Politics is an interesting racket out there, and I never thought in all my years of covering stuff on the film industry would I randomly be talking to someone who was running for mayor. But he did have some experience in film work and has chatted with film types. Who? Brian Crombie, a man of many talents, and a resume of assorted jobs that he could solve all of the city’s problems, maybe even all of Toronto’s problems. Currently, Brian wants to be Mississauga’s next mayor, and with what he has planned, you’ll probably wish you were living there just to vote for him after reading this. That by-election is coming up fast.
Brian is already known for hosting a radio interview show every night at 6 PM on 960AM and has many interesting guests including a young film director who was in the horror genre and had been producing and directing a bunch of horror films, a man who wrote many articles on sexual exploitation and assault in schools, and many more. One particular April Fool’s day, Brian made a joke on his social media saying that he was going to run for mayor and gave a lot of ideas he thought would change Mississauga, especially in the entertainment. But it seemed too serious for a joke, and the next thing he knew, his fans called in with their ideas and their support saying that he actually should run. So Brian with his many years of understanding political powers, changed his mind on the joke and decided he actually would run for mayor.
So, get ready for a multitude of speeches packed into a single interview, because this was the most informative discussion I ever had with anybody. Prepare your ballot for the best!
HNMAG: You’re transitioning into running for mayor. What made you decide to get into politics?
Brian Crombie: Well, I’ve been in politics for a long period of time, always just behind the scenes rather than as the person out front. I actually started getting into politics back when I was a teenager. In the 2000s, Mayor Hazel McCallion asked me to share the Mississauga city summit which I did for 7 years. I was the co-founder, co-chair for it, and I really got involved in civic issues and really enjoyed it. I was CFO of a major pharmaceutical company at the time, but that involvement got me into Mississauga politics and I became of the Mississauga arts council and ultimately for 2 years had been present. That really got me back into the arts, I started out my career working for the Disney company in Los Angeles and was involved in the business side of film, entertainment, and amusement parks etc. It’s always been something I’ve been very passionate about. Building those great cities that have heart to them, because I think that you need a job, you want a good house, but you also want a great community to live in, and its gotta have great retail, restaurants, and parks. It should have some entertainment to show culture, and I think that’s something we haven’t focused on to the extent we need to and should.
HNMAG: And as someone who has hosted an interview hour, have you spoken to politicians before?
Brian Crombie: Yeah, I typically do one or two political interviews every week. Early in the week I do politicians or economists or people like that, then later on I’ll do arts/entertainment people. Different people that add spice to life, I interviewed people that put on the Mosaic festival, one of the most influential festivals in town. I have interviewed people who were launching the Mississauga Arts Council Official Martys Awards. I’ve done a fair amount of artistic stuff as well as a lot of authors of books. I get into the politics, I get into the economics, and I get into a bunch of other things that are really important in life.
HNMAG: If you are elected Mayor, how will you balance out both this and the radio show?
Brian Crombie: I think what we need to do is listen to the residents more, I think we’ve got in Mississauga and maybe far further a failed democratic municipal system. The last election, we had only 20% of the people show up. That means 8 out of 10 people, 4 out of 5 people didn’t even bother to go vote. They said they didn’t think the city politics was relevant, their voice wasn’t being listened to, it didn’t count. I think that is wrong and needs to be changed. With my radio, I do a long form interview, talking to people for 47 minutes. I really get to know people and what they’re all about, and in a great amount of detail. I want to continue doing that whether on my radio or in my day job, I think it’s critical listening to people, because everyone has a story and those stories all put together really is the agenda for what a politician should be doing to put into action what everyone wants to happen. I think that’s number 1, number 2 is I’m a firm believer in democratic systems. I think a municipal referendum would be spectacular and get people out to think about the issue. One of the issues that Mississauga’s been focused on is the last two years has been the potential separation from the regional appeal.
Brian also went into discussing how instituting recall is another important factor in making it possible for community involvement, as it often gets more members of the community involved. He really gave me a lesson in Mississauga politics for this interview and made valid points. But i had to learn more about film industry work there, and what he could do.
HNMAG: And what did it take for you to get into running for mayor?
