Opinionated Billard wants to put his ideas to work

DENISE RIDEOUT

Vocal Iqaluit resident Robert Billard is ready to put his strongly opinionated mind to good use.

Billard doesn’t want to take the same route some other residents do and simply complain about Iqaluit’s problems and criticize city council.

Instead, he wants to be part of the solution. He’s vying for one of two vacant seats on Iqaluit city council.

“I’d been pretty vocal in the past few months about issues going on in Iqaluit. Consequently, people said to me ‘There’s a byelection coming up, why don’t you run?’” Billard said in an interview.

“Municipal politics has been in my family for a long time. So, it has been something I’ve been passionate about. And I come from a family that’s very vocal.”

He said he’s ready to put that skill to use. He wants to bring residents’ concerns and issues to the forefront.

“I care about the situation. I want them to know that I want to represent them,” Billard said.

Recommendations and suggestions residents make to council should be taken into account and implemented into the city’s policies, he said. Even though council conducts studies and holds public consultations, residents’ views are sometimes ignored, he said.

“I think it’s time we start listening.”

Billard, an architect who works for Ferguson Simek and Clark Architects, is taking a different approach than some of the other byelection candidates. He doesn’t have a platform and he isn’t making promises he’ll fix the roads, tackle the housing shortage or get the sewage treatment plant working.

“I really don’t want to run on a one-issue platform,” Billard said.

“There are certain priorities. The environment issues and the housing issues are paramount,” he said.

But housing, infrastructure, the roads, the dump and the sewage lagoon can’t be tackled one by one, he said. Rather, they should be seen as interrelated issues.

“If you think of them as individual topics, we’re not solving all the problems,” he said.

Billard, who has lived in Iqaluit for three years, is a painter, writer, musician and volunteer with the Iqaluit Music Society. He is also the father of a one-year-old son.

He’s keen on making Iqaluit a more close-knit community, as opposed to the urban city it’s becoming. “I’d love to figure out ways to get that community spirit back,” Billard said.