessness, which is going to put the sober people into homes. It's going to put the people that are still using to a stabilization hub on the outskirts of town, and then it's going to put people who are in emergency situations into the special care that they need so that we can actually sweep the streets. Right now, the crux of the argument for why we're not clearing the streets is that we don't have the beds. So we're going to provide the beds, and then we're going to be able to clear the parks, clear our City Square and our Market Square.
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?
Infrastructure is a key point, sir. I'm glad you brought it up. In June 2026, our current mayor and council slashed developer fees by 50%. So, for a semi-detached home, it used to cost developers $29,900, which went to infrastructure. We're already on the hook for roads, for parks, and now Campion and his crew decided that he's going to give a gift to his developer for $15,000 per finished home. And that's obviously going to our residential taxes that we're going to have to pay. That's one of the many, many ways I'm going to come up with cuts. Firstly, I'm implementing forensic audits all across the board, and we're going to be finding the cuts. In 2011, Barry Sharpe lowered taxes. There hasn't been a lower - the taxes haven't been lowered since, but it's doable. And if we do these forensic audits, we're going to be able to find the cuts to give people a break for once.
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 - and are you willing to raise taxes if you believe it's necessary?
Again, the people that are developing the lands ought to be paying for the infrastructure. These are rich people that are doing this. They want to spread these homes. Firstly, I don't think we need to do sprawl. I think we should be focusing on infill, which is using the land and the property already available to us. But if you look at what's happened with this Lock and Key development, for example, on the border with Thorold, our Mayor Campion gave them a $40 million tax break, then went to the region asking them to double it, to match it for $40 million. The region said, "No, Frank, the brownfield cost was only $180,000. Why would we give them $40 million?" So right now, our city hall has been a rubber stamp for these developers, Campion's friends. And if we vote in any of these other candidates besides myself, city hall will continue to be a rubber stamp for these developers. We don't have anybody speaking on our behalf. And this is why our taxes continue to rise every year as our property values plummet.
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?
It's pretty hard to cooperate as Welland when we've been the dump site for toxic waste, for municipal waste, for people with drug addictions and mental illness. So I don't know if you know, Niagara-on-the-Lake doesn't have an army of addicts roaming its streets. They don't have toxic waste dump sites. They don't have the issues that we have here. So Welland is in the centre of the region, but that ought not to be the reason for us to be the dump site. So, as your regional representative, it would be my duty to speak on behalf of Wellanders to make sure that we get our fair share, to make sure that we're treated equally with the other parts of the region.
If elected, what is one thing you would change about how your municipality operates that residents would actually notice within your first year?
It would happen immediately. We're going to be clear in the streets, obviously. That's my number one priority. But Welland is a beautiful place, and right now we just have these hidden liabilities. So if you look at Merritt Island, for example, it's a great place. I talk about the Mike Burwell Triathlon that used to take place when I was a kid. I used to watch it every single year. Now, our market, our parks, our Civic Square, our Merritt Island, they're all being occupied by these people suffering with mental illness, addictions, and homelessness. So there's no way that we can beautify our downtown until we do that. But my priority, as soon as we create safer streets, will be to beautify downtown Welland, rejuvenate it, bring back life and fun. Friends of mine online, recently, we've been talking about how life is in Europe. If you look at Paris, where they have ice wine and winter markets, enjoying their downtown core during the wintertime, whereas our downtown becomes shut down and there's very little activity when it's not summer. And even during summer, we should be having activities every single Friday evening. Music, performers, classical, bands, and all kinds of different events every weekend, every Friday afternoon at City Hall. So I just want to make downtown Welland a more livable, enjoyable place, a walkable downtown core. A lot of places still have their old awnings hanging on the front of their buildings. And it brings back memories of times that I can't remember, of when we used to have awnings on the front of each business in the downtown core, where people would walk around and be sheltered from the rain, even while doing their shopping. And so I want to bring back that old nostalgia of a downtown core that will be livable and inviting to people.
Four years from now, what do you want residents to be able to point to and say, "That's what this mayor accomplished"?
Well, my most important accomplishment will be my All Welland Good Governance Task Force that I'm implementing. And what that's going to do is I want to create safeguards. So one example will be I'm going to ban developer contributions to candidates. That's going to be one of my first priorities. I'm going to be creating safeguards for whistleblowers, for people like Jocelyn Baker that was sued by April Jeffs, Campion and the NPCA for simply writing a letter about a toxic work environment. So I want to protect all these people. This is the reason why we don't have any good candidates running. This is why I had to run. When I saw the candidates that were running for mayor, I thought to myself, man, I have to do this. And the reason is because our municipal elections are just as toxic as these work environments that these whistleblowers have been describing. So I'm going to be implementing all these governance and safety cards that are going to be necessary so that in 2030 we're going to have a whole list of Welland's best and brightest that are going to be running for mayor and council and it's not going to be like the picks that we're stuck with this election.
Clow is one of eight candidates running for Mayor in Welland, alongside April Jeffs, Gary Graziani, Brandon Simon, Natashia Bergen, Graham Speck, Pat Chiocchio and David McLeod.