Josh McNally · Sault Ste. Marie
Progressive values. Practical local work. Affordable homes, fair pay, accessible care, and a city where everyone belongs—with tourism and creativity opening more doors.
Fourteen short chapters, in the same order as the full platform.
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01 · Tourism and the creative economy
Make tourism work for the people who live here: fair pay for creators, customers for local businesses, and more to enjoy in our own neighbourhoods.
Link waterfront activities, food, shops, trails, heritage, and evening entertainment so a day out becomes a longer stay.
Explore a destination music festival with local organizers, fair artist pay, visiting talent, food businesses, and activity across the city.
Open up arts support, suitable spaces, paid opportunities, and wider audiences. Respect creators’ permission, licensing, and control of their work.
A broader economy gives residents more opportunity and businesses more reasons to invest in the Sault.
Read the full chapter02 · Housing, care, and social support
Everyone deserves housing, care, and dignity. Start with what each person needs, help them get it, and make our neighbourhoods safer together.
Build affordable, accessible, and supportive housing partnerships. Explore a workable vacant-home tax with fair exemptions and clear costs.
Connect housing, voluntary treatment, health care, employment, and practical help. Work with existing organizations to fill service gaps. Josh opposes forced treatment as a general response to homelessness.
Address harmful behaviour while tackling addiction, poverty, and unmet needs. Make shared spaces safer without treating displacement as a solution.
Did someone stay housed, get healthier, or find stability? Use the evidence to coordinate services better and redirect resources where they help.
03 · More ways to make a living
Make it easier to start, grow, and keep more of what we earn working here.
Connect entrepreneurs with mentors, equipment, permits, customers, and useful space. Put underused places to work.
Explore one coordinated lot or several locations with power, water, safe servicing, and waste facilities. Consider fair fees and legally available taxation alongside brick-and-mortar restaurants.
Find purchasing gaps that local suppliers can fill competitively. Help businesses reach buyers both here and beyond the city.
04 · The Port of Sault Ste. Marie
Strongly pursue a modern commercial port that connects marine, rail, highway, and industrial land—and opens more possibilities for local industry.
Give multiple commercial users another route to bring materials in and reach Canadian and international markets.
Recruit businesses that process, manufacture, assemble, and employ people in the Sault, alongside the dock and transport connections.
Keep municipal costs bounded, funding conditions clear, and environmental responsibilities central. Judge progress by lasting local business and employment.
The Port is infrastructure for diversification: a foundation on which more kinds of businesses could grow.
Read the full chapter05 · Community excellence
Give learners, inventors, entrepreneurs, and performers an audience—and a useful next step.
Bring business and inventor fairs, science challenges, and performances together with mentors, feedback, and introductions. Offer fair entry and clear selection, with room to take part beyond competitions.
06 · Culture and belonging
More evenings with something to do. More places to gather. More opportunities for artists to earn and neighbours to enjoy the city.
Set up suitable places for regular and scheduled busking, with fair access, easy voluntary tipping, and paid commissioned performances.
Support music, film, comedy, and stories. Bring streets, parks, rooms, and underused spaces into community life.
Heritage lives in languages, family stories, music, food, and the places people care for. Begin with the Indigenous cultures of the Anishinaabe, and learn from communities in their own words.
Batchewana First Nation describes Bawahting as a longstanding gathering place connected with fishing, trade, and ceremony. These histories are part of living cultures: Garden River’s community programs share Anishinaabemowin and Ojibway teachings with children and families today.
The Sault’s Métis community has its own distinct history and culture. The Métis Heritage Centre shares stories of river life, fishing, maple sugar making, the fur trade, and fiddle music.
Sault Ste. Marie Métis Heritage CentreFrench language and culture remain part of community life today. The Centre francophone brings people together through cultural, social, and educational activities, and welcomes new Francophone neighbours.
Centre francophone de Sault-Sainte-MarieFood, family traditions, and community gatherings connect generations. The Marconi traces its roots to a society founded in 1912 to support Italian culture in the Sault.
The Marconi’s storyFinnish newcomers built community through shared activities and outdoor life. The club now known as Soo Finnish Nordic, founded in 1953, continues that connection through skiing and volunteers.
Soo Finnish Nordic’s historyThese are starting points, with room for other longstanding communities and newer neighbours to share their stories too. People connected to a heritage should help shape how it is shared.
Culture is part of everyday life—and part of a more varied local economy.Read the full chapter
07 · Your ideas, your city
Bring your questions, your ideas, and yourself. Josh wants it to be easier to reach someone, hear back, and find neighbours who can help.
Make room for regular office hours and straightforward ways to get in touch.
Explore a community ideas board where local knowledge can help good suggestions take shape.
Work with Indigenous and Francophone communities on reconciliation, language access, and a welcoming city.
The city-name conversation, including recognition of Bawating, belongs with residents and the local Anishinaabe governments and language speakers connected to it.
Read the full chapter08 · Adult hospitality and regulated choice
Explore whether a carefully controlled provincial pilot could make room for clearly identified adult-only cigar, hookah, or cannabis hospitality venues.
Ontario’s smoke-free rules limit what the City can authorize. Seek provincial changes or a pilot, with required federal compliance. Tobacco, hookah, and cannabis need distinct consideration.
Keep ordinary public spaces smoke-free. Require credible protections for workers, minors, neighbours, and road safety; ventilation does not eliminate exposure.
A separate question: should adult-entertainment establishments remain prohibited citywide, or be allowed in designated areas with strict zoning, licensing, and safety rules? Read that discussion →
Read the full chapter09 · Learn at every age
Start free foundational classes with willing partners in spaces we already have, while exploring a permanent Community School for Life.
Explore the former downtown high school as an all-ages centre, with owner agreement, accessibility, building condition, and ongoing costs worked through. Start learning while we work on a permanent home.
Read the full chapter10 · Fairness in the everyday economy
Back affordable homes, accessible learning, and help with dignity. Take down barriers tied to income, disability, age, or background so more people can take part.
Make contracts, grants, spaces, and other public opportunities understandable and open. Apply fair rules to established names and first-time applicants alike.
A good idea and the ability to do the work should count more than who someone knows.
Read the full chapter11 · Taxes and spending
Strong public services need dependable funding. Show what each proposal improves, what it costs, and how we will keep it working.
Look at taxes, fees, services, and infrastructure together—so today’s decisions hold up tomorrow.Read the full chapter
12 · Data centres, AI, and the public interest
Josh supports a moratorium on large-scale data-centre applications while water demand, environmental effects, lasting jobs, and public liabilities are examined with affected First Nations.
Protect our water and public services. Check lasting local benefits and who pays if a project changes, closes, or fails.
Protect privacy, intellectual property, creative ownership, and workers’ interests as AI develops. Creators deserve meaningful consent and fair compensation. These issues sit alongside the separate decision about a data-centre proposal.
This is Josh’s proposed position, not a moratorium already in force. Public obligations should be understood before commitments are made.
Read the full chapter13 · Room to think bigger
Mosaic, described by Jeremy Hannah, asks how four connected downtown and waterfront ideas could work together to diversify the economy and build long-term confidence in the Sault.
Concepts to explore, not approved projects. Work through demand, partners, permissions, costs, and lasting community value together.
View the full-size concept map ↗
14 · Getting started
Bring neighbours and willing partners together around practical projects, then grow from what we learn.
Whole notes, without half steps.
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