Brian Crombie: All you gotta do is get 25 people to nominate you and spend $200 and you’re in. But the problem is actually getting my message out. There’s been two debates recently where they have not invited me, and I think it was affront to democracy and my charter rights. Ironically, the people who didn’t invite me in were residents organizations and those are all about giving people a bigger voice. Inviting citizens to get into the process and not just leave it up to the elected representatives. Yet these 2 organizations banned me from participation. They had arbitrary reasons why, but for I think it’s against the law of Canada and they shouldn’t have done it. I could’ve gone and gotten an injunction on them, but I didn’t want to take the residents organizations to court. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t get my ideas out, so I thank people like you for chatting with me.
HNMAG: What improvements do you plan to have made for the film industry there?
Brian Crombie: The film industry has had a great presence in Mississauga, Toronto is probably the Number 1 place they go to but then for more inexpensive locations there’s been a fair amount of film activity in Mississauga. One of the things that has been really successful here is music. We have Metal Works here that the former drummer for Triumph instituted and I think almost every major music act has come to Metal Works and performed at one time or another. One for the tax benefits and two for the great production facilities. Toronto has sponsored the construction of some film studios, some of them have done okay, some have not. Why can’t we do that in Mississauga? We’ve got the perfect locations, we’ve got it with music. If you can do it, and prove doing it with music, and you’ve got the locations that people want, why can’t we have the film studios? The warehouses and soundstages that they need and want, and I think that it would be wonderful to have those facilities in Mississauga and I would be very supportive of that. I think it fits into my idea of retail entertainment.
HNMAG: A little more about running for mayor. The city has a lot of issues, and do you think it’ll be a challenge to clear up? How many do you feel you’ll be able to tackle?
Brian Crombie: Well, all of them I hope. I think you gotta have priorities though because you can’t do everything and when you have a whole bunch of small priorities, nothing gets done. You gotta have a few big priorities, Number 1 is getting our budget under control. I think that the current city counsellors running for mayor are misrepresenting tax increases and the budget situation. They’re saying the budget increasing acts are only 2.3%, they’re actually almost 3 times larger. They brag that our taxes are modest rather than go crazy about the taxes in Toronto. They gotta understand the numbers, and convey the numbers accurately to themselves AND the people. The budget needs a scrub, and this is the kind of person that I am. Number 2 is housing affordability, we have created a situation where we are building 10 or 20% of the houses we need to build. We’re not getting the money from the federal or provincial government that we need to get, we could get them if we had the allotment. It takes 7 to 10 years to get a development approved, but 2-3 years to build. Why would it take longer to review and improve something, then it does to build the thing? It’s crazy. That’s gotta be made more efficient, more effective, made shorter and cheaper. Number 3 is crime, we’ve got car thefts, home invasions, burglaries, guns in poor credit at an unprecedented level and people no longer feel safe. I think we need to address it, 47% of the Peele budget goes to Peele police and the mayor sits on the Peele Police services board. It is one of the major responsibilities of the mayor, who has to do a lot of research on it. I don’t think we’ve got the community spirit that we need to have for safety.
Brian talked about the importance of how citizens need to be more concerned with each other and how civic responsibility has disappeared with services offering money for blood donations and ratting out criminals. He feels it is the most wrong-headed policy he’s ever heard. I got a lot of details out of him, but boy was it informative. He knows what he’s doing, that’s for sure. Brian’s 4th main issue is figuring out what Mississauga could be in the future, including promoting the largest park and getting a more efficient transit system.
HNMAG: Do you believe people will vote for you because of your reach via radio or are you hoping they vote because they see more?
Brian Crombie: I’m hoping that some people come to the debates and that I get invited to the debates, but I think that in today’s day and age when Mississauga doesn’t have a daily or weekly newspaper anymore, we’ve got some radio stations but they are regrettably not listened to by everyone. I think it’s going to be very difficult to get to them so the only way is through social media. People are going to put up signs, hand out brochures, but the vast majority are going to lose interest in the signs and throw out the brochures after a while, but I’m hoping that people will listen to people like you, my radio show who I’m trying to reach out to through other media. I think that social media and regular media are the only way we’ll be able to get to other people who I can persuade to drive them to my website and I think I’d make a pretty good mayor, but I gotta make people take notice of who I am.
