Third-year Carleton student Alexander Aronec is running in the Oct. 25 Ottawa municipal elections and becoming the first person to challenge incumbent councillor Eli El-Chantiry.
The 20-year-old political science major is running to represent Ward 5, West Carleton-March.
One of his many reasons for running rests with his philosophy for life, Aronec said.
“I am more of a doer than one of those people that protests,” he said. “We’re not any better off than we were four years ago and everyone keeps saying we need new direction but we don’t really see it.”
“You see too many people just saying, ‘Wow people should probably do that,’ and then just kind of standing on the sidelines,” Aronec said. “I think that’s not how I want to live my life. I actually want to do stuff. When I see a problem I try and fix it.”
Aronec already seems to have a full plate. He said he volunteers for Scouts Canada and recently moved back home to help out his parents, as his father is in a wheelchair and his mother recently recovered from a physical injury. He also said he works two jobs, and describes having such a busy schedule as “awesome.”
Incumbent councillor El-Chantiry could not be reached for comment.
Aronec said he hopes that in running he could bring attention to issues that many are concerned about.
One of the issues he said he hopes to improve is homelessness in the city.
“You hear a lot of people our age saying, ‘We have a homeless problem in downtown Ottawa,’ —well, might as well get on it then,” Aronec said.
He said he hopes to deal with the problem by modelling it after a homelessness program that already exists in Portland, Ore. In Portland, police and social workers work closely together to try and get repeat offenders off the streets and into homeless shelters.
Though Aronec will not be releasing his full platform until next month, it is sure to optimize his time, and encourages other people his age to do the same.
“Don’t ever take anything like ‘Oh, it’s just this,’ you never know where it will take you,” Aronec said. “The number of times I’ve met people who say, ‘I wrote this one article, or I did this one thing, or I went to this one party,’ and it changed their entire life.”
“I encourage students to get involved in real-world things a bit more. Right now we’re having the [Carleton University Students’ Association] elections so a lot more people are getting out, but maybe a few more should get involved with community actions. And also, practice random acts of awesome.”