I wanted to bring something to your attention

I wanted to bring something to your attention regarding the Pickering Professional Firefighters Association’s endorsements in the 2026 municipal election that I believe warrants some straightforward journalistic scrutiny. The PPFA has been publishing “Official Endorsement” announcements for members of the current Pickering Council, including Mayor Kevin Ashe, Regional Councillors Linda Cook and David Pickles, and City Councillors Mara Nagy and Shaheen Butt. What initially concerned me was that I had never been contacted by the Association despite being a certified candidate for City Councillor in Ward 2. I have since gone considerably further. I personally contacted the current certified candidates in Pickering to determine whether the PPFA had approached them as part of an endorsement process. According to the candidates I contacted, none of them had been interviewed or even contacted by the PPFA. That is what I believe makes this worth investigating. The City's certified candidate list shows how substantial the field is. Just in the five races represented in the PPFA posts I reviewed, there are 19 certified candidates: seven candidates for Mayor, three for Regional Councillor Ward 2, two for Regional Councillor Ward 3, five for City Councillor Ward 2 and two for City Councillor Ward 3. Yet I have found no evidence of a candidate interview process, questionnaire, policy survey or even introductory outreach to the candidates before these endorsements were announced. That does not mean the PPFA is prohibited from endorsing incumbents. An association is entitled to make political endorsements and may have reasons for relying on incumbents' records or its previous dealings with them. But I believe the public deserves to know what “Official Endorsement” actually means in this case and how those decisions were reached. This question is particularly relevant because the PPFA is not simply another community organization. It represents Pickering's full-time firefighters in its employment relationship with the Corporation of the City of Pickering. The City's own 2026 Budget Highlights specifically identified an ongoing collective bargaining process aimed at renewing the City's agreement with the Pickering Professional Firefighters Association. That fact does not suggest anything improper by itself. It does, however, make transparency about the Association's political endorsement process particularly relevant. The individuals elected to Council make decisions involving City budgets, staffing priorities and municipal administration, while the Association represents employees of that same municipality. There are some very basic questions the PPFA could clear up. What was the endorsement process? Were any candidates interviewed? Were questionnaires sent out? What criteria were used? Were the decisions made by the executive or voted on by the membership? Were non-incumbent candidates considered at all? Were endorsements based on voting records, previous dealings with Council, responses to particular firefighter issues, or something else? There is another fact worth noting: contacting the candidates would not have required extensive investigative work. The City of Pickering maintains a public certified-candidate directory containing campaign websites, email addresses, telephone numbers and social-media information for many of the candidates. I am not asking the newspaper to accept my conclusions. In fact, I would encourage you to independently verify what I found. Contact the PPFA and ask how these endorsements were determined. Then contact the other certified candidates and ask one simple question: “Before the Pickering Professional Firefighters Association announced its 2026 election endorsements, did anyone from the Association contact you, interview you, send you a questionnaire or ask you about your positions?” If the answer across the candidate field is what I have been told, I think there is a legitimate public-interest story about what process — if any — existed behind these “Official Endorsements.” The issue isn't whether firefighters are allowed to support incumbents. Of course they are. The issue is what evaluation occurred before a respected community organization attached its name and credibility to political endorsements — and whether the public understands how those endorsements were actually determined.