HNMAG: Now more about your show. Have you spoken to any film types?
Brian Crombie: Yeah, I have. I’ve spoken to a really interesting guy in the horror genre and he’s doing filming in Southern Ontario in the city of Chatham where there’s an old jail they’ve turned into a tourist attraction and he’s rented it out to do filming of horror films in it and he’s got sponsorship from the local city hall that’s got a film office. I’ve spoken to other people who want to do filming in Mississauga, an actress that is a Pakistani film star that is doing incredible executive production of interviewing people who have come from Pakistan and India to big film festivals. It’s interesting, there is so much incredible culture within our diverse communities and Canadian community, that is involved in art.
HNMAG: You mentioned working in Disney before, so you have any experience in the film industry yourself?
Brian Crombie: I was one of the first people responsible for the funding of the Silverscreen partners, so I was working on a financial standpoint on how to get films produced and done. That was really interesting, I did some acquisition work on a purchase of ABC from Disney. I also did a lot of development work so we looked at what to do with Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Central Florida, Orlando and I spent a whole bunch of budget cutting in trying to make Disney into something we could afford to build at the time. Those experiences were really interesting and one of the things that was probably most fascinating about it was the number of people that go to Disney World and Disneyland are about the same amount between 12-14 million people. To make it a destination, you gotta make it a place where people can stay/live for a week or 5 days.
Brian told me a lot on how finance in Disney worked and what they set up to make sure people stayed longer and at the same time figured how to save money on fireworks compared to building another expensive setup. He even bumped into a lot of stars while working at Disney, one of them being Goldie Hawn, and when that happened, all of Brian’s office supplies and paperwork flew everywhere. Goldie was kind enough to kneel down and help pick up the mess. Brian apologized but Goldie assured him it was okay, which was so unbelievable but absolutely heartwarming. He also met Leonard Nimoy, Shelley Long, and may other people. But I had to talk a little more about his radio show because that was still on my mind after all the topics we discussed.
HNMAG: What actors would you really like to interview in the future?
Brian Crombie: I’d love to meet and interview Ryan Gosling. I think too often a lot of guys think that they’re Ken, and Kenergy and that thing he did at the Academy Awards was just spectacular and I just think that understanding what he’s all about, when he thought he became Ken for a season, or a year I just think he would be a fascinating individual to know and understand. Then I think Sylvester Stallone would be a second, I think that the whole Rocky genre, running up the steps, not giving up, getting up off the mat, and the fact that so much of it was his personal story that he put into the series of Rocky movies.
HNMAG: Do you hope the show will be more than just a radio show now that you’re mayor?
Brian Crombie: I’ve published all my radio interviews in podcast as well as video on YouTube and social media and my website, I get good viewership of my videos. I’m not sure the running for mayor will do anything for the radio show, but if I’m not successful with running for mayor, I’ll continue the radio because I’ve got a positive impact on public policy and on people’s opinions so I’ll keep doing it. And if I’m successful as mayor, I’ll still keep doing it because it’s a great way to listen to people and I’d love it if I could promote it even more and get some good sponsorship and more listeners. What I like doing about it is meeting people and expressing my own views and getting people to listen to them.
His biggest idea and my most personal favourite has to be his plan for a large building that was constructed in the 1950s by Canada Steamship Lines. This big old building has been sitting by Toronto Lake and housing a vast majority of birds instead of boats. Brian wants to make sure that it could be rebuilt into the greatest tourist and entertainment attraction in all of GTA in contrast to the federal government’s plan of putting in more condos. And I thought Vancouver already had too many of those itself.
But it sounds like he has great plans for Mississauga and in case I ever come to Toronto in the future, I’ll have to come by and see if he’s done anything to the place. I really do hope the residents of Mississauga vote for him. If any of my readers reside there, please consider it. Seriously, that by-election is coming up fast! Vote June 10 2024 and help make the city a better place. With your votes, Brian can pay you all back with great help in improving the community.