Chapman looks to regain council seat

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

After a provincial election run that saw him come up short against incumbent MPP Jennifer French, Bob Chapman has thrown his name in the hat to regain his former seat on Oshawa and Region of Durham council.

The former councillor, who was first elected in 2010, resigned his seat in April of this year as he turned his attention to his campaign with the Progressive Conservative party to become Oshawa’s next member of provincial parliament in the June election.

And while he earned more than 22,000 votes in the election, it wasn’t enough to topple French who held onto her seat with 24,301 votes.

“Now that the majority of people in Oshawa chose to go with the NDP and not with me, which is fine, that’s democracy, but there’s still work to be done in Oshawa and I think that I can still make an impact coming back,” Chapman says.

It was a surprising move, as ahead of the June election, Chapman was quoted in several media articles stating that in the event he was unsuccessful in his run for Queen’s Park, he would not be putting his name forward for municipal office.

“I think I’ve done my service as a councillor. I think this moving on to another level is what I want to try to do. I think there’s a lot of other people out there that are good that can take up the next council,” he told The Oshawa Express back in April.

However, Chapman says it was at the urging of the community that he made the decision to run in the October municipal election.

“During the provincial campaign I said I wasn’t going to do it, but it’s overwhelming the number of people that have contacted me,” he says. “My wife and I had a nice talk about it and I seriously thought about it and I said, sure, I enjoyed being on council, I think I worked hard, I did some good work. I mean, we certainly lowered the debt in the last eight years and increased the reserves and got some financial stability in there,” Chapman says.

During his time on council, Chapman also served as the chair of the city’s Community Services committee and the chair of the finance committee at the Region of Durham. Before that, Chapman spent time with the Canadian forces and the Durham Regional Police.

“Most of my adult life I’ve spent in public service between the army, the police and of course, the last eight years with the council, so I thought, yes, I’d go back, there’s still more work to be done.”

Chapman has put his name forward for a regional council seat in Ward 3. However, it won’t be an easy race for the former councillor. In the 2014 election, Chapman held onto the final seat on regional council with 9,237 votes. He’ll be facing off against current councillor John Shields, who in his first election run in 2014 gathered nearly as many votes as the incumbent, earning a city councillor seat with 8,232 votes.

On top of that, the two will be vying against first time candidate Teresa Aker, the wife of longtime councillor John Aker. The residents of Oshawa have proven in the past to like the Aker name. John Aker was first elected in 1973 and held a council seat until 1997 when he stepped away to join the Ontario Municipal Board. Aker’s daughter Clare stepped forward in her father’s absence and held a seat between 1997 and 2003.