I don't want to hide from the conversation about the potential nuclear facility proposed for Wesleyville.

I also don't want to pretend that I have all the answers, or that I can control a provincial project. I can't. I also don't believe that being a municipal councillor means we can simply step back because a project is being led by another level of government.

Whether it is a small local project, significant growth, or a major federal or provincial initiative, our municipality still has a responsibility to our community.

My perspective on this comes from somewhere very personal.

I grew up in North Pickering, in the area where Whitby, Pickering, Uxbridge and Scugog meet. Before I was born, the federal government expropriated almost 19,000 acres of land for a proposed airport. Families were displaced. Century farms were vacated. Communities were changed forever.

And then the decades passed.

I watched abandoned homes slowly deteriorate. I watched people live for years with uncertainty about what would happen to their properties and their communities.

The airport proposal was revisited more than once. It was only in 2025, more than 50 years after the land was first acquired, that the federal government finally concluded that the lands would not be used for an airport. Even now, decisions about the future of those lands continue.

I also grew up during the controversy over the proposed “Pickering Dump.” There was a time when our community was once again waiting to find out whether a major government project would be imposed on our neighbourhood.

And then there was Highway 407.

As a young person, I remember getting the mail and discovering that the proposed route had changed again. One month it appeared to go through our property. The next month, it seemed to go through a neighbour's. Eventually, the highway was built. One by one, homes in my neighbourhood disappeared. Some of the communities that had existed for generations slowly disappeared too. Our home was one of the last still standing.

And then there was development.

The closest town to me was Brooklin. When I was growing up, it was a small community. I remember when the first significant developments began arriving in the early 1990s, including developers who made an effort to create homes that reflected the character of the village.

Today, Brooklin is a very different place.

And now, something even more personal has happened. The property where I grew up is part of what is now identified as the "2051 Urban Expansion Area" in Northeast Pickering. Pickering's Official Plan Amendment 54, adopted this year, establishes the planning framework for a future community in this area, one that could eventually accommodate approximately 72,000 people and 9,700 jobs on approximately 4400 acres.

I never imagined that the farm and countryside I knew as a child would one day be part of a plan for a new urban community.

I share these stories because I have lived through what it feels like when something much bigger than your community is proposed.

I have watched communities literally disappear, and I have watched history, heritage and landscapes slowly disappear with them. I have watched people live for years not knowing whether their home would still be there in two years, five years or ten years. I have watched projects consume years of people's lives and, sometimes, nothing ever happened. And I have watched other projects move forward, bringing enormous change to the communities that remained.

So when I look at the conversation about Wesleyville, I don't see a simple question of being “for” or “against” nuclear. I see a community facing the possibility of enormous change.

There may be significant opportunities. There may also be legitimate concerns. People will have very different views, and I respect that. What I believe is that we cannot wait until every decision has been made before we start thinking about what it could mean for our community.

At the same time, we should not plan our entire future around an outcome that has not yet happened. We need to be prepared without presuming the outcome. We need to listen without dismissing concerns. We need to ask questions without pretending we already know the answers.

And we need to make sure that the people who could be most directly affected are heard and supported throughout the process.

That is one of the lessons I carry with me from growing up in North Pickering; Major projects can change a community forever.

Sometimes change brings opportunity. Sometimes it comes with costs that aren't fully understood until much later. And sometimes the project itself changes, is delayed, or never happens at all.

That is why municipal leadership matters. Our role is not necessarily to control the project. Our role is to understand what it could mean for our community, to be ready for what may come, to advocate for our residents, and to protect the character, identity, heritage and values that make this community home.

We owe that to everyone, whether they are excited about what the future could bring, deeply concerned about what might be lost, or somewhere in between.

We don't have to agree on the outcome to agree that our community deserves thoughtful, compassionate and prepared leadership.